The Cost of Knowledge

I think that knowledge should always be free. I think that it is a collective good. I think it is deeply harmful to people for anyone to get to fund the quest for knowledge and then hoard all they discover, just to bury it behind a wall of extractive costs.

Of course, economists and supporters of entrepreneurship alike will defend the right to profit from the discovery of knowledge as a right bestowed upon the individual who was willing to take the financial risk necessary to invest in discovering that knowledge. They deserve to charge people for access.

But industries fund so much research into new discoveries, new solutions to our problems, and new treatments to our conditions. Then they patent, mass produce, and sell at an enormous cost.

I can understand an argument that they should be able to profit in order to make up for the cost of investment and to be financially incentivized to continue to invest in new technologies and solutions, but I think that there should be a substantial ceiling to to what degree you are allowed to profit.

I would also argue that knowledge itself can never be owned. Because it simply cannot be owned. Information is not a physical product. It exists within your mind and is transferred to someone else’s mind via communication. I have other problems with the idea of private property, especially when it was originally claimed through violence, aggression, and theft, but I just don’t see how you argue that information, knowledge about something, can ever be private property.

Also, would things not be better for you if you both could and knew how to access any information that you wanted or needed?

And you might say, “oh, well Lucas you see, you already can access any information that you want.”

And to that I would say, really? Can you? That was the promise of the internet, sure. But, in practice, you can’t. Specialty knowledge is maintained by professions and you pay for it. You can’t access all of the information that I received to become a Dietitian. You can access a ton of information about nutrition. I concede that. But, you don’t have access to everything that I did. And I paid for it. And you have to pay for it too.

You even have to pay for it if it came from a University, most of which are fundamentally built on tax dollars. But, if it’s published by a University, it is submitted to a professional journal. And academics have to pay to publish their research. And you have to pay access to the journal where they did publish it. Even if you paid taxes to your state and federal government that were used to fund that research.

One way or another, no matter where the information came from, you have to pay for it. The internet doesn’t have everything. Specialty knowledge is safely guarded by industries and by professionals, to maintain their value in a capitalist economy.

I think that is outlandish. Knowledge should be free and easy to access, especially if came from a University that your tax dollars funded.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how much is extracted from us under a capitalist economic system.

Not even knowledge is free.

Knowledge used to be a societal good, a collective resource. Now, it’s just another sale, baby. Cha-ching.

Who knows what this platform will become, but I promise to never charge you for access to information. Information should be free.

Anyway, leave a comment. Let’s have a conversation.