Economics

Why is it that Wal-Mart has figured out how to make things cheaper by low-cost high-volume sales, but software is still routinely more expensive than the computers on which they run?

For God's sake, of course people are going to pirate things if it costs 50-100 for mundane software! I have spent money on software a few times, when the price is good and the software does what I want, but then that's what free software is for.

It is economically useless for us to try and ignore geography by moving actual object all over the world at whim, but to sit on top of content, like software and media, as though they were rare earth metals.