Re: [tlug] Open-source Japan

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

JC Helary writes:
 > On mercredi 04 mars 09, at 13:27, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > No.  When everybody has good information, markets (let alone free
 > > ones) are unnecessary.  It's only because information is scarce that
 > > markets are useful.
 > 
 > Isn't it markets that make information scarce ?

No.  It only takes about 5 seconds of thought to see why not.  To
*make* information scarce, one must destroy it.  To destroy it, one
must cause brain damage.  Markets do not cause brain damage.  QED.

 > As you write, markets have no interest in information not being
 > scare.  Hence they tend to make it scare to ensure their own value.

*sigh* Information is scarce as a matter of physical fact.  Markets
*necessarily increase* the amount of information by providing the new
information called "price".  An offer of a price in a free market is a
commitment to trade at that price, and it reveals important
information about the offerer and the good on offer.  In sufficiently
competitive markets, price even becomes a sufficient statistic for
value.

Of course, market *participants* regularly withhold information.  But
heck, so does every cheating husband, most bureaucrats, and Richard
Stallman.[1]  I don't see why you demand higher standards of the
market than you do of society itself, which does a demonstrably
terrible job of fostering honesty.  Really the big "problem" with
markets is that they create value so prolificly that they attract
fools back to be fleeced again and again (and fools though they be,
there is so much value in the market that on average they come out
ahead!)  IMHO the world needs more "problems" like that.  It needs
them very badly.

Footnotes: 
[1]  He learned better, eventually, but for many years the Emacs
development lists were by invitation only with closed archives, and on
at least one occasion he threatened to kick sites out of the Emacs
beta test program because the URL of the beta version had leaked.
He's also asked me personally to suppress research in the economics of
open source licensing if the results turned out unfavorable to copyleft.