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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CharlesRyan" data-source="post: 4681959" data-attributes="member: 5265">It's easy to think that something you can hold has intrinsic value, but is there really that big a difference between the physical and the intangible, in terms of value?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If physicality confers value, nothing should be more valuable than real estate. And yet we've seen real estate values plummet in the last year. In some places, there's simply no floor--the only thing supporting any price at all is the willingness of speculators to come in and grab the property for a song, on the prospect that it will, someday, again increase in value. Absent such speculators (in other words, absent people who are assigning imaginary value to the property), the property is literally unsellable at almost any price.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Look at the car lots--especially those packed with Hummers. Big, physical items. The dealerships practically can't give them away.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consider the fully-recyclable plastic packaging I throw away because my council won't take it in the recycling bin. Why not? Because there's insufficient market for recycled plastic. It has value in the sense that it's useful, but nobody wants it. So, in a monetary sense, it has no value.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What about services? Do they have less inherent value than goods, simply because they can't be weighed or measured?</li> </ul>I think recent events in the economy really do illustrate that physicality does not equal inherent value. (Just ask anybody currently paying a mortgage that's twice what their house is currently worth.) Some of my points above might be slightly exaggerated for effect, but my broader point is that you can't really assess IP value properly if you cling to the idea that physical objects somehow have "real" value that intangible properties do not.At the end of the day, every single thing is worth exactly what people are willing to pay for it. That's the only definition of monetary value, and the subject's physical or nonphysical nature have absolutely nothing to do with it.</blockquote>

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