2009/5/5 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Not true. I'm considering the historical value, but I'm recognizing the fact that it must be heavily discounted due to the fact that it takes place so far in the future.
I'm not convinced that discounting to present value applies here. You can't describe all of life in terms of economics (in fact, it seems describing economics in terms of economics isn't entirely wise!). How do you assign a monetary value to future historical knowledge? For that matter, how do you assign a monetary value to present historical knowledge? Or any kind of knowledge? In economics things have value due to scarcity, knowledge is freely reproducible, so the concept of scarcity doesn't really apply - either it exists, or it doesn't. Access to knowledge may have monetary value, but the existence of the knowledge doesn't, the concept just doesn't apply.