A non rival goods (a good, even if consumed by one person, is still available to others for consumption. For instance, the online article you are reading right now is likely being simultaneously read by thousands. You can read it and others can read it because it is not consumed by your reading it. Well, a rival good cannot be diffused, but non rival goods can be diffused. If knowledge and education are rival goods, then they cannot be diffused. So these economics folk felt compelled to prove they are non rival goods.  Education was key, it had to be a non rival good–without a non rival educational process there would be no knowledge diffusion. So many an article was written in math and modeling to demonstrate that if I take a class in economics, my consumption of that class in no way limits the reader’s ability to take a similar class in economics somewhere else. To make diffusion operative, and the growth machine realistic, growth economists had to prove that education, skills training, technological innovations are, or could be made by government regulation or policy to be non rival goods. Frankly, the Curmudgeon would have conceded the point just to shut these fools up. No one asked him.

What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development Saturday, April 26, 2014 @ 1:29pm