THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

the more of us have it. Government classifications, trade secrecy,
intellectual property rights, and confidentiality are all attempts at
artificially reducing this natural tendency to leak. Increasingly,
these artificial attempts are failing because the actual information
cannot be 'owned', but only the conduits of its delivery System.
Although he admits to still searching for a patent lawyer willing to
agree with him, Cleveland sees 'the expression "intellectual
property" as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms'.
- As a consequence of the two points above, information expands as
it is used. Information spontaneously tends towards abundance,
not scarcity. In one way, this is fast becoming a drawback: we all
complain about information overload. What remains scarce and
competitive is human attention, and our ability to understand,
turn into knowledge, and use all the information available to us.
- As an ideal possibility, conventional economic textbooks describe
the theory of 'perfect competition'. This theory works from the
assumption that all parties have all the information relevant to
optimise a given purchase, that there are zero transaction costs
and no barriers to entry for few suppliers. In 'real' world
transactions, these conditions are rarely met. Interestingly, the
cyber economy could become the first actual large-scale involves
information, both of us have it. In buying this book, for instance,
Government classifications, trade 'near-perfect market'.
Information can definitely be more abundant and accessible to
more people in cyberspace. The Net makes transaction costs lower
than ever. And many of the usual barriers to entry, such as
location, capital requirements, etc., are less applicable. Because
comparison- shopping is so easy on the Net, it promises to be a
fiercely price-sensitive market. Even so, the emerging market
environment of the Information Age seems to conform perfectly to
conventional economic theory.