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> "Risk. Keyword risk. You are not guaranteed a return on your investment for anything. Someone steals your physical copies of your book, sure, that's stealing.
by arkades 6y ago
> "Risk. Keyword risk. You are not guaranteed a return on your investment for anything. Someone steals your physical copies of your book, sure, that's stealing. Someone copies your book, you lose literally nothing. Free market. Economics. Woo!"
Most (all real?) formulations of capitalism involve enforcement mechanisms for contracts, including remuneration for services - I can't think of anything other than the most extreme straw-man formulation of Libertarianism that doesn't. There's no element of real-world, or less-than-crazypants-theoretical capitalism that goes "you aren't deprived of an actual physical object, therefore, it's not theft." That's... the strangest formulation of capitalism I've ever seen. That's a common defense of piracy, though.
- kick 6y agoThere's no contract with books. Further, most capitalist philosophers worth their salt admit that intellectual property is ridiculous: there were actual debates when the copyright system got put into place, and there were actual debates when the patent system got put into place. You could choose to deny reality and call Milton Friedland a "crazypants" capitalist, or a non-real world capitalist, but you'd not only be wrong, you'd come off looking ridiculous.