[Cyberguy34000]

The point consistently brought up in this discussion is that pirating music is stealing, or that pirating can deprive people of their income, etc...

Lets clarify something....

In a pure free-market system, you cannot guarantee people anything, except for the value of the currency that they use. You cannot garuntee housing arrangements, income, money, working conditions or even a job. Winds that blow in the the world of pure capitalism are unpredictable, and can violently change situations. The good thing is that this tends to create enormous wealth and prosperity, especially for those who understand how it works, the bad part is that there are no guarantees and people can lose out.

When you advocate against ideas or technologies (like pirating), because "someone might lose out, or this band will lose lots of money", than you are advocating for something other than capitalism. We can debate the merits of pure capitalism as an economic model, but that is a separate issue.

The term "intellectual property" is one of the more outrageous terms that has arisen, simply because the entire thing is bunk. Ideas are nothing without the tools, materials, workers, testing, business plans, production lines, or anything else to fruition. Ideas by themselves are worthless.

I've had literally hundreds (I have written documentation of many of them) of really cool ideas. Anything from mechanical inventions, to household products, to power tools, to movie plots. And what have I done with the majority of them? Nothing. But sure enough, given 5-6 years, someone else will independently come up with the same idea, but they'll actually go and do something with it, creating a business, hiring workers, selling the product, and bringing that idea to fruition.

Now, I've probably been deprived of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of "intellectual property" over the years. Dang it, those were my ideas! But you know what? Even if I did go through the process of copyrighting and suing anyone for infringing on my idea, I'd probably take it with me to the grave, because I would have done nothing with it. And so countless people are deprived of the fruits from that idea.

So what about movies? Millions of dollars are pumped into those ideas. They've gone through countless man hours worth of work, shouldn't they be able to profit? The answer to this rhetorical question really depends on what you think about free-markets.

Free-markets guarantee nothing, and can be quite brutal. If those movie studios lose millions because they invested in a bad business model that was outpaced by technology, than the true capitalist would be saying "tough break, better luck next time". Those that do not fully trust the the idea of free-markets will want things to be more fair, and will try to artificially control and legislate matters so that no one gets hurt, no one loses out, and no one has to suffer.

Capitalism insures nothing to anyone, save for the legitimacy of it's currency (even that made the founders of our Constitution choke). The only crime you can really commit against this economic model is stealing. Stealing is depriving people of their physical money or their physical property. "Intellectual Property" doesn't exist, so it cannot be stolen. You cannot "own" an idea. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that there is no such thing as an original idea, because in some way, all ideas or thoughts that have ever been thought were derived or inspired from others. Ideas are worthless.

The only thing that has any value in the world of capitalism, is physical property.


Do you really believe in capitalism?

-Chris