No. Before the industrial revolution participating in art wasn’t something you did to make money, it was a prerequisite to a full human existence. Why say something that is so easily disproven. In ancient Greece, artists were paid by the government to build temples and other public buildings in Athens. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, works of art were commissioned by patrons and made to order. There are tons of examples of people doing it for money and as their sole job. You are %100 wrong here.

Art isn’t a job art is humanity. Art isn’t pointless, art is the point. Cool, and how does that person making art eat?

Look into the concept of commodification. You’ll learn a lot Yes, I learned about this way back in college. It’s not some new or crazy idea. It’s not even a bad idea, it has help society throughout many points in history.

I’m saying that people shouldn’t “be able to live” off of art the same way they shouldn’t “be able to live” off breathing and further.

Art is something you invest time and money and resources into. Breathing is not. This doesn’t make any sense. I can breathe while working a 9-5.

I am ignoring the ripple effects on people’s lives because those effects only hit them as far as they have allowed themselves to participate in the selling off of their humanity.

Really? Well that is extremely close minded. Without IP big pharma won’t be interested in investing millions into a new vaccine, so I guess everyone who dies from the lack of that vaccine is their fault, because they sold their sole. Or you spent your life on your masterpiece of a book and want to make money off your life’s work, someone you’ve sold you soul because you want money to live.

And no. It doesn’t extend to free speech because free speech isn’t an argument solely used to prop up a system that shouldn’t have ever existed at all.

Have you never seen politicians? Have you ever read a history book? Words and hate speech, covered by freedom of speech, has lead to many deaths. But I guess they don’t matter somehow.

Art is not pointless, but it shouldn’t be something you buy or sell. Many things we buy or sell today are the same. Art is not unique.

But I’m sure the artist wants a house to live in. Who is making that house? They want to eat. How are they getting that food. You seem to live in a fantasy land where everyone has unlimited time and money to just create and be happy with creating, no bills, no real world to worry about.

But the argument that an artist in the Netherlands keeping their job because otherwise they’ll starve is a justification for a child in Sierra Leone dying of tuberculosis when the person paying for the art has the ability to give the artist food and the child medicine is evil. And make no mistake, that person is you. Sure call me evil. But if I’m evil then you are the literal devil. That kid who wants that tuberculosis medicine, how do you think we got that medicine? A company invested millions to research it. So when the next disease comes around and it’s killing millions and no one is willing to just burn millions to find a cure because they have no IP, those deaths will be because of people like you. You have this childish mindset that after IP is gone everyone will magically have meds in their hands and everything will be perfect. No, you’re just as dumb as you are evil. New diseases will come up, no one will invest in curing them because they will lose money, and people will die. The difference between me and you is I can see more than 1 month into the future on how this would effect things.

IP abolition is one single part of a much larger reform we need, and anyone who is arguing against it is missing the forest for the trees. That is my argument.

I agree we need reform. But I would say anyone arguing that we don’t need IP is naive. They benefit from it every day while saying it should be destroyed. Which now that I think of it sounds like every republican. Not calling you one, just funny how that works out. No surprise that people with money are the ones wanting it gone. Ever think why the rich want this? Is it because you think they’re trying to be good people? Or maybe, just maybe, they realize how they will get even more money and power while selling a fantasy that people eat up. This is just like how people eat up the idea of tariffs without even understanding what they are. That’s you.

Wanting artists to be able to be paid for their work obfuscates the much larger, actually important issue that they’ll starve in our society without their art. That is evil.

Yes, they shouldn’t have to do art to survive. But your solution would just kill art all together. Because a system is broken is not a reason to remove it entirely, it’s a reason to fix it. You just seem to have this pipe dream of a world where everyone can just do art whenever for free and no one ever has to worry about money. That sounds great, but it’s a fantasy. I live in reality, please join me.