Week of the Doc
Doc Searls was here most of the week, hanging out at the 43rd Street Headquarters for
Contrary Thinking. The weather was gnarly, so it's a good
thing he got some great
photos when he was here two weeks earlier.
Free Entry
We had a great dinner Sunday night, as described by Doc
and Adam
Fields.
Both point to my mention of a bedrock economic principle that has
fallen on such hard times that they both were struck by the concept
when I
mentioned it. From Wikipedia:
Free
entry is a term used by economists
to describe a condition in which firms
can freely enter the market for an economic good by
establishing production and beginning to sell the product.
Free
entry is implied by the perfect competition
condition that there is an unlimited number of buyers and sellers in a
market. In comparison to perfect competition, however, free entry is a
condition often more applicable to real world conditions. To see this,
suppose there is a good which not many people want, which is produced
by only one firm. In this situation, there is not perfect competition.
However, if there is free entry, the market is likely to be more
efficient than if there is not. If the monopoly
firm raises its prices too high, another firm could enter the market
and take its customers. According to this reasoning, where there is
free entry the economic damage caused by monopoly
behavior may be mitigated.
These are smart, knowledgeable guys, so the fact that it is
not their common knowledge is a Bad Thing. That's because free entry
into the market place is the First Amendment of Economics: a
precondition for any
legitimate economy. The absence of free entry ensures economic tyranny.
And that's what we've got, folks.
11:36:11 PM 
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