Fake Economy

  I have no background, and indeed practically no interest, in accounts, markets, capital, gains, futures, profits...all these fall into the category of things talked about by adults on Peanuts - Wanh wanh, wanh wanh wanh.  But it occurs to me, as I 'pay' a friend of mine for some on-call computer work with canned air, that this is how it should work.
  In some post apocalyptic world when there are no longer the means to produce all the necessary components to build new parts, but there is still the vast sea of left over computers that our consume-and-dispose society has left behind, he would live off of patronage. Like back in the old days.  A direct, living economy with natural consequences. He tweaks my computer to get it working again, I give him some of my extra potatoes and a bag of nails.  It's a kind of world where people who's work was no longer valuable would simply go away.
  It's because they had no recourse to the enforcement of their version of  'the economy'.  Like forcing people off of their farms into cities so they can get jobs in factories for money to buy food from farms.

Because you read it online

There is an albatross in the room. Strangely, it's worn, not by any one of us, but by a big white elephant.  The insipid pantomime of flappers representing the current purveyors of the so-called internet are boobs. Nincompoops.  True, real life morons. Well, maybe I'm over stating, but just barely. The blind tenacity that they hold onto their conception of what it is they are actually selling is directly opposite to the mandate for which they sell: profit.

The whole idea of trying to hijack the flow of where people want to spend their money is so fundamentally, apologies in advance, retarded as to dwarf my damned imagination. Can they be so congenitally stupid to spend the money that they do get from us in some ego-fuelled effort to prevent us from spending more money? It's insane! The people who are the file-sharers are doing all of your work for you, for free! All you should have to do is release a standard format file once and then watch the cash roll in. Why? Because you own the damn network! We'll all pay just to have access. Because that is all you have. The keys to access. We'll pay through the nose for it. But no. You want to rule content. Again, I say: Idiots!

Even if you are a moral grandstander that has it so going on in your own life as to be able to proselytize to others,  I can't imagine why would you want to have to pay to support your direct competition! Remember, the people doing it for free?  Ah, but that's just it isn't it. It sticks in your craw that you essentially have to let your competition have free access to your, well, access. Then you have to 'compete' with them for our fickle, content-ruled hearts and dollars. What a pain in the neck! Why bother? I'm sorry, but hopelessly out of touch and archaic business models such as the current one would be like us having to drag our cars around with steers because the great cattle barons of the west never fell. They just learned to lobby better.