Zero marginal cost is radically different to anything that has come before it in the analog world, and it makes some pretty amazing things possible. To illustrate this, imagine that you own a pizzeria. You pay rent for your store and your equipment, and you pay salaries for your staff and yourself. These are so-called ‘fixed costs,’ and they don’t change with the number of pizzas you bake. ‘Variable costs,’ on the other hand, depend on the number of pizzas you make. For a pizzeria, these will include the cost of the water, the flour, any other ingredients you use, any additional workers you need to hire, and the energy you need to heat your oven. If you make more pizzas, your variable costs go up, and if you make fewer pizzas they go down.