Virtual world economic theorist Edward Castronova has a one-page piece over on Wired called “Geekonomics” (Link). While he’s focused on contrasting the scarcity in the real world with the abundance in a virtual world, I found a comparison between the two more interesting. After all, there are some things in the real world that share important qualities with virtual goods. Most of you know where I’m going with this, so I won’t turn on the rant machine.