At 4:02 AM +0200 on 7/2/02, AAA, the Annoying Anonymous Austrian wrote:
But you claimed that signed pieces of digital information were private goods. Please explain.
If it's encrypted, and it's on my hard drive, than it's my property. I own
it, not someone else. That's a private good. I can turn around, and sell it
to you. You can encrypt it, and put it on your hard drive, and you can sell
it. It's *your* property.
The same can be said for time-on-channel bandwidth, or rented computational
cycles, or anything else, up to, and including custom-ordered "output" like
professional opinion.
For the most part, except for custom professional opinions that are to
specific to be worth much to anyone else, we're talking about public
property exchanged over a public internetwork. Private goods.
Go read some more econ and finance, starting with, say, Coase, and ending
with a decent corporate finance textbook, and come back when you have
something useful to say instead of spouting collectivist pseudo-economics,
please.
In the meantime, read my .sig, below, and take it to heart.
Cheers,
RAH
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R. A. Hettinga