what is the weightless economy 
the term weightless economy refers to the trade of intangible or abstract products and services such as consulting software and professional services the weightless economy sells ideas information expertise or services other terms such as post industrial economy or new economy are also used to describe these intangible products the concept of the weightless economy largely evolved at the turn of the 21st century with the rise of information technology and the many products associated with it understanding the weightless economygranted weightless products have existed throughout civilization music is one however it is only since the mass adoption of computing and the development of the internet that economies have become dominated by weightless products it is now possible to deliver products and services to large numbers of customers and across great distances without the need to manufacture ship or store those products and services using physical labor and machines some products like music or software must be created only once before being distributed at minimal cost to as many consumers as want them for example a musician records a song only once in the past a record company needed to physically manufacture vinyl records or cds reproducing the song package them move them from factories to warehouses and finally deliver them to record stores where they could be purchased by customers all of these stages involve costs in terms of both money and labor today that same artist and record label can distribute their music online through streaming services such as spotify and online marketplaces such as the itunes store although the time needed to produce a song is largely unchanged its delivery is virtually effortless and instantaneous whether the song is sold to one customer or one million an economist looking at this example would say that the musician has a marginal cost of production of nearly 0 therefore the marginal profit associated with selling each additional song is essentially 100 once you have already recorded the song and made it available for sale online it costs you almost nothing to sell each additional unit this is the fundamental reason why it is possible for some technology companies to become so profitable in a relatively short amount of time in the weightless economy there is almost nothing preventing a company from acquiring a large pool of customers if demand for the product or service takes off 