And then there’s this to worry about. . .

Via Futurismic, we have a post on The Long Tail blog.  The post is a reflection on economies where creating the supply of the goods is its own reward.  Take acting, for instance:

The thing about acting is that the labor force (actors) actually value the ability to do work in that field that they are willing to take on work for nothing and take on other jobs as a sort of cross-subsidy.  There is a sort of demand for employment in theater, which makes competition among actors so fierce as to actually drive down wages (at time of entry at least) to zero or near zero.

True, and somewhat worrisome as the argument is extended into other creative industries.  The post talks about bloggers undercutting journalists, but you can easily extend the model to other content creation venues.  It’s no secret that most writers would keep scribbling away even without the paltry payments we do get.  And the supply of people willing to spend money to write actually outnumber those who write well enough to get paid, which subsidizes a whole industry of book doctors and self publishing scams.