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Comment by TotalCrackpot | Hacker News Reader

Do you suggest that you need intellectual property for new ideas to be created and propagated? THAT'S silly! For most of the history of this species there were no intellectual property rights and people still were sharing their thoughts and ideas for various reasons.

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For most of the history of this species there also weren't books, people making a living writing books, computers, or importantly, the ability to endlessly copy books using computers. If we want people to write books, those people need to be able to feed themselves, and that's harder if nobody has any reason to pay for those books.

We can try some kind of libertarian socialism system, either with decentralized planing or with anti-capitalist markets to deal with it.

Consider existence of services like patreon where people support creators they respect before are able to get to know the work of the author - no intellectual property rights are needed here.

Realistically, you're talking about a fantasy world.

Less harshly, if we want to have that kind of world, we're not going to get there by abandoning creatives by removing intellectual property protections as the first step. Within the current society, intellectual property law does more good than harm.

But besides that, I don't think a universal patreon-like support system is even ideal. I don't want to provide ongoing support for any creation/creator I appreciate. I like being able to just buy a book.

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