Linux at NASDAQ OMX

What does the human mind have to do with it? If a certain price makes purchasing a product suddenly cost effective, then why should I (or my computer) be prevented from buying that product just because that price only stayed cost effective for milliseconds? This is not a hard scenario to imagine. Perhaps phones cost $70 from the warehouse. If some warehouse has a glut suddenly (they need to move them out to make room for something else), and they offer them for $65. The first (fastest) buyer/retailer gets the lot. Surely it would be unjust to limit this sale.

But take this further, as soon as that transaction has been performed, another one could potentially become valuable! Many transactions only become valuable because of several other transactions. In other words, the reason the warehouse may have wanted to make the sale as quickly as possible at $65 (even though perhaps they could get $67 if they waited longer) is because they were faced with a similar deal on the other end; that is why they needed to empty their warehouse of the phones. If they could not sell the phones, they might not be able to purchase the other product in time at the right price. They would lose out, and so would their supplier and buyer, everyone in the chain looses! As you can perhaps extrapolate, this becomes a large global chain of best deals. The faster they are made, the more efficient the economy can operate, any delay is a potential waste of resources.

If there is one thing that open source should have made clear is that even minute barriers become problematic in a global collaborative environment. Those open source projects which understand this and work hard to minimize barriers are those which are most likely to succeed (because they are likely more efficient). Imagine if someone unrelated to your project, thought that it were OK (and they had the power) to limit the rate of contribution to your favorite project, would it not be unjust? Time and time again this is questioned, wikipedia vs. nupedia..., and time and time again, those with the lowest barriers displace those with higher barriers. This is not just theory, this is science, look at the empirical data, not some economist's or politician's analysis.

Play "Settlers of Catan" a bit with a competent crowd and you will quickly realize how valuable it is to respond quickly to offers and also how valuable it is to make them quickly! :)