Posted by Diarm (194.125.174.158) on May 01, 2002 at 11:28:54:
In Reply to: the real problem posted by isaac (68.63.80.7) on April 30, 2002 at 16:04:38:
: artists and intellectuals will starve or change profession if intellectual property rights are removed.
In what universe do artists make money from the system of intellectual property rights? Not this one, that's for sure. All the hit songs are owned (and money made from them) by people other than the creators and original performers.
Any wealth owned by performers comes from other sources like performing, merchandise, interviews, books, endorsements etc.
As for inventors and industrialists, the history of the Netherlands and Switzerland proves you wrong.
Ah well, never let the truth get in the way of a good ideology.
It's lazy to have one good idea in your life, and sit on your ass for 60 years making money off it. It also removes incentive from creative people to continue being creative after their first success.
The swiss and dutch corporations couldn't do that, because of their lack of a patent system. So they had no choice but to keep working, making new innovations: which is why they became some of the world's biggest firms.
The hardscrabble environment where an idea is fair game (as it is in nature) made these firms strong enough to be world-conquerors.
Last time I checked, Switzerland was the world's richest nation (going by average wealth per citizen), and the Netherlands were pretty close