Is There a Zero Marginal Cost Society?

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The explosion of innovation that took place in the 19th century was truly remarkable. Here's a science fiction question. Do you ever think about a zero marginal cost society? Say there's a universal replicator with super cheap energy, and in essence, all wealth is held in the form of IP. Would that just be crazy or could it work somehow? Well, there's this wonderful book, Favourite of Mine, called Midas World.

Before he became the Adam Smith of Googlenomics, Hal Varian spent decades as an academic economist, writing influential papers, a popular book about the information economy, and several textbooks that are still taught today. So how has his nearly twenty years in the business world affected what he’d write and teach now? Is learning Shephard’s lemma really that important anymore?

Tyler asks Hal these questions and more: why aren’t there more second-priced auctions — or prediction markets? How have the economics of sales changed with the internet? In what ways did his hiring criteria change between academia and business? What could we learn from the sack of Rome? When should economists avoid looking at the literature? How are we always eking out victory in the war on spam? And what are people least likely to understand about Google? Fear not — Hal has an answer for it all.

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Recorded May 10th, 2019 Other ways to connect

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