Shockingly, at physical libraries you can also re-borrow a book if there's nobody on a waiting list for it.

Often libraries put limits on the number of times you can do this, but also since IA is currently not restricting the number of copies of a book it loans out that must make a difference no?

Why would that matter? It's still only available to one party.

Well right now that isn't true. IA suspended limiting the number of loans they issue to the number of books they own.

I find it interesting that there is an inherent assertion against an equal right to access information in the stipulation that the publisher must be paid.

I look at things differently though I suppose. I see each human as a parallel processing core, and our immediate consciously recallable set of knowledge as basically being Cached, our referentially recallable knowledge (stuff we know where to find, but don't have in mind) as a pagefile swap, and the unknown, but authored as a compressed, archived file on our collective population-wide hard disk.

So what we're suggesting here, is that certain cores should have to go without access to certain trivially reproducible archives so that the archiving program (publishers) can utilize the product of said cores (analogous to money earned by other work done) to pick the winners and losers of the process of making an archive(I.e. subsidizing authorial works) in the first place?

This sounds like a pretty terrible system to me, and like publisher's have an exaggerated role as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas. I would not expect that in the presence of a zero-cost information replication mechanism such an entity performing such a task would be desirable except as an artifact of a programmer having something better to do than to refactor out that quirk of the old high cost implementation.

I wonder how far out I can extend this simulation of society as computing system. I suppose the analog of the necessary inputs for life would be the power electricity bill? Hmmmm.

You know, I think I just nerd sniped myself. I'm not sure if I can complete this post as intended now that I'm continuing to think on it. I'll leave it here in case anyone else wants to join in on extending the metaphor/figuring out where the breaking points are.

And how is that different from a physical library.

A physical library pays based on maximum simultaneous checkouts. If they want to allow 5 people to have copies checked out simultaneously, they buy 5 copies from the publisher.

And the IA followed that rule too but opened up wider access with an "Emergency" library once lockdowns due to COVID-19 were put in place.

> Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books.

And just to drive this completely home, it's not an arbitrary restriction—if a library has a larger budget or a book is more popular, they can buy more copies of the book, which also benefits publishers.