I also have that aversion. But regard, zero marginal cost doesn't mean 'zero cost'. There's overhead to amortize. Like, the effort to have a company that hosts that stuff. And the desire to run a for-profit company, else we'd all be at the mercy of volunteer organizations.

They seem to have 'figured out' their business model already, and it involves each person copying the PDF, paying a nominal fee.

FWIW

You make a good point of course -- my issue is that this amortization has become totally divorced from use. For example, a taxi driver also needs to amortize the upfront cost of their car, but the more they drive, the more the car wears down, so it is all predictable, and somehow feels "fair". With digital goods, you may sell it twice, or a billion times, what you earn is independent of how much cost you sunk into it (apart from hosting and other infrastructure as you mention) -- which explains the runaway successes of our times, but it's just something I am unwilling to participate in :)

Yes it seems like new rules are needed for synthetic businesses of this sort.

I've argued elsewhere on HN, that the reward for building an automated system should be, pay for building the system. In America at least, we consider the entire lifetime output of said system to belong to the builder. That is unsustainable. Imagine a future where everything is automated. There will be no need for workers, and not much further development. The economy becomes a static owner-vs-unemployed deal, and how can that survive?

Wouldn't that discourage automation? By which I mean, wouldn't the economy optimize for busy work instead of producing more value for less effort?

Referring to reassignment of automated machine output? I don't see this slowing automation much. It makes for a simpler, more reliable process across the business. Why deal with hiring people when automation solves it forever?

And even if some folks do decide to go the 'boutique' route and hand-make something, there is always another person who will go the automated route and cut their prices by 90%. Free market after all.

It will be upsetting for sure. Lots of entrenched interests in renting automation at high rates. Maybe have to do it in a phased approach - VAT or some such?

This is the wrong way to look at this. You are not paying $12.95 for a bound copy of papers with ink on it, nor for a printed disk with magnetized bits on it, nor the electricity that powers the servers that host the transfer of those bits. This is so obvious I didn't think it needs to be said. It's advantageous for you to think of it this way, though, right? In your way of thinking, no software should ever cost anything if delivered electronically, and no more than $3.00 if delivered on a physical medium.

What about physical things with near zero marginal costs? Do you feel like your logic applies to an album on a CD when everything was on CDs?

It’s absolutely immoral to me that you see a long chain of work (research, writing, editing, marketing, printing) and judge it solely on its last component (printing). There are so many physical goods where the final piece is just a small portion of the final cost.

It's a continuum of course more applicable to some, less to some other things. I find books mostly fine, and I own a huge library, to a large extent inherited. CD albums already seemed dubious to me and hardly bought any, with software products it is entirely on one extreme of the spectrum.

Why are books fine? Publishers don't print to order. The publisher has already printed thousands before you'd even heard of the book. The only marginal cost here is delivery, and that delivery person is already likely to be going down your street with a van full of goods whether you order or not. The marginal cost is just them adding the extra stop and unload for you, which is probably pennies. Or if you go to a bookstore that already had it on the shelf, it's practically zero marginal cost.

Everything is an exercise in amortization. You seem happy to amortize the obvious parts (printing, binding, stocking, delivering), but not the behind the behind the scenes parts (writing, editing, marketing). That's a crappy distinction.

Do you pay for cable tv or Netflix?

No, I haven't watched TV in almost two decades, except when visiting relatives or friends.

Do you pay for internet or electricity? Once you are connected, the marginal cost to send you another bit or electron is virtually zero.