“Anti-rival good” is a
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
suggested by
Steven Weber (professor), Steven Weber. According to his definition, it is the opposite of a
rival good
In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it. A good is conside ...
. The more people share an anti-rival good, the more utility each person receives. Examples include
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
and other information goods created through the process of
commons-based peer production
Commons-based peer production (CBPP) is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler. It describes a model of socio-economic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively; usually over the Internet. Commons-based ...
.
An anti-rival good meets the test of a
public good because it is non-excludable (freely available to all) and non-rival (consumption by one person does not reduce the amount available for others). However, it has the additional quality of being created by private individuals for common benefit without being motivated by pure
altruism, because the individual contributor also receives benefits from the contributions of others.
Free open-source software
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...
described
free and open-source software as anti-rivalrous: "It's not just that code is non-rival; it's that code in particular, and (at least some) knowledge in general, is, as Weber calls it, 'anti-rival'. I am not only not harmed when you share an anti-rival good: I benefit."
Network effects
The production of anti-rival goods typically benefits from
network effect
In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Net ...
s. Leung (2006) quotes from Weber (2004), "Under conditions of anti-rivalness, as the size of the Internet-connected group increases, and there is a heterogeneous distribution of motivations with people who have a high level of interest and some resources to invest, then the large group is more likely,
all things being equal, to provide the good than is a small group."
Although this term is a neologism, this category of goods may be neither new nor specific to the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
era. According to Lessig, English also meets the criteria, as any
natural language is an anti-rival good. The term also invokes
reciprocity and the concept of a
gift economy.
Data sets
Nikander et al. insist that some
data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record of the ...
s are anti-rivalrous. This claim rests on three observations:
# It's cheaper to share than exchange data, because exchange requires ''erasing'' in addition to ''transferring'' data.
# If the cost of copying is negligible, then the
Pareto optimal
Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no action or allocation is available that makes one individual better off without making another worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engin ...
allocation of any such data set is (near) universal availability.
# The value of many data sets increases with the number of users, because the shared knowledge tends to reduce the barriers to understanding and collaboration. This contrasts sharply with material goods, where consumption by one reduces and may eliminate the value to another.
Of course, this assumes that the data shared does not involve uses that would likely harm humans.
[See, e.g., , and .]
See also
*
Network effect
In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Net ...
*
Metcalfe's Law
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users
of the system (''n''2). First formulated in this form by George Gilder in 1993, and attributed to Robert Metcalf ...
*
Rivalry (economics)
In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it. A good is conside ...
References
{{Goodtypes
Goods (economics)