I just finished breakfast at the Hotel Pariz in Prague, where we are preparing for PFF's Tuesday conference on Interoperability and Innovation Examined in the Digital Age. (Actually, at the moment we are goofing off, but don't tell Ray that. He thinks we got here early to work.)

New Year's Day breakfast was in the Yellowstone Snow Lodge in Wyoming; Thanksgiving Day was in Hong Kong, and two days before that in the Ha-Noi Hilton (the new one rather than the one in which my colleague Orson Swindle stayed 35 years ago).

A striking feature of all these occasions was the sameness of dress one sees. The same casual jeans, jackets, and parkas are worn world-wide. It is a stunning fact, given that that 200 years ago a shirt was a valuable item (and in parts of the world it still is, of course.) It represented a respectable input of human time and capital. Now, clothes are produced in profusion, an incalculable tide of riches.

And the major factor in the change was ideas -- learning how to build the machines that could do the work of thousands of people quickly and easily, which meant that in exchange for an hour tending the machine each of those people can buy more clothes than he or she can hand-sew in years of labor.

And that's why we are in Prague -- to talk about how to ensure that this economy of the mind continues to exand, until the cornucopia of human betterment is full for everyone in the world. And we are here to oppose those who think that somehow such progress can be achieved by magic, without respect for the hard-headed institutions of proper incentive structures, rule of law, property rights, and governments that are restrained from rent-seeking and value destruction.

Amended 01-16-06.