5 ms·

and why should "creative expression" be owned?

by renlo 3y ago

Jarwain 3y ago
It should be owned as long as people must rely on ownership to survive in our society.
majormajor 3y ago
Why should land be owned? None of us created the planet... But we have selected an economic system that depends on ownership to drive exchange in a market, so... that's why.
- renlo 3y ago
  I'd argue that land is owned because it's a finite resource, and that without property ownership people would be in conflict with one another. "Creative expression" is not finite, in fact every human possesses it, it's also intangible, it's ideas, thoughts, ... , which I personally do not believe should be owned.
  - wwweston 3y ago
    > "Creative expression" is not finite It absolutely is. Doing it at all requires time & attentive focus, which is a finite resource for anybody mortal, and moreover a resource that's scarce and has to be spent in multiple places. Doing it well requires significant investment in practice and training, often years of it, maybe even decades in order to develop certain levels of expressive fluency. As with any issue of scarcity, economics comes in. If you want this activity supported, one good way of doing it is enabling the investment of time. Copyright does this by giving people an economic/legal claim on how copies of their work are distributed. Paying for copies has the usual market merits -- the economic reward and signals of value are proportional to copies acquired. There are other ways of course, common ones brought up here are patronage and merchandising, but they lose the market merits, and both are basically another way of saying "nobody should have to pay for the value in your work directly," and merchandising is even worse in that it's basically saying "yeah, you'll just need another job to support yourself while you're doing this thing", which is time taken away from investment in the creative endeavor, so you'll get less of the actual endeavor.
    - onlypositive 3y ago
      I think you're confusing creation and expression. Expression has no value in today's digital world. Creation has value but using expression to exchange for that value is difficult, requiring limits on expression in order for the system to work.
    - musicale 3y ago
      I think the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity: "goods are scarce because there are not enough resources to produce all the goods that people want to consume".(quoted at [1]) Physical books are intrinsically scarce because they require physical resources to make and distribute copies. Libraries are often limited by physical shelf space. Ebooks are not intrinsically scarce because there are enough resources to enable anyone on the internet to download any one of millions of ebooks at close to zero marginal cost, with minimal physical space requirements per book. Archive.org and Z-Library are examples of this. Consider also free goods: "Examples of free goods are ideas and works that are reproducible at zero cost, or almost zero cost. For example, if someone invents a new device, many people could copy this invention, with no danger of this "resource" running out."[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_good
      - wwweston 3y ago
        > the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity: It's pretty mysterious that you think you need to introduce this to the conversation at this point given how prominently scarcity dynamics figure into the comment you're replying to. > Physical books are intrinsically scarce Once their production was industrialized with printing press tech, copies of books weren't scarce, they were actually revolutionarily cheap. The copyright bargain isn't borne out of ignorance of how changes in that direction affect the overall dynamic, it's borne out of deep understanding of what remains scarce and risky and difficult to compensate for when the marginal cost of producing copies drops drastically, and what kind of claims might help.
        3y ago
  - 8note 3y ago
    People are still in conflict with each other for property ownership, so it's not solved The ownership, with heavy taxes on that ownership, pushes towards making sure people benefit from the land.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > people benefit from the land "which people in particular are benefitting the most" seems to be the perennial question.
  - jasonm23 3y ago
    This idea is not without detractors. "Property is theft" is not a new idea, makes a lot of sense. Unless you have a lot of it, and then those [censored] can [censored] right off.
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  Where do you get to actually own own land like you do copyright? Maybe we can add property taxes to copyright to force people to give it up just like land.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Taxing IP is an interesting idea; we do tax income from it, but I think an increasing scale of "you have to pay more to keep this for longer" would be pretty reasonable.
- asdkjlfkasjdf 3y ago
  > Why should land be owned? it shouldn't. Or, well, it should, but it should be the one and only thing taxed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
  - Tagbert 3y ago
    I live in Washington state where the state taxes are mainly sales tax and property tax. Both end up being regressive. Sales tax is because it is not proportional to income. You might think that property tax would hit higher income people more but what happens is that the property tax makes homes more expensive for low income people and is also passed on to renters in their monthly rent.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  > But we have selected an economic system that depends on ownership to drive exchange in a market, so... that's why. For extremely loose values of "we", perhaps - I didn't select it, and I would vote "no" if the idea were proposed...
jrajav 3y ago
Because creative expression can be exchanged for goods and services? Why should metal, wood, or special paper notes be owned? It's to represent work done and value to other people.
- beefield 3y ago
  Nope. Metal & wood etc should be owned because it very much looks like that is very useful in creating lots of welfare for people. The trouble with IP is that there are lots of influential people that very much would like IP to be useful in creating welfare. Unfortunately the evidence for that is surprisingly scarce. For discussion, see e.g. Boldrin & Levine

and why should "creative expression" be owned?

by renlo 3y ago

and why should "creative expression" be owned?

Jarwain 3y ago

It should be owned as long as people must rely on ownership to survive in our society.

majormajor 3y ago

Why should land be owned? None of us created the planet... But we have selected an economic system that depends on ownership to drive exchange in a market, so... that's why.

renlo 3y ago
I'd argue that land is owned because it's a finite resource, and that without property ownership people would be in conflict with one another. "Creative expression" is not finite, in fact every human possesses it, it's also intangible, it's ideas, thoughts, ... , which I personally do not believe should be owned.
- wwweston 3y ago
  > "Creative expression" is not finite It absolutely is. Doing it at all requires time & attentive focus, which is a finite resource for anybody mortal, and moreover a resource that's scarce and has to be spent in multiple places. Doing it well requires significant investment in practice and training, often years of it, maybe even decades in order to develop certain levels of expressive fluency. As with any issue of scarcity, economics comes in. If you want this activity supported, one good way of doing it is enabling the investment of time. Copyright does this by giving people an economic/legal claim on how copies of their work are distributed. Paying for copies has the usual market merits -- the economic reward and signals of value are proportional to copies acquired. There are other ways of course, common ones brought up here are patronage and merchandising, but they lose the market merits, and both are basically another way of saying "nobody should have to pay for the value in your work directly," and merchandising is even worse in that it's basically saying "yeah, you'll just need another job to support yourself while you're doing this thing", which is time taken away from investment in the creative endeavor, so you'll get less of the actual endeavor.
  - onlypositive 3y ago
    I think you're confusing creation and expression. Expression has no value in today's digital world. Creation has value but using expression to exchange for that value is difficult, requiring limits on expression in order for the system to work.
  - musicale 3y ago
    I think the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity: "goods are scarce because there are not enough resources to produce all the goods that people want to consume".(quoted at [1]) Physical books are intrinsically scarce because they require physical resources to make and distribute copies. Libraries are often limited by physical shelf space. Ebooks are not intrinsically scarce because there are enough resources to enable anyone on the internet to download any one of millions of ebooks at close to zero marginal cost, with minimal physical space requirements per book. Archive.org and Z-Library are examples of this. Consider also free goods: "Examples of free goods are ideas and works that are reproducible at zero cost, or almost zero cost. For example, if someone invents a new device, many people could copy this invention, with no danger of this "resource" running out."[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_good
    - wwweston 3y ago
      > the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity: It's pretty mysterious that you think you need to introduce this to the conversation at this point given how prominently scarcity dynamics figure into the comment you're replying to. > Physical books are intrinsically scarce Once their production was industrialized with printing press tech, copies of books weren't scarce, they were actually revolutionarily cheap. The copyright bargain isn't borne out of ignorance of how changes in that direction affect the overall dynamic, it's borne out of deep understanding of what remains scarce and risky and difficult to compensate for when the marginal cost of producing copies drops drastically, and what kind of claims might help.
      - 3y ago
- 8note 3y ago
  People are still in conflict with each other for property ownership, so it's not solved The ownership, with heavy taxes on that ownership, pushes towards making sure people benefit from the land.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > people benefit from the land "which people in particular are benefitting the most" seems to be the perennial question.
- jasonm23 3y ago
  This idea is not without detractors. "Property is theft" is not a new idea, makes a lot of sense. Unless you have a lot of it, and then those [censored] can [censored] right off.
tick_tock_tick 3y ago
Where do you get to actually own own land like you do copyright? Maybe we can add property taxes to copyright to force people to give it up just like land.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Taxing IP is an interesting idea; we do tax income from it, but I think an increasing scale of "you have to pay more to keep this for longer" would be pretty reasonable.
asdkjlfkasjdf 3y ago
> Why should land be owned? it shouldn't. Or, well, it should, but it should be the one and only thing taxed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- Tagbert 3y ago
  I live in Washington state where the state taxes are mainly sales tax and property tax. Both end up being regressive. Sales tax is because it is not proportional to income. You might think that property tax would hit higher income people more but what happens is that the property tax makes homes more expensive for low income people and is also passed on to renters in their monthly rent.
marssaxman 3y ago
> But we have selected an economic system that depends on ownership to drive exchange in a market, so... that's why. For extremely loose values of "we", perhaps - I didn't select it, and I would vote "no" if the idea were proposed...

jrajav 3y ago

Because creative expression can be exchanged for goods and services? Why should metal, wood, or special paper notes be owned? It's to represent work done and value to other people.

beefield 3y ago
Nope. Metal & wood etc should be owned because it very much looks like that is very useful in creating lots of welfare for people. The trouble with IP is that there are lots of influential people that very much would like IP to be useful in creating welfare. Unfortunately the evidence for that is surprisingly scarce. For discussion, see e.g. Boldrin & Levine