SimpleWeblog

Another essay topic or two

And this one is simpler:

Money vs. Quality

I am an engineer at heart, so I can't fight my desire for quality for too long. But money seems to be a bigger motivating factor these days. (See also: wal-mart, success of.) But is the window that is being optimized too short? Is it creating a long term loss of value for society?

And then:

The Value of Piracy

Sure, intellectual property theft has a cost to society if it reduces sales and eventually innovation. But do lost sales reduce innovation more than the a wider distribution of the intellectual property would increase innovation? How could you even test this? It seems like now that we live in an age where lots more "goods" can be replicated without any loss to the original owner, some basic property rights may need to be rethought. Yeah, yeah, this all has been discussed as part of music piracy and online publishing and all that, but those arguments tend to be focused on economic value, not overall innovation. But usually people with a broader exposure to inputs will produce better outputs.

Maybe those two topics do tie in together, after all.