F2C: Swire with qualifications on Benkler's Wealth of Networks

Peter Swire, Professor of Law at the Ohio State, gave a presentation "Consumers as Producers" attempting to take a more economics-based view of the ideas in Benkler's Wealth of Networks.

His critiques:

Shift to non-market is not proven, likely far overstated

• Open source is shifting to market-based companies
• Social and hobbyist evolve to market functions (Jon Postel to ICANN; Web 2.0 - target of ads & PR; and the Internet itself has evolved from non-commercial to commercial)
• Economist would agree with the decline in cost of producing information goods and services, but that just shifts the supply curve way out -- we will get more production from factory owners or their equivalent. This may or may not
• Occam's razor.  Markets will likely explain it all in time, not requiring a radical shift to non-market relationships.

Pragmatic reasons to deploy the economics-based approach to consumers & producers

• Need to persuade policymakers and business people to achieve our broadband Internet goals.

Benkler's rebuttal:  Market production is considered desirable policy.  Is your claim the result of our policies?

My take:  Since Paul Romer, economics now takes ideas into account (as opposed to treating them as external (exogenous). I'm not an economist, but I suspect these two should put their arguments in the context of new economic theory, rather than markets as understood by Adam Smith.