If everyone can create content for low cost, then it is the marketplace that determines worth. The problem is distribution and marketing. No matter how good your creation is, it's worth nothing if people can't find it. So, currently, the bottleneck is the search engines, of which there really are only three.
I've complained about this in this essay: Google Monopoly
As for mass production of more tangible things, the dynamics are similar. People are willing to pay more for a branded product. This has to do more with self-image and the skill of marketing than technology. There are only a few areas where there are absolute constraints on markets. The two that come to mind are automobiles and prescription drugs. The first because of the cost of entry into the business, the second because of the type of intellectual property abuses referred to in the diary. Even in the outrageous case of drugs, the monopoly is shortlived, averaging about five to ten years. That there may be much unnecessary suffering in the interim is the fault of governments for allowing these policies to continue.
I've written many times about transitioning to a society that is less dependent on "stuff", but in the west people are too busy spending money to listen, and in the third world people just want some of the goods for themselves. Change may only come when resource scarcity forces it. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
But consumer culture in general grew hand in hand with the industrial revolution. There is no reason to believe it to be eternal.
The whole point of my diary however, was mapping out a probably expansion of intellectual controls, and why we need to fight it. Because fighting it might lead to a vastly better world than by not fighting it.
