As you are waiting for your Amazon Prime Shipment of Chris Anderson’s Free: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business, read an excerpt in Wired.
Our brains seem wired to resist waste, but we are relatively unique in nature for this. Mammals have the fewest offspring in the animal kingdom, and as a result we invest enormous time and care in protecting each one so that it can reach adulthood. The death of a single human is a tragedy, one that survivors sometimes never recover from, and we prize the individual life above all.
As a result, we have a very developed sense of the morality of waste. We feel bad about the unloved toy or the uneaten food. Sometimes this is for good reason, because we understand the greater social cost of profligacy, but often it’s just because our mammalian brains are programmed that way.
Or go back to my last blog-entry on the topic.
PS: If in Europe, go for the UK edition because it will be published 5 days before the US edition.
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I loved this excerpt and cant wait for the book!!
His framework for scarcity vs abundance is great food for thought.
Scarcity
Rules: Everything is forbidden unless it is permitted.
Social model: Paternalism (“We know what’s best”)
Profit plan: Business model
Decision process: Top-down Organizational structure: Command and control
Abundance
Rules: Everything is permitted unless it is forbidden.
Social model: Egalitarianism (“You know what’s best”)
Profit plan: We’ll figure it out
Decision process: Bottom-up
Organizational structure: Out of control