Unrealistic optimism and susceptibility to trickery

The money to pay them comes from a tax on the physical goods needed to use their creations, in other words from a tax on the paper, storage media, phones, screens, pills, or other substrates that carry the benefit to the user. The creators are then paid based on that tally. A census of usage can tally the distribution of a given creation. There are many complications associated with counting the results of creativity, and IвЂ™ll get to a few of those in a moment, but for now letвЂ™s stay with the general idea. Try to make sure the creator gets paid.Д¬ensus methods are available to count how widespread something is. DonвЂ™t make futile attempts to limit the spread of ideas.

With those two concepts in mind the rational way to align creativity and its benefits becomes clearer. Thus, ideas are not property and creators have a right to be paid proportionally to the benefit they bring. Paying the creator doesnвЂ™t magically change a limitless resource into something else. ThatвЂ™s different from pretending an idea can be transformed into disappearing ink if too many people look at it. The sense is justified, just as anybody has a right to be paid for work useful to others. Which is whatвЂ™s happened with the counterproductive attempt to lock down creations, whether artistic or medical or technical.Д¬onfusion arises because thereвЂ™s also a sense that creators have a right to benefit from their good ideas. It breeds resentment followed by workarounds. Setting up artificial barriers and waylaying people trying to get past them offends against an intuitive sense of justice. In fact, the only way to force them into that mold is to artificially limit their availability, just as the only way to make people pay for sunlight would be to set up a space shield and extract a ransom. Ideas donвЂ™t need to be apportioned among too many users any more than sunlight does. Food, clothes, land, or phones are all things that can only be shared a little bit, if at all, without becoming useless to the sharer. Property, on the other hand, is a way of distributing limited resources that can be used up. Arguably, it provides more enjoyment because sharing ideas and feelings is more fun than having them alone. That doesnвЂ™t change it and it still provides each individual with the same enjoyment.

It doesnвЂ™t matter if the whole world sings the same song. The flaw is that ideas in the broad sense, encompassing concepts, inventions, and creativity, do not share the main characteristic of property. Ideas as property are based on a fundamental fallacy, and as with all fallacies, acting on them does not work. Some bright wit would have locked down the concept of spending the night on the ground and set up a toll booth. If weвЂ™d had the same rules millions of years ago as we do now, weвЂ™d still be living in trees. This work is dedicated to all of those who have more of what it takes than I do, whoвЂ™ll carry us through the time of trouble to the other side. I donвЂ™t have the intestinal fortitude to do much besides think.

Maybe theyвЂ™ll be lost too soon to do any good, but this is all I can do. IвЂ™ve set these thoughts down in the hope that they can help toward bridging the dark time. So, even though IвЂ™m not enough of a seer to know what lies on the other side of trouble, IвЂ™m pretty sure itвЂ™ll feel like waking from a bad dream. ThereвЂ™s no reason to assume it will be different this time. If the worst case climate change comes to pass, it could be millenia.ДЄfter the death of earlier empires, whatвЂ™s emerged from the rubble has been better. It could be many decades, or it could be centuries. That depends on how bad the environmental damage will be and whether we react to the trouble by pulling together or falling apart. WeвЂ™re headed for a dark age and who knows how long it will last. WeвЂ™re not doing anywhere near enough to avoid disaster, so weвЂ™ll walk into it. Many people set course for it during and after the Enlightenment in the 1700s, but in recent generations thereвЂ™s been the assumption that all the hard work has been done. This exploration of what equal rights means in our world shows mainly how far weвЂ™ve drifted away from that goal.

Unrealistic optimism and susceptibility to trickery