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> The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism. You'd be surprised, how many laissez faire capitalists regard "intelle

by _0ffh 2y ago

> The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism. You'd be surprised, how many laissez faire capitalists regard "intellectual property" to be an anti-capitalist artificiality. The whole raison d'etre for private property is that two people cannot use the same good for different purposes at the same time, it is rivalrous. Property ownership is the mechanism that resolves any potential conflicts arising from this rivalrousness. The owner gets to decide what to do with the good. The same is not true for information, because we can both e.g. watch the same movie at the same time without interfering with each other, therefore there is no conflict that needs resolving. Therefore "intellectual property" is not a thing. (The reasoning goes further, but that is the simplest version of the most important argument I think.)

forty 2y ago
I don't know, I view capitalism mostly as a way to allow people who have money to make more money without providing work or value from people who do work. I feel that intellectual property (which in my language, French, is simply translated as "author's right"), by making intellectual work ("art of the mind") a normal merchandise, allows platforms, labels, editors, etc to make money from the artists work, so is favorable to capitalism. Note that DRM makers are the main winners from this shit, as they capture value created by the artists, and they provide no value of their own since DRM has never prevented piracy.
- _0ffh 2y ago
  > I don't know, I view capitalism mostly as a way to allow people who have money to make more money without providing work or value from people who do work Well, that's not how capitalists view it, quite the opposite. In a free market economy, which relies on voluntary interactions, the only way to make money is to generate value for others. Take me buying a loaf of bread: To me the bread has more value than the money I give to the baker, otherwise I would not agree to the interaction. To the baker OTOH the money has more value than the bread, otherwise he would not agree to the interaction. Free markets are a positive-sum game.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    Free market capitalism doesn't really exist. The baker is the only baker in town, and could choose to increase prices and become filthy-rich (but doesn't, because he's a nice person). There are government regulations preventing me from setting up my own bakery without jumping through hoops – which is just as well, because if I could set up a bakery, I'd be selling people flavoured mud, sawdust, and plaster dust (zero-calorie bread: tastes just like the real thing!). Mutually-beneficial transactions are a good description of what's happening, but that's not a description we can use to do systems-level thinking, because it's not what's "really" going on.
    - _0ffh 2y ago
      > but doesn't, because he's a nice person He doesn't, because he would quickly loose all his business to the competition, and if there was none, there quickly would be - unless government force provides him with an artificial monopoly. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." - Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
  - forty 2y ago
    The trick is that a very small number of people confiscated most of the wealth and their "added value" is releasing some of that wealth to those who were not lucky enough to have any wealth. I think I could be fine with a capitalist system where wealth is spread evenly (which should involve abolishing inheritance for example, but not only)
  - orwin 2y ago
    That's called liberalism. Literally liberalism. Capitalism posit that capital owners, not labor, decide what should be produced by a company, and how it should be produced. That's all.
    - _0ffh 2y ago
eesmith 2y ago
I don't think it's bringing up intellectual property is all that useful when talking about DRM. DRM is a technological means to enforce private control independent of the (limited) legal monopoly from copyright. It's legally enforced by the DMCA (in the US) and similar laws in other countries, which "criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...). If copyright were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be DRM.
- _0ffh 2y ago
  Without government force to back it up, who would care?
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Laissez faire capitalists still want a government, so I don't see the point of following your tangent.
    - _0ffh 2y ago
      > Laissez faire capitalists still want a government No, not as a rule, they don't. Some may, but even those must be against government interference in the market, as that's the definition of laissez faire. The only relevant dividing point is if they regard "IP" as a valid form of property.
      - eesmith 2y ago
        Certainly it means the government should stay out of the market, but the large majority of laissez-faire capitalists still want a government. The following quotes are from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire#Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire#Capitalism and elsewhere in that page: "Advocates of laissez-faire capitalism argue that it relies on a constitutionally limited government that unconditionally bans the initiation of force and coercion, including fraud." with an example: "A more recent advocate of total laissez-faire has been Objectivist Ayn Rand, ... Rand believed that natural rights should be enforced by a constitutionally limited government." More historically: "The Physiocrats proclaimed laissez-faire in 18th-century France ... they advised the state to restrict itself to upholding the rights of private property and individual liberty, ..." "Gournay held that government should allow the laws of nature to govern economic activity, with the state only intervening to protect life, liberty and property. ..." "To the vast majority of American classical liberals, however, laissez-faire did not mean "no government intervention" at all. On the contrary, they were more than willing to see government provide tariffs, railroad subsidies, and internal improvements, all of which benefited producers". ..." Getting rid of government but keeping capitalism would be more like anarcho-capitalism, not laissez-faire capitalism. My observation is that DRM is essentially independent of copyright or intellectual property, so bringing up the existence of that dividing point really doesn't matter.

by _0ffh 2y ago

forty 2y ago

I don't know, I view capitalism mostly as a way to allow people who have money to make more money without providing work or value from people who do work. I feel that intellectual property (which in my language, French, is simply translated as "author's right"), by making intellectual work ("art of the mind") a normal merchandise, allows platforms, labels, editors, etc to make money from the artists work, so is favorable to capitalism. Note that DRM makers are the main winners from this shit, as they capture value created by the artists, and they provide no value of their own since DRM has never prevented piracy.

_0ffh 2y ago
> I don't know, I view capitalism mostly as a way to allow people who have money to make more money without providing work or value from people who do work Well, that's not how capitalists view it, quite the opposite. In a free market economy, which relies on voluntary interactions, the only way to make money is to generate value for others. Take me buying a loaf of bread: To me the bread has more value than the money I give to the baker, otherwise I would not agree to the interaction. To the baker OTOH the money has more value than the bread, otherwise he would not agree to the interaction. Free markets are a positive-sum game.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  Free market capitalism doesn't really exist. The baker is the only baker in town, and could choose to increase prices and become filthy-rich (but doesn't, because he's a nice person). There are government regulations preventing me from setting up my own bakery without jumping through hoops – which is just as well, because if I could set up a bakery, I'd be selling people flavoured mud, sawdust, and plaster dust (zero-calorie bread: tastes just like the real thing!). Mutually-beneficial transactions are a good description of what's happening, but that's not a description we can use to do systems-level thinking, because it's not what's "really" going on.
  - _0ffh 2y ago
    > but doesn't, because he's a nice person He doesn't, because he would quickly loose all his business to the competition, and if there was none, there quickly would be - unless government force provides him with an artificial monopoly. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." - Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
- forty 2y ago
  The trick is that a very small number of people confiscated most of the wealth and their "added value" is releasing some of that wealth to those who were not lucky enough to have any wealth. I think I could be fine with a capitalist system where wealth is spread evenly (which should involve abolishing inheritance for example, but not only)
- orwin 2y ago
  That's called liberalism. Literally liberalism. Capitalism posit that capital owners, not labor, decide what should be produced by a company, and how it should be produced. That's all.
  - _0ffh 2y ago

eesmith 2y ago

I don't think it's bringing up intellectual property is all that useful when talking about DRM. DRM is a technological means to enforce private control independent of the (limited) legal monopoly from copyright. It's legally enforced by the DMCA (in the US) and similar laws in other countries, which "criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...). If copyright were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be DRM.

_0ffh 2y ago
Without government force to back it up, who would care?
- eesmith 2y ago
  Laissez faire capitalists still want a government, so I don't see the point of following your tangent.
  - _0ffh 2y ago
    > Laissez faire capitalists still want a government No, not as a rule, they don't. Some may, but even those must be against government interference in the market, as that's the definition of laissez faire. The only relevant dividing point is if they regard "IP" as a valid form of property.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Certainly it means the government should stay out of the market, but the large majority of laissez-faire capitalists still want a government. The following quotes are from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire#Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire#Capitalism and elsewhere in that page: "Advocates of laissez-faire capitalism argue that it relies on a constitutionally limited government that unconditionally bans the initiation of force and coercion, including fraud." with an example: "A more recent advocate of total laissez-faire has been Objectivist Ayn Rand, ... Rand believed that natural rights should be enforced by a constitutionally limited government." More historically: "The Physiocrats proclaimed laissez-faire in 18th-century France ... they advised the state to restrict itself to upholding the rights of private property and individual liberty, ..." "Gournay held that government should allow the laws of nature to govern economic activity, with the state only intervening to protect life, liberty and property. ..." "To the vast majority of American classical liberals, however, laissez-faire did not mean "no government intervention" at all. On the contrary, they were more than willing to see government provide tariffs, railroad subsidies, and internal improvements, all of which benefited producers". ..." Getting rid of government but keeping capitalism would be more like anarcho-capitalism, not laissez-faire capitalism. My observation is that DRM is essentially independent of copyright or intellectual property, so bringing up the existence of that dividing point really doesn't matter.