They always were entertainment, so: concerts, performances etc.

Sponsorship and patronage. Who knows. As long as it's not this artificial scarcity illusion.

The scarcity isn’t in the reproducibility of intellectual property. It’s in human motivation.

Yes. People are supposed to get paid for the labor of creating. Not the finished product.

Why would we pay people for the labor, not the product? I don't care if something took you 1 minute of 10 years, it's value to me doesn't change (except in the case where the 1 minute version is reproduced a lot by you and it's scarcity gives it value)

Because creators are scarce and finished products are not. It's simple.

We're in the 21st century, the age of information and networked computers, and these people are trying to sell bits. It makes no sense. If your work is making bits, you need to figure out a way to get paid for the labor of discovering those bits, not the bits themselves.

Because god knows how easy it is to copy those bits after they've been found.

We've already figured out a way to compensate creators for their work—it's called copyright. You say you don't like it, but you don't propose any alternative either, which makes you sound like an entitled brat.

Copyright is not necessarily the best way for creators to get compensated. For example, for most musicians in the US it's only a small part of their income [1]. Study is from 2013, could be different in the Spotify era, but it found that on average 12% of musicians' income came from copyright-related sources. 22% if you count session recording. Top-earners made a higher percentage from copyright. It isn't terrible, but it's not exactly the main way musicians are making money.

Writers make basically all of their money from copyright-related sources, but the median income from writing for full-time authors in the US is 20k [2].

My point is, copyright is a way to compensate creators for their work, but it's not the only way, and in practice for most people it doesn't do a stellar job.

[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199058 [2]: https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-dra...

I have issues with your interpretations of both papers. High level: The paper on authors says it's Amazons monopoly rent seeking as why writers don't get paid more Music is also famously an industry where artists rarely own the copyright for their (recorded) music, instead selling it to cover production and advertising costs. Also, the music study suffers from and the paper on musicians has a good deal of classical performers and teachers in the mix skewing the sample. These are not professionals that interact with copyright in any meaningful sense, but they are also not professionals that would be classified as creators.

Of course, because music can be performed. People will pay to see a live performance, which means music performers aren't entirely reliant on selling recorded performances. Live readings, on the other hand, don't attract large crowds and therefore aren't a great source of income, making writers more dependent on IP rights. It's pretty obvious.

Oh please. I cared enough to propose some alternatives up above but the truth is I don't really need to fix their broken business model for them. How they get paid is literally their problem. If they insist on selling bits, they're free to seethe endlessly when people copy those bits with complete impunity. I'm done feeling sorry for these monopolists.

So we're going back to the feudal times were artists live in servitude arrangements with the propertied classes? It's pretty funny how artificial is a pejorative in your world when it precedes 'scarcity' but not when it precedes 'intelligence'.

Property rights are the basis for any society in which people have independence and autonomy. I think we should put software developers on sponsorship and donations for a year so that they understand the consequence of an economy like this.

>So we're going back to the feudal times were artists live in servitude arrangements with the propertied classes?

Most of what we see today as the greatest art of all time was produced under this arrangement, so if we look purely at the outcome for society, the arrangement can't be that bad.

> So we're going back to the feudal times were artists live in servitude arrangements with the propertied classes?

As if it's any different now. Wanna create something and need money to make it happen? Be prepared to enter into arrangements with rich investors and corporations and producers. The people with the money will literally get credited in your works.

> It's pretty funny how artificial is a pejorative in your world when it precedes 'scarcity' but not when it precedes 'intelligence'.

The "artificial" in intelligence is a technological limitation: it's not a real intelligence because we haven't been able to make one. The "artificial" in artificial scarcity is a condition humans impose on abundant resources in order to create an economy where there is none: we have the technology to copy and distribute these abundant resources but the monopolists won't have it.

So you bet it's pejorative.

> Property rights are the basis for any society in which people have independence and autonomy.

Sure. Real property like land and physical possessions. Not this imaginary property that only exists to let people turn abundance into scarcity.

> I think we should put software developers on sponsorship and donations for a year so that they understand the consequence of an economy like this.

I don't even disagree. Software developers are also creators that exploit their monopolies for gain. Personally I don't even believe in copyleft licenses, they only exist to fix copyright and turn it to our advantage. There should be no copyrights to fix in the first place.

>Sure. Real property like land and physical possessions. Not this imaginary property that only exists to let people turn abundance into scarcity

There is no difference between the two. All property is 'imaginary'. Turning abundance into scarcity is literally the only reason to have property rights all the time, including in the physical world. Land isn't actually scarce in most places.

The reason we introduce scarcity and ownership for land as well as digital goods is exactly the same. because it gives the owner an incentive to tend to it. It lets you capture the value of the improvements you add to it. The enclosure of the commons didn't happen because the commons were scarce, it happened to create conditions for their development rather than their abuse.

Software developers who don't own their code earn 800 dollars on patreon will Microsoft makes millions of their labor. This is literally the economics of free software. It's the largest upwards distribution of wealth ever invented. Imaginary property, that is to say intellectual property, is the only thing that puts you on even ground with Microsoft. You want a world without it where hardware is the only thing that matters? Good luck competing.

> There is no difference between the two. All property is 'imaginary'. Turning abundance into scarcity is literally the only reason to have property rights all the time, including in the physical world. Land isn't actually scarce in most places.

No way. Physical things are scarce. This is basic physics. You cannot duplicate energy or matter. Two physical bodies cannot occupy the same space. Physical property is not even in the same conceptual space as intellectual property. Land isn't scarce in most places? Really.

Exactly none of the properties I just mentioned apply to any form of intellectual property. You can duplicate bits infinitely at negligible costs.

> Software developers who don't own their code earn 800 dollars on patreon will Microsoft makes millions of their labor.

Microsoft makes a zillion dollars off of free software labor because those developers were tricked into giving up their rights while simultaneously allowing Microsoft to retain theirs. It makes no sense to give away code unless everyone does. I have three answers to this:

Abolish copyright straight up. Now everyone's on equal footing with Microsoft. No longer a crime to use their proprietary code when it inevitably leaks and even make money off of it.

License everything under AGPLv3. They can't exploit your free labor if they refuse to touch your free software code. This is the approach I ended up choosing because I don't have the power to enact the previous solution. I don't think I'll ever license anything under a "permissive" license ever again.

Simply don't publish the code. Nothing wrong with keeping it private, for one's own use only. I do this too.

Universal basic income to begin with. So they can create if they feel like it instead of waiting tables to make ends meet.