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But we can insert into IP laws anything we want. Invoking capitalism is purely going to muddy the waters. IP laws are not capitalism, they are an extra-market hack to incentivize the invention of goods that have little to no marginal production costs. @guesswho can propose any other hack they want, and in fact this conversation has happened on the motte without the invocation of capitalism at least once before. The fundamental problem that exists outside of any economic scheme is that some things have high upfront costs, some of which costs are in the form of risk, that needs to be born by someone while the fruits can be endlessly enjoyed by all. IP is actually a pretty elegant solution to balancing these incentives all things considered. I'm happy to listen to other suggestions but we're not going to be talking about capitalism.
I mean, 'the king hires you to be a bard and tells you when and where to play' was one such solution. Not a good one, but there are lots of solutions out there.
My point is that IP laws are a uniquely capitalist solution to the problem, because the whole point of IP laws is to let capitalist price-finding still work on post-scarcity goods.
There would be no benefit to IP laws and artificial scarcity if you weren't trying to achieve that type of price-finding through markets, which is the heart of capitalism.
Ok, but you have said we're probably better off keeping the rest of the capitalist(I do quite dislike this term as it implies a kind of rule by capital that I deeply disagree with so unless otherwise specified I'm substituting in 'Market based system with private property rights) system so unless you're proposing replacing that it does need to slot into a capitalist framework. You've proposed central planning with a distribution which has all the problems of the IP system, just as hare brained of schemes would instantly arise to maximize payouts and minimize costs, but lacks the things you get out of the box by going with a capital compatible system.
I agree IP couldn't work if there was nothing to be gained from ownership of the IP but that's just dumping a contextual system into an abyss that tells us practically nothing. What any system that encourages production which has high upfront costs and near zero marginal costs must have is a way to both compensate people who produce things that many people actually want and discourage the production of things that many people don't actually want. And it's a big bonus if it's not susceptible to waste based on signaling games, i.e. many people might say they want more educational programming but if in reality none of it is actually consumed that's a failure in planning.
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