None of that is relevant to this discussion. We are talking about someone who spent time growing a skill and is charging people who want him to use that skill for whatever they are hiring them for.
In my example "their creation" is a textbook, and "legal walls" would be copyright/DMCA.
There is also Getty/Universal Music/etc. attempting to enforce artificial scarcity in an area where real scarcity existed (in addition to plenty of artificial scarcity) but is beginning to be overcome.
It's allocating resources towards preventing distribution. Maybe you'd agree that it's "direct" artificial scarcity, but believe without that necessary artificial scarcity we'd soon become worse off overall?
> I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.
Sure - but you see that is not inherently the same thing as the specific method of profit extraction through requiring payment per access to the book/image/music/..., right? An artist receiving donations or public funding for releasing their work to everyone under a permissive license is still profiting from their work, for example. I'm not necessarily saying you have to agree that alternative methods are currently feasible in all or most scenarios.
Opinion articles on HN notwithstanding, do you not think that free and open-source software has, as a whole, been fairly successful?
Moreover, IP law doesn't just apply to art or code - evergreening of medical patents is enforcing artificial scarcity on information that could save lives. Textbooks that could teach millions being restricted to the few thousand that pay is also going to have a huge hidden impact.
I don't know if there are viable alternatives for all scenarios, but given how much is on the table if artificial scarcity can be replaced - I think it'd be wrong not to actively try, encouraging any potential alternatives, rather than just being resigned to the idea that this much waste is necessary. At the very least we should oppose the attempts to enforce artificial scarcity in areas that currently managed to do without it.
Virtually everything we humans do was inaugurated by those who came before, and our wholesale, liberal replication of those prior actions defines our very existence.
Any concept of ownership beyond "what is possessed and am in physically controlled" is artificial. The law of nature is that might makes right.
Lets say I have a plant and I grow that plant with a bunch of other plants and make special seeds. This isn't a common skill set. Now lets say I sell you those seeds and you grow plants with them.
Now, which seems more natural.
You take the seeds of those plants and grow more seeds for yourself.
or
I prevent you with laws on taking those seeds and growing more plants.
When you put something out into the world, it is completely natural for people to take those objects and do what they want with them. It's only with more modern humanity that we reserve rights for the person selling after the sale.