To return to your computer server example though, these things require so little labour add so little value[1], that they're very nearly / actually are free. A

To return to your computer server example though, these things require so little labour add so little value[1], that they're very nearly / actually are free. A google search is free, posting a message to HN is free. I agree that as you add layers of machines, you get more divorced from the original labour, I was going to say that labour provides the lower bound, maybe my prior paragraph shows that isn't true, of course there are costs to those 2 activities, they just aren't borne directly by us. As I put in a sibling comment, it's a model, not suited to everything, but suited to evaluating buying v building an Atari emulator. [1] I suppose you could argue that computers add lots of value, but competition has reduced the price down to approximately the labour cost. I'm probably not using strictly economics terms here.