Chris Anderson Practices What He Preaches?

WIRED’s Chris Anderson has a new book out, making his case for the “economics of free.” By this he means “free lunch,” but the core of the book is trying to dress up “free lunch” as “free markets.” In the new economy, all goods will be digitized, and as that happens, they will obtain a cost approaching $0. Therefore, all companies will make their money by providing auxiliary services atop their free goods, for, Anderson believes, production costs also approaching $0. [Ex: sell ads on free content site]

Here’s the problem: if consumers love “free” goods so much, what makes Anderson confident they will be willing to pay $>0 for services. Moreover, even if they were willing to pay for services, wouldn’t that willingness be undermined by the knowledge that, if Anderson is to be believed, the services also cost $0 to make? Never mind that there are serious doubts about the $0-cost-ness of digital production and distribution. [Malcolm Gladwell pretty effectively eviscerates the whole argument in the most recent New Yorker]

I have long rolled my eyes at arguments like Anderson’s. The more seriously you think about what “free” really means, the more you are convinced that it’s inherently anti-market, that the Internet leads us to a kind of decentralized socialism. Some tech-evangelists are upfront about this being their true goal, and even if I disagree with their values, I respect them for honesty. Folks like Anderson infuriate me because they couch their desire for a universe driven by “non-monetary” rewards for work in a vision of a profit-making economy.

Thankfully, Anderson has been revealed in his true colors: chunks of his book have been liberally plagiarized from Wikipedia because apparently, it was just too much of a hassle to cite properly: “he and his publisher ‘couldn’t agree on a footnote policy for Wikipedia entries’ ” Oh, cry me a river.

According to Anderson’s defense, everything is free online because the Internet makes assigning ownership so difficult that property ceases to exist. I personally believe the Internet necessitates a new definition of intellectual property, not an elimination of intellectual property as a category altogether. Without property, you have no philosophical basis for a market economy. So Anderson’s plagiarism and his cavalier response to being exposed suggest he doesn’t really believe in markets at all.