It is clear from the preceding examples that technology and law, separately or in various combinations, are being intentionally used counter-productively by businesses and governments to undermine abundance and create artificial scarcity. These counter-productive approaches may be summarized as follows:
The technological approach. A good example are the copy-protection measures taken by software developers to make it difficult for users to copy disks and similar media. These technological approaches include not only copy-protection but also copy-restriction, copy-identification, and user-restriction. An example in agriculture is the Terminator Technology. This approach is often combined with a legal approach.
The subsidy approach. Another approach similarly uses digital/genetic use restriction technologies (DURTs/GURTs) to prevent copying and reproduction, but goes further. These technologies are also actively promoted by the government while low-cost credit, subsidies and other forms of support are withdrawn from competing technologies. This is the case in the promotion of HYVs, hybrids and engineered seeds at the expense of traditional and heirloom varieties, and the replacement of work animals with mechanized equipment.
The technology protection approach. Still another combination approach uses laws to protect technological copy-protection from being bypassed or to mandate its use. The former is the case with DRM technologies, which U.S. law now protects from being bypassed or disabled.
The purely legal approach. Outright bans illustrate a purely legalistic approach. The enforcement of patents, copyrights and plant variety protection bans simple copying, seed sales and seed exchange. Other bans: uncertified seeds; low-power broadcasting; unlicensed practitioners of healing. Bans may not be so benign: in the Middle Ages, women healers were burned at the stake.
The most devastating approach of all has been the poisoned pill strategy of introducing an anti-abundance technology that appears to deliver a good or service but in fact destroys a resource that it intends to replace. For example: agrochemical industry destroyed the natural fertility of the soil and devastated populations of natural pest control organisms; the genetic engineering industry is undermining organic farming through genetic contamination; engineered corn is hastening Bt resistance that will make the natural Bt biopesticide useless; formula milk slows down and eventually stops the mothers' production of breast milk for their babies.
If it cannot be controlled, then the abundant resource, like the sun, is simply ignored as much as possible.
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