I was answering an IP question on Reddit today and I wrote this and I’m wondering whether you think it’s appropriate logic and rhetoric:
You have to look at why we have property rights in the first place.
Take a table for example. You have a table. It’s your property. If I take it from you it is illegal, because you will no longer have said property. This is called stealing because you no longer have the thing.
Scarce resources can be property. Why? Because of their scarcity - if I take them from you, you no longer have them.
Now, intellectual property is non-scarce. What that means is that if I “take” an idea from you, you still retain the original idea. I do not deprive you of your access to the idea. Hence, IP is not real property.
I definitely see that thousands of people get paid less because of pirating content. The problem is that the IP protection laws were put in in the first place - this created the malinvestment.
Take another example - taxes. Say we institute a 95% tax on everyone and then have the government distribute than money as it sees fit. Now, some people will surely evade the tax. When they evade the tax, they will no longer be supporting the rest of society through their stolen tax dollars. Thus, the rest of society is “worse off” and gets less money for their labor. “Plug up the holes and catch the evaders!” rises the cry. But this is ignoring the fact that the rest of society wouldn’t be “worse off” had it never been made dependent on this system in the first place. The government-instituted monopoly created the malinvestment in the first place.
Now, I do not believe that there would be less innovation without IP.
Remember, too, that IP-like rules can be made in a completely free market. It’s all simply contractual. Anyone who receives your content is must pay you if they pass it on (by contract).