[oskarth]

If you want to get to the truth of something, you might want to entertain alternative viewpoints. Just because you are emotional about it doesn't make you right. Now you can choose to ignore what's happened in the last few decades and continue on with your stubborn view, but chances are you'll turn out to be wrong. If you want to have a more nuanced view of things, here's some reading for you: http://paulgraham.com/property.html

[bweitzman]

The irony is that we do charge for smells, it's called perfume, and it can be quite expensive

[Qwertious]

Not exactly - after the perfume is sold, the person wearing the perfume gives out the smell for free, and nobody tries to charge people for smelling the worn smell.

Obviously the bottle of concentrated smell costs money, though.

[bweitzman]

yes and no. When a person buys perfume, they don't care about the actual chemical makeup of whatever liquid is in the bottle, they care about the scent (and possibly brand associations). I would call that paying for the smell. The smell happens to come with an implied license for distributing it in small quantities in public :)