Being an anti-socialist, not getting for free what I could get for free

This post, Making Money From WordPress.com, which links to this more interesting post, Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, in which the following quote come from:

…This calls to mind one version of Stewart Brand’s original aphorism from 1984: “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive … That tension will not go away.”)

As if information wants anything, but if it did, this describes both its needs. Why? Because though it may cost nothing to digitally distribute information, it many times costs an enormous amount of money to produce information.

Then, in describing one of the free business models, the writer says:

· Zero marginal cost
What’s free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone. Free to whom: everyone.

This describes nothing so well as online music. Between digital reproduction and peer-to-peer distribution, the real cost of distributing music has truly hit bottom. This is a case where the product has become free because of sheer economic gravity, with or without a business model. That force is so powerful that laws, guilt trips, DRM, and every other barrier to piracy the labels can think of have failed. Some artists give away their music online as a way of marketing concerts, merchandise, licensing, and other paid fare. But others have simply accepted that, for them, music is not a moneymaking business. It’s something they do for other reasons, from fun to creative expression. Which, of course, has always been true for most musicians anyway.

And it’s here that he, like the buffoon libertarian, is disregarding the the cost of producing information.

Free is not a good descriptor. Stealing is a better descriptor.

The fact is that a certain portion of the population can get all sorts of things for free, at least for a period of time; that is, for the period of time before there’s some type of economic collapse because what’s being produced for a cost is taken for less than what motivates the producers to produce.

[As far as stealing music goes, everyone and his brother wants to be a rock star, so there will be decent musicians who are willing to adapt to the changing times and give their music away; that is, as long as the economy is decently stable, because without money, you can't make good music. The economic collapse would result from the entitlement mentality reflected in the music stealers. People with an entitlement mentality are socialistic fools who select socialist fools for their government representatives.]

The fact is, by means of socialism many people can get a lot for free. All they have to do is get the right politicians in office.

And the fact is, there are things that I could get for free, but I’m not willing to take them for free. The reason that I won’t take them for free is because the producer isn’t offering them for free, which is not to say that I believe the producers desires should trump all.

Just like the socialist politician doesn’t appeal to me, even though I could get something for free from them, the digital pirate doesn’t appeal to me. And I could make all sorts of analogies about how civilized people with a conscience restrain themselves when they could do otherwise.