>I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.)
You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.
Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem).
>I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive.
I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.
there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.
There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).
Any "positive right" (a right requiring the initiation of force) is not only qualitatively different (in that it requires the initiation of force instead of arising because the initiaition of force is barred), it is not a legitimate right.
Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite.
Disagree.
It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works.
That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression", or if you have a too-expansive view of copyright (e.g., conflating it with patents).
Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good.
Most good aspect of modern life comes from people serving themselves; benefitng the common good is a nice side-effect.
And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.
Really? That's an incredibly destructive and anti-life point of view.
>There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).
It takes a perverse definition of force to say that when person B is living on land that person A claims ownership of, and person A has him forcibly thrown off it, that person B was the one who initiated force.
>That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression
They have the power to prevent me, privately, behind closed doors, from writing my own stories with Harry Potter in and giving them to my friends.
You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.
Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem).
>I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive.
I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.