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They might all make a fraction of their income, but wouldn't it still be a lot even without government? I keep thinking about medical doctors: if licensing laws
by ahomescu1 13y ago
They might all make a fraction of their income, but wouldn't it still be a lot even without government? I keep thinking about medical doctors: if licensing laws wouldn't exist, wouldn't they still be in high demand and scarce? For an analogy, we can look at the market for programmers, which is practically unregulated: because of high demand and naturally restricted supply (it takes talent and education to become a good programmer), they command a high salary (assuming that the labor market for programmers right now is a free one, which I think is mostly the case). Wouldn't a doctor working in a free market also make a six figures salary?
- sharemywin 13y agobut a lot of software money is propped by copyright, patents, etc. also what if software companies could fly in any one they wanted to work on code. education is also pretty regulated by government.
- ahomescu1 13y agoNot all of the world's software is consumer-oriented. Programmers could still work on contract, writing software for business customers who wouldn't really bother with piracy. For a concrete example, there are plenty of companies right now paying developers to work on LLVM (which is UIUC-licensed, so practically free for everyone); those people still get paid well. As long as you write single-user software (or server-side software), you don't need copyright as much. Arguably, we're moving away from the shrink-wrapped copyrighted software model (with the exception of App Stores). Education might be regulated by government, but does that really have a positive impact? A MIT degree isn't valuable because government says so, it's valuable because it's from MIT (which is a private university with a lot of great professors and students). The value of education is not granted by government.