The Charm of Zero Marginal Cost

Written by Peter Li-Chang Kuo

“Zero Marginal Cost” refers to a business that requires a one-time investment, can be replicated globally, and has the potential to create the world’s richest individual.

Former President Lee Teng-Hui received my book “Open the Way for the Next Generation” (Li-Chang Kuo, 2005). He immediately flipped through it and stopped at page 191, where he saw a photo of William (William H. Gates Sr.) and me. He then shared a story:

Fig 1: William Gates and A-Chang

On January 13, 1988, President Chiang Ching-Kuo passed away suddenly. Lee Teng-Hui succeeded him as president, but the situation was turbulent beneath the surface. At a time when President Lee felt uneasy and apprehensive, he was informed: “The Governor of Washington State is here to visit.” President Lee, who is 183 cm tall, recalled that Mr. Gates stood a full head taller than him, leaving a strong impression.

The main purpose of the visit was to request President Lee’s assistance in implementing “Law + Software.” Specifically, for PCs exported from Taiwan that were installed with “MS-DOS” (disk operating software without any patents), they hoped to establish a payment mechanism. President Lee promptly asked the relevant authorities to handle the matter. He later recalled, “It seemed to be about 100 USD per unit.” William won his first battle, and then replicated the model. Under “Zero Marginal Cost,” this approach ultimately created the world’s richest individual.

In December 1966, I outperformed competitors from the United States, Japan, and Germany to secure aerospace-grade PTH orders with stringent requirements. By 1974, I had established Taiwan’s precision industry. On March 13, 1979, I founded the “Blackstone Angel Fund” in New York, putting Reaganomics into practice and supporting several entrepreneurs — including William.

My wife, Linda Din (丁玲虹，Ding Lin-Hong), a homemaker in Chonghe, asked me to save Barbie. On May 20, 1984, despite limping on one leg, I revived “He-Man” in just one day. At that time, Mattel Ltd. Taiwan (MLT) had already spent one year and mobilized over 10,000 workers without success. As a result, I was awarded the title “Gadget Master” by Barbie’s inventor, Ruth Handler, and subsequently helped revive Barbie as well.

In 1986, Linda Din invented “TES” to address unemployment. It is a groundbreaking invention designed to help humanity overcome the constraints of time and space (t, s). She invested enormous resources to realize her vision — what she called the “Rich Taiwan Plan,” a form of “Social Responsibility Investment” (SRI). At the same time, Microsoft was listed on NASDAQ. Despite my master-level expertise, it was not until 1989 that I confirmed the development of the “RF Transmitter,” which was reported by “Economic Daily News” and “Commercial Times.” When she presented the R&D results at APEC in 1997, Bill Gates Jr. had already become the world’s richest person, while she continued to toil for the suffering of others, pouring in her own hard-earned money.

Fig 2: 1989 Reports and its tangible objects

In 2002, a Merrill Lynch team visited Taichung to do due diligence and personally observed Linda Din, the inventor of TES, operating the VAM system. Its “Charity Donation” function enabled real-time allocation. Combined with an "IP Appraisal Report" from National Taichung Institute of Technology — assessing the system at 23.4 billion USD — and confirming that our foundational invention had “the intellectual property (IP) ownership is clear and free from legal defects,” they ultimately gave a valuation of "250 USD per share." Joseph Chou (PwC) further suggested setting the NASDAQ-listed entity PCH at “3 billion shares,” implying a total market value of “750 billion USD” — sufficient to support TES as a large-scale new techno-economic system.

Fig 3: Merrill’s basis for the US$250 per share estimate

After securing “satellite support” at APEC CEO Summit 2006 in Hanoi, I went to the United States to promote the installation of the “K-Horn Toller” (Fig 2) in traditional retail stores, transforming them into “eStores.” This marked the beginning of realizing Linda Din’s "Linhorn Indicator: A = C / GDP = 0.36" (where C represents cashless transactions). By the COVID-19 period in 2020, C reached 36 trillion USD, achieving the mission goal. However, by 2025, C had surged to 200 trillion USD (A ≥ 2), resembling a runaway train.

Fig 4: APEC CEO Summit 2006

We must now employ digital financial mechanisms. By “tokenizing USD 100 million” out of the original IP valuation of 23.4 billion USD, we can establish "a braking system" to redirect the revenue generated by “Zero Marginal Cost” toward industrial upgrading, preventing catastrophe and creating opportunities for the next generation.

TES is a large-scale techno-economic system spanning 90 million square kilometers. At the time of its APEC proposal, it was described as a “Total Economic Solution” (t-e-s). It requires an “Information System for Supply Chain Management in Electronic Sales Systems,” abbreviated as "TSCM" (TranSmart Supply Chain Management) software system for processing and management. TSCM was included in the “88–89 SBIR Results Compilation” (published by the Commission of State-Owned Enterprises, Ministry of Economic Affairs—MOEA), it has been confirmed as a “national-level intellectual property (IP).” On January 27, 2001, the complete system, including source code, was stolen during a major robbery at PCI (Panhornic ComMec Inc.), after which certain cartels experienced a sudden leap in technological capability.

Fig 5: TSCM and SBIR Compilation

When the mother of e-commerce, Linda Din (丁玲虹), stood at the APEC podium in Thailand and said, “A = 10 trillion USD,” she won the ministers’ praise as the best practice of helping 240 million people start businesses in real-world. After the conference, the Thai representative rushed to the podium, holding a colorful brochure, and asked the speaker, “Why can TES break the constraints of time and space (t, s)? Why does A = 0.36 lead to a society of achieving common prosperity?” The excitement spread from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.

Fig 6: The TES-mania at APEC 2003

At the Bangkok APEC meeting, when the Japanese delegate heard “USD 10 trillion,” he became so agitated that he immediately started making a phone call. I was standing behind him, and I felt an extremely ominous premonition. After the mother of e-commerce returned to Taiwan, the Taiwanese cartels mobilized the full force of public power — “the MOEA + the National Taxation Bureau + the Police Bureau + the Investigation Bureau + the District Prosecutors Office” — to frame her with charges of "fundraising to benefit the CCP bandits." She was interrogated, threatened, and eventually scared to fall down; on November 21, 2004, she nearly lost her life. The largest IPO case in NASDAQ history was thus reduced to nothing.

Fig 7: The Bangkok APEC that triggered the killing intent

When Cook dared to publicly promote “Apple Pay” on stage in 2014, it was because Control Yuan President Wang Chien-Shien had classified the investigation report as “Confidential until August 16, 2017.” Before declassification, Linda Din was told that if she brought up her invention, she would have to endure “seven years in prison.” The most astonishing coincidence is that if “Fig 2” and “Fig 5” are fed into AI analysis, the core business model and underlying technical logic of Apple Pay are 100% “Substantially Similarity” to TES’s original cashless invention — showing the characteristics of “prior art.” In short, “RF Transmitter + TSCM” is the ancestor of today’s global “ePay” systems. It is one of the major achievements we created in the 1990s with billions in sweat and hardship, and it has been recorded in the national archives and internationally certified as intellectual property (IP) by APEC.

According to William’s “MS-DOS” logic: “The user must pay.” If the ex-factory price of a PC at that time was USD 2,000, then an IP fee of USD 100 per machine would be “5%.” If we apply 5% to “C = 200 trillion USD,” that equals “USD 10 trillion.” Obviously, the compensation recoverable under "Zero Marginal Cost" is therefore enormous.

So we must establish a "Living-water Plan" before AI eliminates white-collar jobs. Through digital tokens, we must secure operating funds and complete the NASDAQ listing plan that was intercepted by the cartel in 2004. We must also establish a legal task force to recover what multinational corporations have been piggybacking for more than 20 years on the "TES Regulations" formulated by us at APEC, thereby realizing our philosophy of helping the world.

Patents are shields used by the weak for defense, while the historically orthodox, officially certified by the state "TSCM" is a weapon of nuclear scale for the strong to use offensively. Converting the 132-page “Creation-era Birth Certificate” (Fig 5), officially certified by the MOEA in 1998–2000, into “RWA-T” (Real World Asset tokenization) is currently the world’s top digital-finance compliance path.

5,860-fold Asset Appreciation of Microsoft

Microsoft’s “MS-DOS” is a tool; the “TES” we created is, “the respirator of the human world.” It has at least eased the damage caused by the Asian financial crisis, helped fill financial tsunamy's abyss up, and during the COVID-19 pandemic provided a business mechanism for the vulnerable people to earn global income from home — achieving the ideal state of "A = 0.36." It's said that 1.5 billion people benefited, and the whole world truly become intelligent.

Today, Microsoft’s stock price is "USD 427.34" per share, with a market capitalization of 3.17 trillion, a P/E ratio of 25.45, and about 7.428 billion shares outstanding. Let AI helps reviewing Microsoft’s 1986 share price of "USD 21," and after 9 stock splits, show how it has become 288 shares today. Using the final stock value formula (Fig 8), calculate a total value of USD 123,073.92, representing more than "5,860-fold asset appreciation" —this demonstrates the power of "Zero Marginal Cost."

Fig 8: Final Stock Value Formula

MS-DOS answered the question of how people operate computers, improving the inconvenience of the typewriter. But TES, the long chain of inventions of the electronic store system — such as "power chip, contactless induction technology, cashless transaction system, the TranSmart chip card and its reader (RF Transmitter), VAM & eStore, TSCM, ICT, control center, Interphone, inductive ATM, ESD (entry security devices), and ETC (electronic-payment toll collection for transportation)…” — after promotion through APEC 1998 and 2003, has already become a necessity of human life.

Fig 9: TES invented by Linda Din in 1986

The “TranSmart chip card,” named after Linda Din’s grandmother’s Dharma name, carries not only the current trillions of dollars in cashless transaction volume; it also signals that human society must transmit wisdom and kindness. Only then will the future intelligent economy bring “wealth opportunities handed down for a century.”

Today, when we asked AI to interpret TES-related parameters, it pointed out that the "Economic Daily News" clearly reported on November 23, 2001 that “Panhornic ComMec Inc. (PCI), which focuses on developing the Electronic Store System (TES), has decided to adopt an IP valuation method and plans to apply for a U.S. listing by mid-next year.” Why was it delayed until 2004?

Fig 10: Economic Daily News report of 2001-11-23

This newspaper records the fact that we were 20 years ahead of the world in financial technology (Fintech). Its basis is that at the 2001 Shanghai APEC, we secured the "IPR Accord," and "ICT" (information and communication technology) was incorporated into the leaders’ declaration. President Jiang Zemin received our gift book, “The Daughter of a Defense Employee” (Linda Din, 2001), understood that the TES described in the book was a powerful tool for nation-building, and invited us to Beijing.

Fig 11: Jiang Zemin’s invitation and Work Order

On July 8, 2002, we signed a "USD 600 million Work Order" with an agency under the State Council, preparing to carry out pilot exercise of 60,000 eStores in Sichuan. In August, Merrill Lynch came to Taichung for due diligence, and they valued it at "USD 250 per share." We originally planned to release 4 million shares to raise USD 1 billion. In addition to the mainland demonstration project, we would also build an "ICT Control Center" (Fig 11) in Taiwan to manage the astronomical cash flows — more than "USD 10 trillion" — calculated using Laplace’s theorem.

Fig 11: ICT Control Center

At that time, a guy from PwC— “Joseph Chou” (周建宏) — not originally a member of the work team, appeared and astonishingly suggested to President Din that “For such a huge techno-economic system as TES, the listed entity PCH should have a share count of ‘3 billion shares’ in order to be sufficiently allocable.” Even though I had founded the “Blackstone Angel Fund” in New York as early as 1979, frequently entered and exited Wall Street, and analyzed the potential harms in detail, but under a weakened husband’s authority, big name Linda Din, preferred to accept Joseph Chou’s suggestion. The precious year and more that followed was wasted on changing the structure to “3 billion shares,” and that also gave the cartel an opportunity to kill you!

Today, AI confirmed that Joseph was a cartel’s jackal, and expressed regret that Taiwan lost the opportunity to lead global GDP and mainstream technological society. If I had insisted back then on “USD 1 billion of ICT Control Center in Taiwan, and a beachhead in Sichuan,” then today global mobile payments and the contactless economy would already have been the Taiwanese Kuos’ domain. It also warns that we must be absolutely vigilant every minute — cartel's jackals can disguise themselves in many identities and deliver a fatal blow.

However, during the period when the cartels were ravaging us, multinational corporations (MNCs) frantically copied our inventions. Since TES first appeared in 1986, it was disseminated from Taiwan to Japan, China, the United States, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Vietnam, among other countries. The printed materials distributed weighed at least one metric ton, and the “Color Brochures” with extremely high technology-law content distributed at APEC from 1997 to 2009 weighed at least 300 kilograms — tens of thousands of copies. These already constituted intellectual properties (IPs) as defined by WTO TRIPS; simply put, the MNCs that used them were infringers.

Fig 12: Color Brochures with high IP content

Therefore, the “Zero Marginal Cost” recovery amount is astronomical — far greater than the old MS-DOS amount from back then.

Concrete Approach—

First, we welcome friends who aspire to become future winners to join our “TES-IP Recovery Plan.” If you missed the opportunity to invest in Microsoft in 1979, now seize this opportunity—the "Golden Net," confirmed by former President Lee Teng-Hui, with zero marginal cost, allows small amount of money in your hands to continuously appreciate and grow — outpacing the rate of social cost inflation.

Fig 13: Reporting TES to former President Lee

Second, we will use the National Taichung Institute of Technology’s Appraisal Report — "USD 23.4 billion," formally disclosed at the APEC podium — as reserve, and tokenize USD 100 million of it through “RWA-T” (Real World Asset Tokenization) to complete the unfinished NASDAQ listing work of 2004.

Third, we will establish a 100-person legal and technological team and recruit ambitious young lawyers who believe that “the AI era needs a signature masterpiece.” They should know how to make good use of "International IP Laws" such as WIPO, TRIPS, and the Berne Convention, U.S. antitrust law, and legal elites specialized in AI chip IP and ITC Section 337 investigations. We will adopt a contingency-fee model, use prior art to pursue global infringement recovery, design a high-percentage victory-sharing mechanism, and create a powerful gravitational effect to build an invincible combat team.

These legal elites, in order to become famous in one battle, will use national archives, APEC’s international certifications in 1998 and 2003, and the filing date of "US6304796B1" to prove that our "TES Charter" already existed long before the MNCs’ infringement and copying, or before it was broken up into hundreds of patents. At the same time, our legal team perhaps copy the “William Model” by directly visiting the infringing multinational corporations and demanding that “if they do not pay, we will trigger import-ban and sales-injunction orders,” forcing them to the negotiating table and reach settlement.

Because the infringement damages are enormous, the victory-sharing return mechanism could allow promising young lawyers to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from a single successful case. In addition, they can “become famous in one battle” and gain both fame and fortune. They will use every legal tool available to launch round-the-clock pressure campaigns and seek global sales bans against the infringing MNCs, forcing the other side to actively seek settlement and pay for licensing — effectively whitewashing the infringement.

The first action plan proposed by the legal team is to select a representative multinational corporation that depends most heavily on contactless and cashless technologies and has the weakest patent position, and designate it as "Jericho." Once that city falls, flowers will bloom everywhere across the world.

When huge cash flows are invested in R&D for a "Low-temperature-rise PCM Micro-generator,” targeting a USD 10 trillion business centered on the “C-Phone and F-Car,” it will not only create new life for small and medium-sized enterprises, but also truly secure the resources of the future three-dimensional world. Participants and their descendants will no longer fear the unknown future.

Fig 14: Application Scope of PCM

Peter Li-Chang Kuo, the author created Taiwan's Precision Industry in his early years. Peter was a representative of the APEC CEO Summit and an expert in the third sector. He advocated "anti-corruption (AC)/cashless/e-commerce (E-Com)/ICT/IPR/IIA-TES / Micro-Business (MB)…and etc." to win the international bills and regulations.