David Friedman, a scholar in law and economics, has published several fascinating books over the years including one of my favourites: The Machinery of Freedom. His latest (next?) book, Future Imperfect, is available on the Web in draft form, complete with provision for making comments.
My tenuous excuse for mentioning it here is because it does deal with issues of future copyright enforcement. But, less relevantly, I was struck by this superb example of economist-think.
If you really believe that foreign terrorists breaking into computers in order to commit massive sabotage is a problem, the solution is to give the people who own computers adequate incentives to protect them — to set up their software in ways that make it hard to break in. One way of doing so would be to decriminalize ordinary intrusions. If the owner of a computer cannot call the cops when he finds that some talented teenager has been rifling through his files, he has an incentive to make it harder to do so in order to protect himself. Once the computers of America are safe against Kevin Mitnick, Saddam Hussein won’t have a chance. [My emphasis]
An example of how counter-intuitive — but equally how right — much economic thinking can be.