Clouds

23. October 2008 by admin.

Perhaps the recent economic downturn was caused by our own actions, not just the speculators on Wall Street, but also the common people. I will attribute one such cause as the trade of non-tangible goods - software being the number one in sales revenue. The process work like this. People buy the software, and high-tech companies will hire more programmers, and speculators will invest to make the stock appear higher in value and the interests larger. The dot-com bubble burst is over, but its effects are still felt.

What is software? Nothing more than our intellectual creations. Software takes time and money to develop, but far less than tangible goods. They also last rarely as long. So why are there monopolies, such as Microsoft and Apple, on certain programs (operating systems, music creation software), and many others lacking in quality (just visit any freeware and shareware site)? Uniform standards are one such reason for the discrepancy. However, the cost of important software for productivity is still overly exorbitant. The common people can hardly afford such bundles, packages, and suites of digital information, all of which last a short period of time. Although software should in theory drive our productivity, software at its best only improves our use of computers, which fuels the bubble of IT speculation.

Free trade and the rise of eCommerce has only accelerated the pace at which software is sold and distributed, but we have yet to see its positive effects, since they do take up a significant portion of what the common man pays for with his earned money. What are the ramifications on the US economy as a whole? On the world economy? And is it moral for a country to charge monthly costs and create multi-million dollar industries out of online games?

Intellectual property should be enforced, but it should also be affordable, and the economy must not be sacrificed at its expense.

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