4 ms·
Inany cases the value of a good depends on other people not having it. Why this is hard to understand is beyond me.
by tormeh 11y ago
Inany cases the value of a good depends on other people not having it. Why this is hard to understand is beyond me.
- jrochkind1 11y agoSo you could consider Linux to be of no value? I assume you don't use it then? Or any other open source software, which you consider worthless?
- tormeh 11y agoTypo: should be "in many" instead of inany
- knodi123 11y agothe value of a good that is being sold depends on the supply of that good in the marketplace. if there's no change in the supply in the marketplace (i.e. if the dude kept the sourcecode for personal reasons and never shared it), then there is simply no harm whatsoever.
- bediger4000 11y agoThat is absolutely untrue in many (but not all) cases of "intellectual property". Let's take some extremely valuable "IP", Microsoft's "Word" word processor. If one person had exclusive use of "Word", the "IP" would be worth a great deal less than it is right now, when almost everyone has "Word". The property here is called "network effects", and it also applies to physical property. If only two telephones exist, they're a good deal less valuable than if everyone has a telephone.
- tormeh 11y agoTypo: should be "in many" instead of inany