Ross is at the Wikimania conference and here is his outstanding post on the meaning that is emerging from the conference.
Transaction costs are 50% of US GDP. This is what Open Source and the 'sphere are after. 50% of GDP!!!!!!
As a historian I jump back to the point of take off in the English economy. It was after Henry VIII had adopted the protestant faith and went after the pool of locked in wealth that the Catholic Church had acquired over millennia. The Church was the largest landowner in the country. Much bigger than the King. Henry confiscated the lot, and monetised it. This, the dissolution of the monasteries, provided the capital for the new men and the foundation of the British surge above their weight in a Europe where France and Spain had the conventional edge.
Is this what is on the table???
