the gold standard of art

[quarrel]

Libertarians - and staunch conservatives in general, actually - take an extreme stance on property. In their view, anything you make or earn is 100% yours to control, and you are the only entity with a legitimate say in how any of it gets used. “Taxation is theft,” they say, because in taxation, an outside agency takes something you earned and

Comments

[terrycloth]

In fact, there’s a high correlation between people who favor ample government spending and people who staunchly defend artists’ rights to control the distribution of their own work.

There is?

I thought most Democrats were young people, and most young people I know are pirates with no respect for copyright.

You see, if you owned enough gold to buy thirty-seven pairs of pants ten years ago, you would own enough gold to buy thirty-seven pairs of pants today

*snerk* This is a joke, right?

[quarrel]

I thought most Democrats were young people, and most young people I know are pirates with no respect for copyright.

I'm mainly thinking of academic types. I suppose you're right about the unwashed masses. Perhaps at the root of it is the cynical idea that people are more generous with other people's property than with their own.

*snerk* This is a joke, right?

I never said it was a good philosophy, just that it's out there. And anyway, if the relative value of gold versus pants does vary (and I'm sure it does), it's the result of good ol' organic, natural market forces, not pinko-commie gub'mint intervention.

[terrycloth]

I think it's more that these people believe in being 'fair' over being 'greedy'. Copyright in particular is a really artificial sort of pseudo-property-right that doesn't resonate with a lot of people, while funding things for the common good using taxation seems like 'everybody work together and share!'

For academics, they get more philosophical in the formal sense, and counterintuitive constructs like copyright make more sense to them.

Nobody actually likes the government as a whole, but if people could agree on what parts were the good parts it'd probably be smaller.

[quarrel]

Copyright in particular is a really artificial sort of pseudo-property-right that doesn't resonate with a lot of people,

Do you have a source for that, or is that your personal experience? How much of it is that they don't cordon to the notion of copyright in general, and how much of it is that they don't think it's legitimate when it protects the income of big, rich companies?