Five jumbled up sentences, related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out and key in the number of the sentence as your answer:

1. You can observe the truth of this in every e-business model ever constructed: monopolise and protect data.
2. Economists and technologists believe that a new kind of capitalism is being created - different from industrial capitalism as was merchant capitalism.
3. In 1962, Kenneth Arrow, the guru of mainstream economics, said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights.
4. There is, alongside the world of monopolised information and surveillance, a different dynamic growing up: information as a social good, incapable of being owned or exploited or priced.
5. Yet information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made, it can be copied and pasted infinitely.

The correct answer is 2 (Sentence 2 is the odd one out).

To solve this, we need to identify a central theme that connects four of the five sentences and then isolate the one that does not logically belong to that thread.

Step 1: Read all five sentences carefully and look for a unifying idea.

Let us paraphrase each sentence to extract its core idea:

Sentence 1: "You can observe the truth of this in every e-business model ever constructed: monopolise and protect data."
→ This talks about how businesses hoard and protect data/information as a monopoly.

Sentence 2: "Economists and technologists believe that a new kind of capitalism is being created — different from industrial capitalism as was merchant capitalism."
→ This talks about the evolution of capitalism as a broad economic concept. It does not mention information, data, or intellectual property directly.

Sentence 3: "In 1962, Kenneth Arrow, the guru of mainstream economics, said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights."
→ This directly addresses how information/inventions are turned into intellectual property — a form of monopolisation of information.

Sentence 4: "There is, alongside the world of monopolised information and surveillance, a different dynamic growing up: information as a social good, incapable of being owned or exploited or priced."
→ This contrasts the monopolisation of information with the idea of information as a free, social good.

Sentence 5: "Yet information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made, it can be copied and pasted infinitely."
→ This supports the idea that information is naturally free and cannot truly be contained, directly reinforcing the contrast in Sentence 4.

Step 2: Identify the central theme of the coherent paragraph.

Sentences 1, 3, 4, and 5 all revolve around one specific topic: the nature of information — whether it can or should be monopolised. There is a clear logical chain:

Sentence 3 provides the theoretical/historical foundation: Arrow's 1962 argument that inventions exist to create intellectual property rights (i.e., to monopolise information).

Sentence 1 provides the real-world evidence of this in action: modern e-businesses build their entire model around monopolising and protecting data.

Sentence 4 then introduces the contrasting, emerging dynamic: information as a social good that cannot be owned or priced.

Sentence 5 gives the logical reason why: information is abundant, freely replicable, and essentially infinite — so monopolising it goes against its very nature.

Step 3: Test Sentence 2 against this theme.

Sentence 2 speaks broadly about the emergence of a new kind of capitalism and compares it to historical forms of capitalism (merchant vs. industrial vs. new). While this is a related economic idea, it does not directly engage with the specific argument about information — its monopolisation, its free nature, or whether it can be owned. It is a macro-level, abstract economic observation that sits outside the tight logical thread woven by Sentences 1, 3, 4, and 5.

Furthermore, the phrase "the truth of this" in Sentence 1 acts as a referential link — it refers backward to something already stated, which most naturally connects to Sentence 3 (Arrow's principle about intellectual property). Sentence 2 does not provide any such connective anchor to the rest of the paragraph.

Step 4: Conclusion

The coherent paragraph is formed by Sentences 3 → 1 → 4 → 5, all of which discuss the tension between monopolisation of information and information as a freely replicable social good. Sentence 2, which makes a broad, standalone claim about a new form of capitalism without directly connecting to the information-rights debate, is the odd one out.