The Internet As The Ideal Market

[Dikaiosyne]

This thread deals with two things. First, I would like to call attention to this NPR article about the Interactions of the Real and Virtual Economy in World of Warcraft.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5032947

It reports on how virtual items are being sold for real money. Value is being created in a purely aritifical space. Although the article sometimes sounds like Ben Stein reading dirty magazines, with its commentator's clunky use of game terminology (Its really quite funny), its very interesting how a new industry can grow up in an entirely virtual space. This seems to be the next step in the evolution of e-commence. Where Amazon and E-Bay and others are selling real items without the overhead of a storefront, now completely virtual items are being sold in a completely virtual world. There is even a going exchange rate for the converson of US Dollars to WoW Gold Pieces.

To me this just shows the power of the interent as a marketplace. Now almost completely free of government intrution, people can buy exactly what they want at a price that the market will bear. New Completaters seem to crop up everywhere, and websites detailing the price differences keep the market competitive. Like Rand says, With a Free Mind, goes a Free Market. And since the Internet is one of the great advances in freeing the mind, it logically follows that a Free Market would pop up inside of it. And also since the buying and selling of products goes hand in hand with intellectual and personal exchange, nothing like this has while been seen since the Greek Agora. A center, not for production (although with the WoW example, this maybe changing) but for consumption and exchange.

This also demonstrates the tragedy of any government's interfernce with the medium. This is true capitialism in 1s and 0s. Any interfernce that would reduce the freedom online, would also reduce its value. The world has added a Second Beating Heart, and it doesn't need any plague in its arties.

Second, almost in response to the Solow Model Thread, Just as the "New World" being discovered added immensely to the resources of Europe, couldn't these internet "New New Worlds" also add value to the real world. Arguable, they are creating value both for the metaphysical enrichment of the players, and the company that creates and preserves them (Blizzard). But now a secondary industry is growing up around the product. You hear enviromentists say, you need resources to grow, and anything beyond the resources of a world will result in death. But inventing a new world brings so much new to the table. Theoricially an infinite amount of these worlds can be created so therefore an infinite amount of value can be "mined" and brought into the real one. Isn't that an answer for theorically infinite growth? So, instead of the Science Fiction Space Opera dream of going to the stars to support our consumption, maybe we have to look at the circuits instead.