Ecology, not Economics

In one of Philip K. Dick's short stories ("The Preserving Machine," collected in book form 1969), someone invents a machine that turns musical works into animals and bugs. His intention is to give the musical works the ability to preserve themselves, thereby ensuring their survival should civilization end and all the sheet music and recordings perish. Of course, once the creatures are released, they begin change and evolve: some become feral and vicious, one kills and devours another, and so on - and when the inventor recaptures one of the animals and turns it back into music, he finds it has become all but unrecognizable - a new thing. The song, released into the real world, has become its own creature, unpredictable and beyond its creator's control.

Property, my Aunt Barbara. This is a metaphor I can get behind.