Quote:
Originally Posted by ptgatsby
The most common example is the marginal zero-cost for each additional electronic copy. Things do, indeed, change.
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That is hardly an example of change. The words to a song have always had a marginal cost of zero to copy. If you walk into a concert, hear the lyrics, then sing the song on your own, or play it on your piano, whatever, you may then reproduce that work. This is why rational people do not consider ideas to be property. Something that is not scarce(meaning zero marginal cost to reproduce), can hardly be considered property.
And regarding an understanding of complex systems and their proximate causes, you are misunderstanding something basic. I am not claiming to be able to predict the exact outcomes of specific cases. I am saying that there are basic axioms which we can grasp, which allow an analysis of the macro-conditions in an economy. We can state that the printing of paper money, all else being equal, always leads to inflation. This inflation has a distorting effect on the market, it shifts production away from productive ends and towards ends near the source of the inflation.
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