Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c75IR // #c75Synthesis

While the marginal costs of digital goods do not quite approach zero, they are close enough to create some pretty strange economics.

— In our words · Source: The Second Machine Age (Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee)

[Use when]

When explaining why digital markets concentrate into monopolies.

[Why it matters]

Near-zero marginal cost is the engine under winner-take-all: one producer with a website can serve billions, so capacity constraints — the thing that used to spread markets around — become irrelevant.

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