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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

I'll continue to steal stuff.

Then I sincerely hope someone else takes the same attitude towards your economic activity by helping themselves to it without compensating you, so that you gain some first-hand experience of what that feels like.

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If you are in IT as a normal 9 to 5er then it is already happening as the larger corporations work to suppress wages, a downward pressure that is felt throughout the market. To say nothing of how much of one's economic productivity is stolen by being charged for services that others use via taxation (even when you don't count welfare; I'm talking things where big companies get corporate welfare and tax breaks with the burden falling on the average taxpayer).

I can't help noticing that most of the arguments against paying for creative works seem to be rooted in grumpy Marxism.

I'll give you another one. Most creative work is crap and distinctly not tied to the return of investment.

If I buy a book for £6 I get a few days if not a couple of weeks of enjoyment out of it. This is good. Well done authors.

If I buy a £1 music track I get perhaps 20 minutes a week out of it for a few weeks before I burn it out.

I can't help you with your aesthetic dissatisfaction.

Perhaps you should only spend money on music to attend concerts, or save up your cash to buy a musical instrument instead of listening to recordings that provide only transient enjoyment.

I presume if you are stealing something (to use your phrase above) it is because you want it at the time you help yourself to it. If you suspect that you will quickly get sick of music, why not just spend the money on books instead? I mean, if I found that every time I bought fish and chips I felt sick afterwards I wouldn't start stealing it without paying, I would just stop eating it.

If you steal music in digital form without paying for it, of course it is not lost as with a physical object, but you have lowered the equilibrium price of the good by unilaterally increasing the overall supply.

Incidentally I play the piano, guitar and clarinet... Perhaps that's the problem. I will reflect upon that.

Musicians, like many other professions (I could mention scientists as another example), are usually not into what they are doing because of the money. They sell their music because earning money enables them to play more music, not wasting their time with other work. So I'm not so sure they should mind, as long as they still make enough to keep it going.

Actually most people have some passion they would like to spend on instead of working. Maybe we could arrange it so that we all shared the boring work equally and then spend the rest of the time pursuing our passions? Then musicians could be musicians — and I could be what I want too!

Also we can afford to pay them more if we don't spin all our cash on distribution top slicing and go to the gigs etc.

It's not the fault of people in the arts that you don't enjoy your job. Also, creative work is still work. Writing a novel typically takes months of work, for example. I think it's quite reasonable to set a price and collect some money from people who want to read it.

I don't understand this attitude that someone else should provide you with free entertainment just because you chose a career that you don't find fulfilling. What is it that you want to be/do that you can't now?

«Choosing a career» is not always what happens. Do you think those who wash public toilets, just happened to have chosen that career?

Fact of the matter is, unless you're born rich or have aquired enough capital to live off other people's work, you need a job to get by. The ratio between shit jobs and cool gigs is increasing, and those who are worse off in the first place get the shittiest jobs — for less pay of course!

> Musicians, like many other professions (I could mention scientists as another example), are usually not into what they are doing because of the money.

You might want to run that one past the rappers, because I'm getting mixed signals from their videos..... ;-D

65% of my pre tax income disappears on tax through income tax, NI and VAT so yes it's already happening.

Oh, so because you feel the government is stealing your money you are OK with stealing the product of someone else's work to get back at the government?

Meanwhile, aren't you choosing to keep living in the UK or EU. Why don't you move to Monaco or some other low-tax jurisdiction?

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