Traditional payment systems are functional to the economy of scarcity based on physical goods and characterized by diminishing returns and Pareto-optimal limits; thus implying the fundamental necessity for traditional systems to sanction reprobate behaviors.
In the immaterial world rules are different: returns can increase as shown by Brian Arthur. The economy has no intrinsic scarcity and in fact, being an economy of abundance we try, with limited success, to apply transactional systems typical of the economy of scarcity.
Based on pragmatic considerations about the usage conditions of technology-enabled information goods, it is foreseeable a new transactional system for digital goods which is not based on the sanction of reprobate behaviors, but on the valorization of virtuous behaviors.
I am not arguing that such a system should replace the traditional payment system for digital items, but that it might co-exist so that entrepreneurs could start new activities choosing what they think is the system that is more adequate for their business model.
This article has been written to be published on Nova 24, the innovation supplement to “Il Sole 24 Ore”, Italy’s largest financial newspaper. Due to space constraints, a reduced version was published
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