Free

My review of Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price appeared recently in National Review Online under the title "The Problem With Zero."

As might be expected from someone who believes that property rights and markets are the roads to freedom and innovation, and are the best ways for communities to cooperate, the tone of the review is dyspeptic:

A line is drawn between those who “get it” and those (over 30) who do not. The focus is on people’s entitlements as consumers, not on their need and desire to be proud producers. An advanced economic machine is assumed, but the conditions necessary to maintain one are no responsibility of the author, or of the reader. Also lacking is any awareness that a working society requires concepts of duty and reciprocity, not just entitlements, that paying for what you get is an important form of morality, or that adapting to the digital age involves questions not resolvable by resorting to Condé Nast’s website-proclaimed mission “to ignite and nourish [readers’] passion.” 

Most of the space is devoted to the point that Anderson and the others in the "information should be free" camp are riffing on the economists' idea that efficiency is achieved when price equals marginal cost, only they fail to understand that this idea is not suitable for home use -- it works only on the blackboard, where capital is completely mobile. Turned loose in the real world, it has done great damage.