Supply and Demand

The gross mechanics of economics can be a fascinating thing. Taken to extremes the math becomes intimidating. The strategy of pricing alone can fill volumes. The simplified or street version, however, might include a few rules of thumb such as:

1) Avoid a short term strategy that paints yourself into the corner of a long term failure.
2) Utilize a scarce or difficult to replicate proprietary factor to market or process a low cost commodity.
3) Do not price yourself out of the market or out of business.
4) Do not create artificial scarcity in order to support an artificial price.
The later might be considered a moral judgment but it is rather a long term strategy to avoid 1) and 3)
5) Measure thoughtfully the dynamics between total cost of delivery (supply) and price the market is willing to pay (demand).

The Internet represents a global market. The demand side can be considered nearly infinite but at a rather low price. Information on the other hand is inherently free; thus, a wide margin that will accommodate a very low price.

The paradigm of the old post mature industrial age institutions, such as phone companies, the recording industry and the motion picture industry flaunt the reality of an information age in artificially scarcitizing cultural artistic content at the expense of a society largely devoid of the arts by virtue of the industry's greed. These monopolies have enjoyed a century of selling us our own art at monopoly prices while living the most extravagant life styles and we vicariously emulated them. The internet seems to be holding its own Boston Tea Party in rejecting that greed. The industrial age bean-counter may be forced to give way to the information age pricing.

An information age guru may be falling pray to some of the same old strategy, however, in the distribution of her news-letter. My response to the unsolicited proposition may reflect rule number 1) and 3).

"With all due respect, the name Esther Dyson is forever associated with IT, clouds of information and the betterment of the Internet. For that reason I assume this reply will go through to a valid address. I have a problem with the price, however. While I would like to read the insightful writing, I cannot afford it. In addition to that, I believe information should be free or nearly so, like the library. Free information fosters egality, fraternity and for the economy productivity. Exclusive knowledge and expensively informed insiders do not. I am reminded of George Gilder and the expensive insider information that failed so completely when the bubble broke. (A fault that lay more with monopolies and the greed of the post mature institutions from the industrial age than with the information itself.) At $795 Release 1.0 lies just out of reach of the millions of people who need to read it. Perhaps not for personal use but as a constituency in support of the strategy for a free and open mesh internet with exponentially growing bandwidth. "