Something from Nothing

Everyone's giving out free stuff on the internet these days. Search Engines, Music, Books, Apps, you name it, it's free.


So....if everyone's giving out free goods, does that mean that people will stop earning money and our economy will suffer? Me? I believe that our economy will definitely change, and certain industries will change radically in the way they earn money, but I believe that people will just find other sources of income. I predict that the main source of income will become advertising in this new era. We are going to find industries related to web-based advertising are the strongest in the burst of this new technological based work era.


For example, I have a family member who works for a company that boosts the profiles of businesses on the internet. How does the company do this, you might ask? By making blogs that receive hits on google and putting links to the company on those blogs.
Here's her blog as an example:


http://minba.wordpress.com/


I personally believe that the economy will be fine. People will only spend time on free things if they have motivation to do so. If the economy takes a drop and people are worried about their jobs, then free software will decrease as much as necessary. Laissez-faire. As long as there is a decent balance between supply and demand, and people are still producing the kinds of things people want to buy/use, we cannot deny the technological progress, the free software. We are more likely to cripple ourselves from lack of progression than from too much of a good thing, in my opinion. I do not wish to oversimplify this, but I do know that people who work hard and come up with good, innovative products will often, if not always, find rewards.