IMO... One of the fundamental failures of anti capitalists is to understand the cost of producing and consuming information and factor that it to their calculations.

You will often see criticisms to the effect of "capitalism only produces market efficiencies with perfect information". I reject this argument.

It may be true that I could purchase a similar good for less nearby (we'll use a pen, sold by neighboring stores for $0.50 difference in price) however.. Researching all alternative purchasing paths is a significant time cost and likely to only produce minimal value, so I don't.. And maybe overpay for the pen.

Information has to be produced by someone (they should be compensated). And potentially benefits me (I have a marginal gain to be shared with the producer).

I think this plays our in reality... People shop for houses where gain is potentially significant, not for pens.

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I would *love* to be able to write code for important projects for free if I had some way to pay the bills without charging for my labor. As it stands I'm not independently wealthy nor do I have any rich relatives that will be leaving me a fortune when they pass so I have to require money for my time. I wish that wasn't the case, but that's the way things work atm so I have to abide.

Charging for you labor is the only signal you have to know if your time is well spent or not. Working for no pay is a vanity.. Not a "bad" one per se .. But there's no way to be sure it is the best use of your time, or that it's providing the most value to the world.

Code if not information and can be obfuscated/bundled. Sometimes oss can make sense on generic complnents to have peer review.

if you have the info buy the cheap pens and offer them at different places at a highwr price