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Comment by wycs | Hacker News Reader

It’s almost like intellectual property is an absurd injustice.

Especially since it escapes taxation. If you taxed IP like you do real property, we would see quite a different system form.

That's an interesting point. Has taxing IP ever been investigated and/or implemented? What were the conclusions?

I wrote up a proposal for just that and sent it to Dianne Feinstein. I'm still waiting to hear back.

She'll hold onto it until it's convenient to expose, just like she did with the Blasey-Ford allegations.

Income generated from IP, such as licensing fees, do get taxed, though. Are you referring to the lack of excise-like taxes on IP?

I'm thinking of the same way that land you owned is taxed even if it isn't being used for anything, with a tax partially based on how much the market values the land (so land that is nowhere interesting is barely taxed while land that is highly desired is highly taxed).

This way, a company couldn't just hold onto an IP and no do anything unless it wanted to keep paying the taxes, and the higher the demand for the IP the higher the taxes.

The concept that any individual is the only entity capable of creating a specific work is simply false.

The artificial limitations on creativity are impeding economic growth and need to be removed

It's more that IP laws have not been kept up to date with advances in technology.

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