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Comment by joshmarlow | Hacker News Reader

My first thought is that this perspective is conflating Capitalism with a Free Market.

Free Markets are about competition and consumer rights.

Capitalism - from what I've read - is about a minority having the decision making power with regards to capital allocation.

So the USA has a free market system ran by capitalists. I would argue that IP laws can be favorable from the perspective of Capitalism but not the Free Market.

The capitalists own the patents and have the wealth to _incentivize_ the law makers to make IP protection laws.

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Not even Marx uses that definition of capitalism.

Capitalism, as defined by communists is about the "private ownership of the means of production". The term has now been widely adopted, even by its defenders, although we don't care specifically about the means of production, we defend property whenever it enhances the freedom of the human individual (an abstract individual, not any specific person).

Intellectual "property" doesn't enhance freedom in any way. Most libertarians and philosophical defenders of capitalism agree with me on this (except Ayn Rand fans)

Thanks for the response - I'm pretty new to the literature so I'm happy to have corrections!

I might be lacking some nuance here, but "private ownership of the means of production" sounds equivalent to my statement about making decisions about capital allocation, in that the means of production is one form of capital. Not trying to be pedantic, just looking to understand the difference :)

That would be more of an oligopoly. Capitalism and free markets are more or less the same thing. However certain forms of regulation and lobbying can result in oligopies also known as 'crony capitalism'.

No. Free markets are theorized in liberalism, capitalism is just a nice way to says that companies belong to people who bought the tools, not peopl who operate them. You can have a communist liberalism (the "liberal anarchism described by Decoeur is pretty close to that), or (better) something in between like in germany or sweeden and Denmark with 33% of the voting power is given to employees, with an annual prime given to them depending on reversed dividends. Germany have a free market but is not a 100% capitalist country.

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