The consumers were given preferences for certain kinds of information and designed to purchase it as cheaply as possible. Think of the publisher as Time-Warner, and the brokers as your local magazine store. People magazine is listed as a preference by only 3 percent. Buy only Time, since it has the biggest potential market. This results in a vicious price war, as everybody sells Time at increasingly lower prices.
Many stores go bankrupt.
But others try selling Fortune - though the market's smaller, the margins are higher. Then, as soon as all those other owners see how much money they can make by selling Fortune, there is a mass migration into the Fortune market. Another vicious price war ensues. And, for a while anyway, even the majority of Time readers are ignored while the Fortune melee continues. It may be that, as the agent economy becomes more sophisticated, agents will learn to become more socially conscious, for lack of a better term.