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> It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money But that's not true in the case of

> It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substantially impacting the value of the currencily). So me robbing your bank account isn't immoral, by your logic. It seems to me like there is a hole in your metaphorical boat here if it allows such an obviously immoral action to be considered. At some point you need to admit that reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property or depriving them of a livelihood in some fashion is some sort of theft. Otherwise you're just begging people to produce a series of trivial and obvious examples showing these kinds of obvious contradictions. > Okay sure, but that doesn't change anything about my argument. Allbirds' look is being commoditized, and perhaps in the future there will be an entire category of minimally-branded wool shoes, just like today we have entire categories of similar-looking shoes like wingtips. There already is this market. Tom's did it before and there are plenty of other examples. Amazon's specifically copying one vendor and then using their horizontal integration to hide the fact that Allbirds even exists. That's not a commoditized good no matter how much you want to try and repeat the phrase.

csallen 7y ago
> But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substantially impacting the value of the currencily). So me robbing your bank account isn't immoral, by your logic. The fact that my money gets replaced by someone who has agreed to do so (the bank, the insurer, whoever) doesn't mean it wasn't stolen. The very fact that someone had to reimburse or replace it is proof that it was stolen. That reimbursement couldn't happen otherwise. Perhaps you could argue that it was stolen from the bank and not from me, sure. But it was still stolen. Compare to copying. If you share an idea or reveal a shoe design, and then I copy you, have you been deprived of that idea or design? No. It's still in your possession, which it never left, not even for a moment. Nobody needs to reimburse you by giving you another copy of that idea to replace the one you lost, because you never lost it. > At some point you need to admit that reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property or depriving them of a livelihood in some fashion is some sort of theft. Reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property is literally the very essence of competition in a capitalistic system lol. And this is what I predicted your argument would boil down to in the very end. You can't build a case that there was any actual theft of an idea. The best you can do is argue that original worker should be entitled to an exclusive right to profit from that idea. That concept has a name, and it's called copyright, not theft. > Otherwise you're just begging people to produce a series of trivial and obvious examples showing these kinds of obvious contradictions. You haven't shown any contradictions. For some reason you just aren't grokking the concept of rivalrous vs nonrivalrous goods.

csallen 7y ago

> But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substantially impacting the value of the currencily). So me robbing your bank account isn't immoral, by your logic. The fact that my money gets replaced by someone who has agreed to do so (the bank, the insurer, whoever) doesn't mean it wasn't stolen. The very fact that someone had to reimburse or replace it is proof that it was stolen. That reimbursement couldn't happen otherwise. Perhaps you could argue that it was stolen from the bank and not from me, sure. But it was still stolen. Compare to copying. If you share an idea or reveal a shoe design, and then I copy you, have you been deprived of that idea or design? No. It's still in your possession, which it never left, not even for a moment. Nobody needs to reimburse you by giving you another copy of that idea to replace the one you lost, because you never lost it. > At some point you need to admit that reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property or depriving them of a livelihood in some fashion is some sort of theft. Reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property is literally the very essence of competition in a capitalistic system lol. And this is what I predicted your argument would boil down to in the very end. You can't build a case that there was any actual theft of an idea. The best you can do is argue that original worker should be entitled to an exclusive right to profit from that idea. That concept has a name, and it's called copyright, not theft. > Otherwise you're just begging people to produce a series of trivial and obvious examples showing these kinds of obvious contradictions. You haven't shown any contradictions. For some reason you just aren't grokking the concept of rivalrous vs nonrivalrous goods.