The commons has emerged as an important factor in the possible alternative to capitalism. In the movement from material production to immaterial production, a new commons of ideas is being appropriated by private interests. The commons of ideas is abundant compared to the scarce commons of nature, and demonstrates that the old argument concerning scarcity in a free market does not apply to ideas. This emergence of the commons can have the same degree of affecting overall economics as the transition from the immobile property of land to the mobile property of capital that marked the beginning of capitalism.