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Comment by ahk | Hacker News Reader

You want to make something, start by first creating the universe (as Carl Sagan put it). Since you didn't, you already owe a large debt to the universe for just existing (assuming a you've a good life) and to a lesser extent to society for supporting you (with doctors, farmers, builders, roads, schools, stability, security, existence of an economy etc) which is not really repaid in taxes. So, there's a social contract, which people now feel is being abused by creators.

Edit: But yeah, I'd like to live in a stable utopian anarchy as well.

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The universe wasn't made by humans. But yes, I pay for my MacBook, I license the fonts I'm using in my web app, I'm going to pay the guy who does my graphic design, I respect the licenses of my Python modules, I write the odd OSS app myself, and I pay taxes. Yes, people do things for other people. Those people - doctors, builders, famers, teachers - deserve to be compensated just like software makers and writers do.

Yes they do. But what's fair compensation? If a doctor saves your life, do you then become his slave? Because if not for him, you'd not exist anymore. No? Then it's obvious that the compensation is only upto a point. What if it was some medicine discovered a century ago that saved you? How do you compensate that person? You need to rely on society to have taken care of or provided for him when he was alive.

If technology progresses to a level where an individual is independent of society (to the point of one planet per person maybe), your ideas would work. Right now society has the upper hand over the individual.

This is why doctors are paid well - they're responsible for something very valuable, people's lives.

I don't understand how people needing others (which is true, no man is an island) justifies people taking things from others.

Some would argue that doctors are paid well because they've formed a cartel and fight strongly to prevent others, such as nurses, from intruding on their turf. Something that would lead to healthcare that is both better and cheaper.

I'll let you draw your own analogies to the creative industries.

I'm fairly sure none of the 3 people responding to this HN article are members of cartels. Piracy doesn't discriminate between good or bad. There is no 'major label only' torrent site.

It's not the needing of others, but the inability to price or pay for societal benefits that leads to the social contract you're basically born into.

Another example, what price do you put on having your neighbors being educated or non-violent enough to not kill you the next time they see you and take your family and belongings? In an anarchy, the cost of your own weapons cache maybe, but in current society it's hard to determine. But it's still a benefit to not be living in the stone age or next door to the Huns.

> Another example, what price do you put on having your neighbors being educated or non-violent enough to not kill you the next time they see you and take your family and belongings?

The price I pay of my neighbour not killing me if he feels like it is not killing them should I feel like it - that's the nature of society. We also both fund a police force that will attempt to prevent and punish crime. It doesn't seem hard to determine at all.

Markets work differently from societies - the price consumers pay in a market is the price the provider asks for, for the product the consumer has chosen. The provider could set an unreasonable price if he wishes, but the consumer could always decided that the value provided isn't sufficient and not buy the product.

> that's the nature of society

Haha. Exactly. I think you don't really believe what you read about other societies where this is/was common. And the police are a component of society, but is just having some policemen around enough to prevent crime? If so, I'd be selling you a great Russia investment story.

So we both agree that society is good.

I'm not sure how society being beneficial makes it wrong profit from making something (if that's what you're saying - to be honest, I'm not suite sure).

No, I was responding to your statement on copyrights and why society gets to determine that.

OK cool. Society determines copyrights - I think that's good too. Most people think those who make stuff get to determine the price they sell it for (except a few rare cases, eg AIDS medication), so that's what the law states.

They certainly do try to set their own prices. On occasion society revolts, sometimes violently and sometimes not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha.

Salt Satyagraha was a protest against a government tax, by those in favor of free markets - not a protest against free markets. See the link you just posted.

I brought it up as an example of a society in peaceful revolt against a high price for goods, doesnt really matter who was setting the price, a tyrannical government or producers. They had civil disobedience which has a few similarities to how people flout copyright laws today (not completely the same of course, since they were willing to go jail). Like charging high prices for access to something that's essentially free (salt then, copies of mp3 files now)

Also see how electricity is commonly stolen in developing nations, anti-prohibition activities etc. For examples of societies trying to act through government to regulate payments to people, look at the UK bank bonus tax or the Autralian attempt at a mining super profits tax, and in the other direction blank media taxes, farm subsidies etc.

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