Exactly. What a lot of economists tend to "forget" is that markets also include black/illegal markets and markets that are hardly controllable by the government.
Yeah, I agree. I think it can be a case-by-case situation depending on both the reader and the publishere/author. An undergrad needing a course textbook that's published by a monopolistic cartel with a 300% markup? Absolutely. For well-paid worker in a developed country buying a novel written by a niche author? probably not the right thing to do.
It's very unclear how book sales translate into income for authors. You are rewarding middlemen; these middlemen have a role that may or may not be important these days.
I'm not proposing an alternative mechanism. I think people who can comfortably afford to pay the asked price for a book should of course do just that. On the other hand, for the billions of those who do not have that privilege, I wholeheartedly recommend piracy. It is of no cost to the author/publisher (since they weren't going to pay anyway) and of tremendous positive impact for equality and social mobility for the community.
In a perfect world piracy would be an unfair and unnecessary venture. In this one, for many people it is absolutely justified.
The bad communism is when the government takes your stuff and you don't have it anymore. This is "communism" in the same way that everyone being able to breathe the air or speak English without paying a proprietor for the right is "communism". This is often a motte and bailey that communists use, but you're attacking the motte.
You're essentially arguing that there isn't a market for air. But there is. This is the market served by submarines and firefighting gear and spacecraft and HEPA filters.
If no one had a monopoly over copies, you'd still have a market to supply them, they'd just generally be really cheap and the supplier would be someone like Cloudflare. Likewise there would still be a market for creating works, because people would pay for commissions. There might not be as many of them, but there would still be a market.
> You can’t even have a market of IP without government granted ownership of IP.
What on earth are you thinking? For essentially all of human history, every work of art was produced for the market, and it was impossible to own any IP.
Songs are not physical things, but that has never stopped them from being produced for the market. Same goes for stories, and for all other forms of oral content. These are not things that we've ever been short of.
How could you possibly arrive at this conclusion? Think of the most famous stories / literature works before year 1500 - myths of Ancient Greece, the bible, ancient folklore about fairy folk - none of it was produced for a market of any kind.
You are unfairly taking credit for the fundamental human need of self expression, and assigning it to your preferred ideological position.
Can you name 5 famous stories, before year 1500, that were made ‘for the market’?
Even penicillin was not created for the market. Most scientific discoveries weren’t.
> How could you possibly arrive at this conclusion?
Because I know what it means to create something for the market?
> Can you name 5 famous stories, before year 1500, that were made ‘for the market’?
Given that I've already pointed out that all such stories were made for the market, how do you expect me to answer this?
Can I name five famous stories from before the year 1500?
The Tale of Cupid and Psyche
The Shahnameh
Nüwa Knocks a Hole in the Sky
The Divine Comedy
The Epic of Gilgamesh
> myths of Ancient Greece, the bible, ancient folklore about fairy folk - none of it was produced for a market of any kind.
As I have already pointed out, all of these were produced for a market. Why would you state otherwise? What do you think it means to offer something on a market? (Why do you think the general term for the space where these things live is "the marketplace of ideas"?)
> Even penicillin was not created for the market. Most scientific discoveries weren’t.
Penicillin wasn't created at all, as you suggest by calling it a "discovery". But we use it today because it was offered on the market by someone who hoped to receive the rewards that the market would offer for it.
> Given that I've already pointed out that all such stories were made for the market
You made unsubstantiated assertion that lays claim to a millennia of human history. You offered no evidence of any kind.
> I know what it means to create something for the market
Firstly, that that statement itself is debatable. Secondly, one would need extraordinary knowledge of history to make claims about for thousands of stories written across thousands of years.
I cannot help but conclude that you are an ideologue and you believe there is no life outside ‘the market’ and when I write something in my personal blog, or invent a story for my child, that’s ’the market’ too.
I find this level of ideological appropriation repulsive.
http://libgen.rs/
The government-granted monopoly, not so much.