Town Hall Meeting

Check out this article about forced scarcity. It’s a thought provoking take on how companies are clinging to their old business model when technology has changed to the point where people can easily get their product for free.

“In the last few decades, thousands of babies in Third World countries have died from contaminated baby formula. What happens is the mothers mix the baby formula with contaminated water, because sanitation is poor. So why the hell do the mothers feed their infants poison formula when they can just produce milk, for free, from their own bodies? The answer is that they do it because the manufacturer of the formula, Nestle, ran lots of ads telling them to.

If you want to know what the future looks like, there it is. The future is going to hang on whether or not businesses will be able to convince you to pay money for things you can otherwise get for free.

Futurists and sci-fi writers talk about a “post-scarcity” society, meaning it’s like Star Trek, where matter replicators and fusion reactors have ended all shortages. On one hand, that now looks like a ridiculous pipe dream, but in a lot of areas of our life, we’re already there.”

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html

Thanks Mike for the link!