[exporectomy]

Just because it's artificial scarcity doesn't mean it's not useful. Money also has artificial scarcity and that's a pretty good invention.

My point is that copyright is to incentivize authors to produce work but if it's limited by the author's lifetime, then older people will be incentivized less than younger people because they won't be able to sell the rights for as much money because they'll expire sooner. We don't particularly need work created by young people more than old people, so why incentivize it that way?

[matheusmoreira]

My point is copyright duration should never have grown beyond 5-10 years to begin with. I'm not saying copyright should expire if the person dies.

> Money also has artificial scarcity

I don't understand. Why do you think that?

[exporectomy]

You can create your own notes and coins but it's illegal because they want to maintain the artificial scarcity. The whole idea of fiat currency depends on people trusting that artificial scarcity will be maintained by the government.

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah, government currency does have those problems. I'm not sure I'd even classify it as real money to begin with, it's just a scheme governments impose on their populations. Real money is precious metals: naturally scarce, malleable, fungible, divisible, universally recognized as valuable. A very small set of cryptocurrencies also have a shot at becoming real money one day.

I don't think this can be called artificial scarcity though. It's real scarcity that's gradually inflated away by governments and banks. Data is already infinitely abundant as soon as it's created.

[exporectomy]

Have you somehow modelled how the global economy would change if copyright was 10 years and fiat currency didn't exist and people used gold instead? Without that, you're living in fantasy land. You can make any idea seem better if you just make up the consequences in a way that favors your idea.