Should Intellectual Property exist?

[Joij21]

IP and copyright is based on the meritocratic concept that if you work hard for something you ought to have the right to be compensated for being the one who actually put the hard work/effort into the thing/s that was/were produced.

A creative commons license is a similar idea though gives the producer the right to recognition rather than compensation (because for some recognition is adequate enough compensation for the effort that was put in)

It is a general rule of human nature that humans mostly only sacrifice and choose to do hard work and effort if they receive a dopamine inducing reward at the end such as increased popularity via recognition for the work or material compensation (like money) which they can exchange for something dopamine inducing (like drugs, alcohol, or entertainment). Again not all humans but most humans, so IP/copyright and creative commons licences fits adequately within the generic human fairness doctrine.

(I know I sound like an extraterrestrial observing humans afar and their monetary means of exchange and recognition to my fellow aliens who have no such concepts. And you know what, honestly this is how I would explain these ideas to aliens who don't understand such systems if they exist, not sure if I would also admit how human society is also centered around perpetual conflict and conquest but umm)

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

IP and copyright is based on the meritocratic concept that if you work hard for something you ought to have the right to be compensated for being the one who actually put the hard work/effort into the thing/s that was/were produced.

Which is the right thing to do.

Tracy Chapman is enjoying the royalty checks right now. Without IP, she wouldn't receive a penny.

 

[Evie]

It's actually an interesting point, and I think pointing out that the compensation in a lot of way involves dopamine more than any specific material reward is a good analysis. And food can be added to the list, since food is definitely a source of dopamine (among, at time, many other essential things)

 

[Joij21]

It also costs you a delay in dopamine gratification when one commits and sacrifices one's free time to real hard work and dedication in order to make a thing/service/product of good quality.

Hence the demand for something dopamine rewarding to make up for the loss of time when one could have spent time pursuing easier little highs of dopamine.

There can also be a lot of stress, cortisol, adrenaline in constantly trying to attain perfection in what is being produced. Not to mention occasional boredom in having to sometimes be patient in the process of producing whatever you are producing.

 

[Birdjaguar]

And you had them with Red Scare advocates, the reach of whom extended far beyond McCarthyism.

What was, I ask again, the consequence of the Hollywood blacklists, exactly? This is what was originally being discussed. The whole "censorship of art" that is apparently unique to Soviet and other autocratic regimes.

Before it descended into the predictable "what does workable socialism look like" from posters that don't appear to introspect on the ills of capitalism one iota, anyhow.

McCarthyism had a big, but relatively short term effect on Hollywood and the arts in general. Yes, artists were affected. If you are one that got blacklisted the impact was huge. Censorship comes and goes too as politics and cultural forces ebb and flow.

What does "workable socialism look like" is a valid question that is independent of the ills of capitalism. The topics are connected in that some want the former to replace the latter. If you want to sell moving to socialism you need to be able to explain how it would work at the individual and community level and not the macro level. That is where people actual live and do things. Diverting the questions to "what about the ills of evil rich people stealing from workers" is just a way to avoid the hard questions about what living under this new socialism would actually look like.

the predictable "what does workable socialism look like"

...is a question that never gets answered.

 

[Evie]

I don't know that the world has seen any actual workable version of any economic sytem, nor a satisfactory explanation what they look like.

Capitalism has just been a little better at shoving its problem a few decades into the future than communism, and they're coming home to roost about...well, now, really.

I remain wholly unconvinced that any single ideology by itself offers any practical working long term model for humankind.

 

[Joij21]

I remain wholly unconvinced that any single ideology by itself offers any practical working long term model for humankind.

I think it's because there's like some inherent desire in many people for there to be some kind of Fukayamist notion of an "end of history" a perfect be all end all system that represents the ability of humankind to take control of itself and evolution and have it no longer be in the hands of nature or material crises to shape but through one's own will and ambition alone. A resurrection of the idea of free will within a secular materialist world which now largely rejects the earlier spiritualist notions of free will in favor of determinism both in physics and biology.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't know that the world has seen any actual workable version of any economic sytem, nor a satisfactory explanation what they look like.

Capitalism has just been a little better at shoving its problem a few decades into the future than communism, and they're coming home to roost about...well, now, really.

I remain wholly unconvinced that any single ideology by itself offers any practical working long term model for humankind.

We have seen and live in a living breathing example of capitalism at work. We fully understand its strengths and weaknesses. We even know how to fix its worst aspects. We just don't do so very easily. The failure to explain how more socialism+ would actually work and change people's daily lives prevents it from being taken seriously as an alternative. All we hear are broad generalities about sharing and equality. That leads me to believe that those folks have no idea how to actually get us from what we have now to where they want the world to go. Until the "we need more socialism" folks can figure out what living under their system will be like, they are just spinning a Disney fantasy. To do that they have to have a plan for what will change, what will go away and what will be new at the community and personal level. "Oh we will figure it all as we go" is a display of ignorance both about people and the system they are advocating for.

 

[Joij21]

what does workable socialism look like

Because it's not supposed to be workable, it's supposed to crumble apart and collapse then give way to communism. Karl Marx even admits this!

That means just like how there's supposed to be like some period of violence and turmoil and endemic civil wars and wars during the period transitioning from capitalism to socialism. The very same thing is supposed to happen all over again in the transition from socialism to communism with actual anti-socialist revolutionaries battling pro-socialist reactionaries.

What this means is if you advocate for socialism your basically saying we all have to suffer through not one period of extreme and excruciating violence, BUT TWO! BACK TO BACK!! And that's if the socialism works as intended and doesn't stall out at some Stalinist or Maoist midpoint then slumps back to capitalism.

Ain't no one wants to get raped by a bunch of warlords or forced to fight civil wars. They'd much rather just stay on the current capitalistic mode however flawed it may be to avoid all that aforementioned gore fest.

 

[Evie]

To me it seems more like we live in the moment when we realize capitalism was a ponzi scheme all around, entirely unsustainable becsuse even if we know what the solutions are (or rather, we think we know), if we remain unable to implement them, then they might as well not exist, and "working capitalism" is as much of a pipe dream as working communism proved to be.

 

[Gorbles]

McCarthyism had a big, but relatively short term effect on Hollywood and the arts in general. Yes, artists were affected. If you are one that got blacklisted the impact was huge. Censorship comes and goes too as politics and cultural forces ebb and flow.

What does "workable socialism look like" is a valid question that is independent of the ills of capitalism. The topics are connected in that some want the former to replace the latter. If you want to sell moving to socialism you need to be able to explain how it would work at the individual and community level and not the macro level. That is where people actual live and do things. Diverting the questions to "what about the ills of evil rich people stealing from workers" is just a way to avoid the hard questions about what living under this new socialism would actually look like.

If you are affected, and it had a huge impact, given that we're discussing human lives, by definition it couldn't have been relatively short-term. Or even short-term at all.

But this at least answers the question of: did it happen, regardless of your framing of it (downplaying the issue). It was an issue. Accept it. Which means it's no longer unique to the Soviets and other autocrats. It's not just someone "the bad guys" do. Which was the original point of disagreement that I picked up on.

Moving on, "what does workable socialism look like" isn't even necessarily related to selling it. These are separate things. I'm a developer. My job is to do the thing. My job is not to sell the thing. I would probably be pretty bad at selling the thing, because the thing that is often sold is done so without any actual developer backing. We just do the thing. It only backfires on sales if the promise is too grand to realise.

"selling" socialism isn't the same as working it. Arguably, the two concepts are in tension with one another.

...is a question that never gets answered.

It actually got a bunch of answers. You explicitly rejected at least one of them for not meeting whatever standard you're imposing on any answer to this question.

Which is not good discussion, yeah? A lot of this is a worldview thing.

Why did you do that? That's something only introspection can reveal. It's common enough, but the answer is different for everyone.

Also, as an aside, you're asking for an entirely new thread, by the by. Not only do you have to be willing to clamp down on the autoresponse of "that's not a proper answer", we're moving way past IP rights onto something far broader and more existential.

To me it seems more like we live in the moment when we realize capitalism was a ponzi scheme all around, entirely unsustainable becsuse even if we know what the solutions are (or rather, we think we know), if we remain unable to implement them, then they might as well not exist

In my opinion, part of the problem is that some people don't realise this, to the extent they don't want to.

 

[Joij21]

To me it seems more like we live in the moment when we realize capitalism was a ponzi scheme all around, entirely unsustainable becsuse even if we know what the solutions are (or rather, we think we know), if we remain unable to implement them, then they might as well not exist, and "working capitalism" is as much of a pipe dream as working communism proved to be.

Yes but the argument is capitalism is generally good it's just like glitchy software, it must be patched from time to time. But ideally meritocracy should be at its core.

Or rather capitalism should exist to be a facilitator, one of a series of pillars supporting meritocracy. With the meritocratic ideal being supreme and emphasized over it's supporting concepts of doing.

The other pillars can of course be spiritual education of morals, academic education of virtue, a healthy civil service of active citizen participants of charity, and so on in order to uphold the meritocratic idea which all are to be a seamless synthesis to uphold and hold as most sacred to the civilization and humanistic moral development.

 

[Joij21]

"selling" socialism isn't the same as working it. Arguably, the two concepts are in tension with one another.

You can't sell it because it's too violent for most people and would upend their lives in a negative way. It's an idea that oft seams to demand violent civil war and revolution via class conflict only to then intentionally self destruct via even more class conflict into a utopian wishy washy notion of communism.

 

[Gorbles]

You can't sell it because it's too violent for most people

Nah.

But I expect nothing less of someone who espouses meritocracy so strongly.

Tell me. Do you think your ideal state apparatus would come about without violence? Assuming (based on your post above) that you think what we have right now isn't ideal.

Note: there is a difference between violence in change, which is moderately universal, and constant violence upholding a particular status quo (which, again, fans of capitalism really should introspect on / about).

 

[Birdjaguar]

To me it seems more like we live in the moment when we realize capitalism was a ponzi scheme all around, entirely unsustainable becsuse even if we know what the solutions are (or rather, we think we know), if we remain unable to implement them, then they might as well not exist, and "working capitalism" is as much of a pipe dream as working communism proved to be.

The world's capitalist system is the manifestation of whatever theoretical model one has for it. It is what happens when people make an effort to apply ideas in the real world. Capitalism has been developing for at least 500 years, maybe longer depending upon how one chooses to define it. 500 years is a long time as far a people are concerned and so it has been sustainable. You can predict its future if you want; I am reluctant to do so. Your prediction is not new and has been around at least 100 years. We live in a world where we can see how humans implement big ideas recently and in the past. I do not see that any "next big idea" would be implemented any differently that the ways we have done so in the past.

I would bet that whatever dream notions the hard core socialists have about how life would be better after some kind of transition to their society, the actual facts of their world would be nothing like they imagine.

The internet we have now is unlike what those folks were thinking about in the early 90s. As a side note, the driving force behind spending money through the internet using CCs was the porn industry. They needed an easy way to get reliably paid for delivering their wares by computer that avoided plain brown boxes delivered by the US mail.

 

[Joij21]

Note: there is a difference between violence in change, which is moderately universal, and constant violence upholding a particular status quo (which, again, fans of capitalism really should introspect on / about).

It's based on short term time intervals of which violence is worse than the other.

The violence to maintain the status quo is spread out over a vast time period and not as drastic all at one time, therefore it is mild when seen from the perspective of our very short lifespans.

The violence in change would be simply too great and all at once for it to be bearable for any single person's lifetime. Meaning they would very much prefer to punt it to some future forsaken generation to suffer through rather than their generation and life which they desire to "live to the fullest" to be utterly trashed and ruined. Or avoid it all together since we don't live particularly long anyways to really care about spread out violence over lifetimes we simply just don't have a personal stake in.

 

[Gorbles]

You didn't answer the question

 

[Joij21]

Tell me. Do you think your ideal state apparatus would come about without violence? Assuming (based on your post above) that you think what we have right now isn't ideal.

Yeah you could do it peacefully if it was started as a colony under the ocean or on another planet. It's also not too radical either it's more like perfecting our liberal and capitalistic society by emphasizing a moralistic ideal in meritocracy with some kind of cult of reason based civic spirituality to give a sense of ritual and purpose that makes the virtuous ideal better understood by people as well as giving them something that has meaning greater than themselves so the system works a little bit better. So you know it could easily be implemented by reforms without any bloodshed.

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah you could do it peacefully if it was started as a colony under the ocean or on another planet.

So, that's a no then.

So you know it could easily be implemented by reforms without any bloodshed.

If you were 20,000 leagues under the sea, or on Alpha Centauri, that is.

It's easy to think your ideas are the natural way of things; that people just need a little nudge to "see the light".

That's not how stuff works. Progress (of any kind) is hard and painful because it often comes at cost to others; mostly others who are invested in the status quo. Inertia is a strong force.

Objecting to socialism just because you think it requires violence is to object to any change in society above a certain level of impact.

 

[Joij21]

mostly others who are invested in the status quo.

So like most people, since most people are invested in the status quo. Meaning demanding socialism would be calling for violence against most people.

The system has to be failing to the point whereby the majority see it no longer fit to uphold, and they've seen the failures of socialism before and how it doesn't necessarily make a better system after the sacrifice. Not to mention it demands further sacrifice by forcibly failing so as to force the transition to communism when most people would demand peace and a return to normalcy at that point. People just have no time for sacrifice to a half assed system that's designed for failure, they would rather replace the previous with something they believe is genuinely eternal and better at least selfishly for them in their lifetime. (Remember you only life once then it's all over my friend, hence Y.O.L.O.)