I’m far from convinced of this, if by technology you mean modern cutting edge computation tech for example. ALL goods ARE technology. From programming languages to aircraft to condoms to corkscrews. Knowledge, for a very long time, has been easy to reproduce. The fixed costs of produces a dread-tree-book is huge but the marginal cost of another one, once it is written and typeset and at first printed, is tiny in comparison.
I agree that knowledge relevant to production is technology. But still, the fraction of a product’s cost that’s attributable to technology can vary widely. And the fraction that’s attributable to new technology at the margin can vary even more widely.
For instance, printing presses for books are technology, but they’re not technology at the margin. The technology has already been invented. When you set up a printing press based on old, pre-existing technology, you are investing in capital and labor, not in technology (except insofar as your buying the equipment played an incentivizing role retrospectively for the people who came up with the relevant printing press technology).
The ratios also matter. If we’re shipping physical books, then the marginal cost is over a dollar. If we’re letting people download e-books, the marginal cost is under a cent. If we think of the content of the book as the “technology” (insofar as it contains ideas) then the ratio of technology fixed cost (the cost of writing the book) to the costs of selling/distributing the book is a lot higher in the e-book case because the cost of selling/distributing is lower.
I agree that knowledge relevant to production is technology. But still, the fraction of a product’s cost that’s attributable to technology can vary widely. And the fraction that’s attributable to new technology at the margin can vary even more widely.
For instance, printing presses for books are technology, but they’re not technology at the margin. The technology has already been invented. When you set up a printing press based on old, pre-existing technology, you are investing in capital and labor, not in technology (except insofar as your buying the equipment played an incentivizing role retrospectively for the people who came up with the relevant printing press technology).
The ratios also matter. If we’re shipping physical books, then the marginal cost is over a dollar. If we’re letting people download e-books, the marginal cost is under a cent. If we think of the content of the book as the “technology” (insofar as it contains ideas) then the ratio of technology fixed cost (the cost of writing the book) to the costs of selling/distributing the book is a lot higher in the e-book case because the cost of selling/distributing is lower.