Information doesn't give a Shit about being Free

I do though (give a shit about information being free). Banning propaganda is only one measure of enhancing the efficiency of national economy. Traditional economies are about distributing limited goods/resources. Information economy is about distributing information. Unlike traditional goods information is never a limited resource in a digitized infrastructure. Information can be copied and distributed at almost no cost at all. Therefore traditional market rules do not necessarily apply to information. Information seems to have the amazing property of multiplying best when it is freely available.

When the traded good consists purely of information the production cost depends heavily on the availability of other information goods that are used in the development (creative work is an exception to this rule, but it partly applies to e.g. music and visual arts). In fact almost any modern computer program would be next to impossible to develop without the help of numerous development tools like modern programming languages, debuggers, compilers and so on or without ample ready made parts (``libraries'') of tested code for the creation of graphical user interfaces, database/Internet access and the like. On the other hand the development of many programs (like e.g. email clients, CD-burner software ...) is a trivial task today that can be achieved by one experienced programmer within a week.

Since the development-cost of new informational goods depends mostly on the availability of other such goods the efficiency of the national economy is maximized if the availability of such goods is maximized.

I do not assume, that hobbyist will completely take over the software sector. But hobbyist developments can already completely cover the market for home desktop systems. Business applications is a very different story though. But business applications are mostly very company specific. Thus copyright rules do not affect the market for business applications as it does markets for more general purpose software. Companies can and will still for example pay programmers to automate their business processes or implement the newest Sim apps that run on mobiles. There are ample examples where companies will still pay programmers to develop rather specific code even if copyright is history.

The development of hardware differs significantly from software development. Many aspects of the hardware development process cannot be automated or simulated, because the underlying physics are not known or are too complex to simulate. Since the development of hardware always requires the production of prototypes it always implies some monetary investment. Such investments would probably not be made if the investors could not expect a return on their investment. Thus patents are beneficial in the context of hardware investment.

Patents do also have undesirable effects on the national economy though: Patents are frequently used to monopolize or even completely prevent the production of patented goods. Thus the production of these goods is not subject to the efficiency and production price optimization which is the the most important advantage of market economy.

Infotags are an attempt to distill the advantages of patents while leaving the disadvantages out of the system. They encourage investment in hardware development while making it impossible to foster production monopolies.

The enhanced transparency of companies is another measure for improving efficiency: Novel ideas that proved useful in one company can easily be used by other companies to improve their efficiency.