The Zero Profit World

Matt Yglesias:

In a fully competitive market, products should be sold for the marginal cost of producing a unit. And in the software world, the marginal cost of producing a unit is zero. Therefore, in the long run software should be free and nobody should make a profit.

This is an odd use of the word “should,” I think. And rather than being an argument for free software¹, it’s really more of an argument that either (a) economic “efficiency” is overrated or (b) fully competitive markets are overrated. If nobody ever got to make a profit, after all, the world would be a pretty dreary and backward place.

But then, I suppose I’m biased. The marginal cost of producing blog posts is indistinguishable from zero, and I’d just as soon make more than zero dollars producing them. So I’m not really a fan of long run profits trending to zero, even in the nonprofit world.

¹For reasons that escape me, this argument is almost always employed as a criticism of industries like software and music that have very low marginal costs. I suspect ulterior motives.