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If you read about Harberger taxes in Heinlein, you should know that there's been a lot of work done since then; notably by Posner and Weyl in 2018, but also by

by khafra 2y ago

If you read about Harberger taxes in Heinlein, you should know that there's been a lot of work done since then; notably by Posner and Weyl in 2018, but also by Robin Hanson: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/for-stability-rentshtml https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/for-stability-rentshtml > Pricing things is super hard Not applicable to copyright, but perhaps something analogous would arise if there were a market for it: Real estate agents have to estimate the value of a home to the market all the time, and have some simple heuristics with a fairly reliable error rate. Use those, plus an extra percentage for whatever the additional value is to you of sentimental attachment, of not dealing with the hassle of moving, etc. You could also buy "harberger insurance" which would cover the additional cost of rebuying your asset, in exchange for premiums that depended on how much the insurer thought you were underpricing your asset.

dsr_ 2y ago
Real estate has facts and opinions: the size of the land and where it is; how much the land nearby sold for; last price paid for this land; condition of the buildings. Copyright only has opinions and history, and for the vast majority of IP, the history is "nobody has ever paid for this". But the real killer for this proposal is that it creates a new mechanism for rich people or corporations to take work away from others. If the market is not serving the needs of the people at large, the people at large will and should alter or abolish the market.
- khafra 2y ago
  > the real killer for this proposal is that it creates a new mechanism for rich people or corporations to take work away from others. There's two ways you could mean this: 1. A rich guy really likes your IP, for personal reasons; he's willing to pay a bunch of money for the rights to it. 2. A rich guy making business decisions thinks he can profit at someone's expense from owning large swathes of IP; he swoops in and buys it all up, to the detriment of the public. Case #1 could absolutely happen under the harberger IP scheme. If Elon Musk decides he likes your cartoon, he can buy it at your declared price, and say it's his, and everyone will say "yes, Elon, that is yours." But Elon Musk already does that every day; he's constantly cropping the watermark off some cartoon or other and posting it on X, and everyone says "yes, Elon, that is yours." The only difference under the harberger IP scheme is that the artist actually gets his declared value for the cartoon from Elon. Case #2 is what the harberger IP scheme is designed to facilitate, but it's not taking work away from others--it's buying the products that others have created, at the price at which the owner is willing to sell. This is what professional artists want. There's nothing here that would allow rich people or corporations to profit in some way that normal people cannot.

by khafra 2y ago

dsr_ 2y ago

Real estate has facts and opinions: the size of the land and where it is; how much the land nearby sold for; last price paid for this land; condition of the buildings. Copyright only has opinions and history, and for the vast majority of IP, the history is "nobody has ever paid for this". But the real killer for this proposal is that it creates a new mechanism for rich people or corporations to take work away from others. If the market is not serving the needs of the people at large, the people at large will and should alter or abolish the market.

khafra 2y ago
> the real killer for this proposal is that it creates a new mechanism for rich people or corporations to take work away from others. There's two ways you could mean this: 1. A rich guy really likes your IP, for personal reasons; he's willing to pay a bunch of money for the rights to it. 2. A rich guy making business decisions thinks he can profit at someone's expense from owning large swathes of IP; he swoops in and buys it all up, to the detriment of the public. Case #1 could absolutely happen under the harberger IP scheme. If Elon Musk decides he likes your cartoon, he can buy it at your declared price, and say it's his, and everyone will say "yes, Elon, that is yours." But Elon Musk already does that every day; he's constantly cropping the watermark off some cartoon or other and posting it on X, and everyone says "yes, Elon, that is yours." The only difference under the harberger IP scheme is that the artist actually gets his declared value for the cartoon from Elon. Case #2 is what the harberger IP scheme is designed to facilitate, but it's not taking work away from others--it's buying the products that others have created, at the price at which the owner is willing to sell. This is what professional artists want. There's nothing here that would allow rich people or corporations to profit in some way that normal people cannot.