Chris Anderson on Free

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2008

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

Chris Anderson talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his next book project based on the idea that many delightful things in the world are increasingly free--internet-based email with infinite storage, on-line encyclopedias and even podcasts, to name just a few. Why is this trend happening? Is it restricted to the internet? Is there really any such thing as a free lunch? Is free a penny cheaper than a penny or a lot cheaper than that? The conversation also covers whether economics has anything to say about free.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. My guest today is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. He
0:41.7	is the author of The Long Tale, the subject of an earlier podcast, and his next book scheduled
0:46.8	to come out in 2009 is called Free. Chris, welcome back to Econ Talk. Thank you. Always
0:53.3	pleasure to be here. Chris, you laid out some of the arguments behind Free in a recent article
0:57.0	for Wired that will link to edicontalk.org. What's the idea? What's free now and why is it only
1:03.2	going to get better? Well, there's really, I think you phrased it right, which is what's
1:11.2	new about Free. Basically old Free and new Free. Old Free is basically been around since
1:20.8	the free lunch, which was, by the way, San Francisco saloons in the 19th century would give
1:27.9	you free lunch if you bought beer. It is the razor and blades, it is the free checking,
1:33.5	et cetera. It is all across subsidy of sorts, where one thing is free, but you pay for another.
1:39.6	You don't necessarily spend less money in the end, but the psychological, powerful word
1:46.1	free is invoked to change the behavioral economics of the purchasing decision. We can talk
1:52.7	more about the increasing range of cross-up to decent, clever ways to make things feel
2:01.0	free, but that's not new. What is new is what's been basically enabled by the internet. The
2:07.8	internet is, if you look around, first of all, almost all services and content and products
2:12.8	on the internet are available in a free version, and almost everything is free to the consumer.
2:20.0	Google doesn't show up in your credit card bill. That is the main driver. The main reason
2:29.1	why everything on the internet is free is basically digital economics. For the first time
	...

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