The point about marginal cost pricing is a bit simplistic (it ignores the "time preference of money", and risk premiums) -- but, otherwise I think it's pretty good "futurism".
I don't know whether or not we'll ever have a "free" car -- but, a lot of existing business models are going to be destroyed. Also, I don't consider anything with embedded advertising to be "free" -- it takes up my time, and (potentially) alters my brain.
"Your email is free, right? Everything should be free! That's why I will nationalize the healthcare industry! It's just a logical extension!"
I agree with marginal cost pricing, but one is hard-pressed to give me an example of a zero marginal cost for anything. If you are putting something on the web, its marginal cost is never zero. You cannot even have a presence on the web at zero marginal cost.
This might be fun to think about and debate but it is simply wrong.
Sure you will, and it will run just as smoothly as your Linux desktop! Of course, you'll have to distill your own gasoline, to make sure that it matches the unique chemical formula optimal for your particular construction of cylinder and spark plug, but hey, that's cool - it shows how leet you are! Sure, it takes time to keep your free car properly configured and patched with the latest safety and security devices, but hey, you weren't planning on spending time doing anything productive with your car, like, you know, drive it somewhere, were you?
The guy makes some wishful statements, but his error comes from his primary assumption. It's right here:
There are three kinds of free in the world. [...] But there's a third form of free, which is the fascinating one that's really just now coming of age ... where really nobody pays
That statement is false. Somebody always provides the materials, labor, or time to produce any good or service. Just because it sometimes happens to be the same guy that created the good or service doesn't mean the process of creating it didn't cost him anything. "On the house" does not mean "nobody pays".
What I think would be interesting would be the ability to pay to not be the recipient of advertising.
For example, I like NCIS on CBS. Its about the only show I watch regularly now that The Unit is pretty much gone. 1/3 of the hour I spend watching it is commercials for products I don’t or won’t buy. I’d pay a small fee to be able to see the show(s) I like without advertising - and its probably more than what CBS gets in ad revenue when they divide it across the number of viewers.
Likewise, I’d subscribe to some web sites that are currently free if I could see them without ads.
No, there's no such thing as free. Someone always pays. Whether it is the consumer, a third-party advertiser, or the provider, a payment of some sort is occurring. It could be in cash, time, effort, or resources.
Nothing is ever free.
The number 1 rule of the Universe: There is no free lunch.
What the author really means is no apparent cost to the consumer.
If I have a great idea for a story. I might tell it for free around the campfire. But if I go to the trouble of typing it up and proofreading it and putting it on the web, I want to get paid. Paid from somebody, I don’t really care who.
Anybody remember Nuclear power so cheap electricity it will be free? Didn’t happen that way. It never does.
Cheap, yes. Free to the consumer, maybe. Nobody gets paid? Never.
No it's just more of the same as we have heard from what is basically a Marxist movement on the Internet.
They argue that things should be free, and that people should donate their time to creating things for free in order to make it impossible to make money off of doing them.
I have no problem with people donating their time, effort, and even money to projects like Wikipedia. However, they aren't produced without cost. They might be free to the user, but someone is still paying for the bandwidth, and people are still donating their time to provide the content. It doesn't matter if you donate time or money or something else, the project is still being run by donations.
Obviously everything can't be done through such a model or no-one earns a living, that is unless you have some entity like a Communist government step in and determine how much to pay people for their efforts.
If you undermine the profitability of doing things by subsidizing it, you can even create a monopoly to some extent. If you can gain enough market share, and have control, or at least strong influence over the content of a popular "free" site you have a lot of control over what content people receive. As you can guess that has a lot of appeal to certain people, and they can find a lot of "useful idiots" to provide the free labor as long as they present their message right.
So far, such efforts have had limited success because there has remained reasonable competition, and enough skepticism of such projects to maintain a market for competition.
That won't keep them from preaching their populist message of how things should be free and of the evils of capitalism.
yes, and You get what you paid for.
Interesting ideas, but the interview wasn’t too coherent.
I do think more and more basic or entry-level products might become free. Like software, there will be charges to upgrade.
If someone were able to live without upgrades most of the time for most things, imagine how much free stuff and services could be had!
But if you are interested in such things you should look up "RepRap". It's a project to help spread Replicating Rapid prototyping machines. Basically 3D printers where you get one for free and use it to create 2 or more and give them away for free.