Kragen Sitaker writes: > Russ Nelson writes: > > RMS is in the majority of people who think that economics is about > > money. It's not. Economics is the study of what people do with their > > freedom -- why they make the choices they make. > > Economics is the study of what fictional people with purely selfish > motivations, and classically perfect information about their > alternatives and perfect strategy, do. Nahhh. It's only been that way since the end of WWII. Some of us practice the old form of practical economics, which predicts from theory that fixing prices too low results in shortages (and lo! You have too little housing in NYC), or too high results in oversupply (and lo! The feds have to buy out dairy herds). If you want a view from the trenches, if you have a really bad attitude about economics, if you think competition is anything worse than multiple offers of cooperation, if you laugh at the old joke about "If you lined up 2,000 economists head to toe, they would have 2,001 opinions", go read _The Vices of Economists--The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie_, by Deirdre N. McCloskey. At the very least, free software business leaders should be familiar with the basic results produced by economists (and yes, they do agree on much -- but somehow only the disagreements are news). A good introduction is _Economics in one Lesson_, by Henry Hazlitt. Another painless introduction to price theory (and if you don't understand price theory, how can you price your goods and services?) is David D. Friedman's _Hidden Order_. Search http://www.lfb.org for any of these books. -- -russ nelson <sig@russnelson.com> http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!