[userbinator]

I fully agree that this is just one of the many battles in a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely. People call it a conspiracy theory but the trend is very clear to see, and has been accelerating for the past few decades. Thus it is good to see some opposition showing up.

"You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF

[fabianhjr]

In discourse big capital has done well to erase the distinction between personal and private property.

Big capital has been fighting to strengthen private property and eroding personal property.

- ¿Drawing a schematic of a thing you own for repair?

- ¿Creating a spare part to repair a thing you own?

Those infringe on companies private property so you must have no rights over your personal property.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Personal_property#/Personal_vers...

[pitaj]

I would say that intellectual property is not part of private property.

There's also no easy distinction made between private and personal property, and any attempt to define one is nonsensical. There are endless examples where something is both personal and private property, or rapidly switched between the two.

Yet another aspect of Marxist theory that fails to hold up to even the lightest scrutiny.

[LocalH]

Intellectual property is a misnomer. The word “property” contains some very physical connotations that ideas and media are not bound by. Unfortunately, too many powerful people have a vested interest in continuing to use the word “property” in conjunction with non-physical items.

[sacrosancty]

I think that's a bit of cultural bias there. Imagine a society without personal property, like some small tribe. Wouldn't they see our property rights as artificial? Maybe their "true" property would be something we don't even recognize like their honor or wife or other things they don't want to share with each other.

I have a wheelbarrow in my yard that I'm not using. Why can't anyone else use it? There's no natural reason why they couldn't. It's just there, they can take it and wheel dirt around in it. I might no even know it's happening, but my property rights say they're not allowed to.

I think the main feature of property is to disallow others from using it in a way that restricts your own use. For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

I wonder how you feel about medical information being free to copy? That's not property either, is it? Are you happy with no moral rights for subjects of photographs and no rights to privacy of medical information? Should patients "own" their medical records or should hospitals be free to use them however they like?

[ISO-morphism]

> I think the main feature of property is to disallow others from using it in a way that restricts your own use. For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

The main difference between the wheelbarrow and IP lies in the copies. If someone else uses my wheelbarrow I can't use it while they're using it, or they may damage it. If someone copies an mp3 of a song I performed, I still have my mp3.

We had a working economic model based on physical property and we've been crippling the wonderful ability to infinitely create zero-cost copies of digital artifacts in order to fit our existing model. It's not horrendous that we've done this, and I'd optimistically view it as a step on the road to something yet unrealized.

> medical data

That deals with privacy, which is a different can of worms.

[alexvoda]

Since medical data was mentioned, lets just bring in the topic of copyrighted/patented genes.

It is already a topic discussed in the agricultural space.

Just imagine a future where we will have cures for some incurable diseases, but as a consequence of IP laws, the pharma company now controls your reproductive rights because you are making copies of their IP.

[db48x]

> Imagine a society without personal property, like some small tribe. Wouldn't they see our property rights as artificial?

This is a common argument, but one that is ungrounded in reality. Ancient tribes were small and certainly had fewer (or no) written rules, but there is plenty of evidence that they had personal property. Grave goods are just one of the most obvious. Neolithic huts with fences built around them to keep the livestock safe are another. We have stories dating all the way back into prehistory of shepherds counting their sheep. Etc, etc.

[alexvoda]

> For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

Just because you own something does not mean you automatically have a right to receive the revenue you want.

Being undercut by free when selling copies of x is absolutely natural for a medium where producing any additional copy of item x is free and can be done by anyone.

Want to be paid for the original new content, then sell that. Plenty of new content is already being funded that way. And before IP existed, all creative content was funded that way.

What IP allows you is to instead of demanding a bounded ammount of compensation for a bounded ammount of creative output (demand payment per creative work), you instead can demand an unlimited ammount of compensation.

IP is monopoly rights and undermines physical property.

[LocalH]

Medical information has other relevant concerns besides who "owns" it. As a matter of fact, it can be hard (if not impossible) for an individual to receive a copy of their own medical records. There are privacy concerns that simply don't often apply to the types of data which are usually referred to as "intellectual property" (software, music, movies, literature).

"Intellectual property", as a term, also serves to further layman confusion on the topic. I can't count on all my appendages the number of times I've spoken to an average person (whether in person or via the internet) where they've said something about "copyrighting" a business name or other trademark. Let's call "intellectual property" what it really is - copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Each of those has a completely different framework of regulation and philosophy, and it doesn't really serve us to lump them all together into one term for most productive discourse on the topic.

[cturner]

The concept of property evolved independently in every civilisation that grew beyond a small tribe and predates the nation-state.

It exists to deal with the dynamics of scarce goods. If person a is using your wheelbarrow, then person b cannot use it as well. You can't raise cows on a piece of land, but also plant a crop of wheat there. This definition goes back thousands of years and is respected across cultures.

There is another practice that was respected across cultures for thousands of years: the free sharing and open remixing of songs, stories and ideas.

IP is a weaselly project to carry the advantages of property rights to non-scarce goods, and to things which were previously fiercely regarded as public domain. It creates a set of rights which did not previously exist and which created new benefits for people who were already elites.

"For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you." This does not follow from the argument you are making. Selling something is not a use of it. Carting things around in a wheelbarrow or playing a compact disk - these are examples of use.

Perhaps you bring some cultural bias to this conversation. Having grown up in a setting with IP, and having a career in a field where some people gain great advantage from IP, you have come to believe that it is reasonable to regard ideas as property.

But IP is an aberration, even in our time. It is not law in all places, it is not enforced well in the places where it is, and in those places people who are morally conscious and otherwise law-abiding routinely violate it.

IP is impractical to enforce equally, is inconsistent with the principle of live-and-let-live, it raises the barrier-of-entry to a range of industries, it grants extra privileges to existing elites, it is easily gamed by bad-faith actors, it is disrespected by the general population, it has at best a hand-wavey economic justification that is backed by no real evidence. IP is complicated when good laws are simple, and IP muddies the water for a concept that is a genuine foundation of our civilisation - property. IP fails all tests for what is reasonable law.

If the government were to say that black were white, this would not make it so. So it is with property.

[Retric]

Physical objects break down with use. That’s the natural impetus for personal property to be a thing. Ideas however don’t fail with use which is why no legal system has the concept of actually owning an idea rather than say getting a patent for a few years etc.

Intellectual property doesn’t exist, it’s all just privileges handed out at the whims of the the state the same way only Dentists can practice dentistry.

[Hasu]

I'm still not seeing the distinction on a fundamental ontological level. Physical property rights are also just privileges handed out at the whim of the state. There are plenty of examples of ideas that are less useful when they're common knowledge: Coke's secret formula, novel strategies, the passphrase to my private key, Apple's plans for the next iPhone, the list goes on. There are valid reasons to want to keep information secret or retain ownership over certain information patterns that you have mined or generated at great cost to yourself, the same as if you bought or built a physical object at similar cost to yourself. Just because the end product is information instead of a thing, why should you not have rights?

[jimmygrapes]

You contract out the use of the wheelbarrow so that you are aware it is not accessible.

[tremon]

I think that's just an unfortunate consequence of overloading in the English language (and others, btw). One of the meanings of the word "property" is just "ownership" and has nothing to do with the physicality of the items under discussion. In Dutch, it's called intellectueel eigendom which translates as ownership, not property. When the Dutch "eigendom" refers to physical items, it's usually used in the plural (e.g. mijn eigendommen == my belongings).

[pitaj]

Yes, that was exactly what I meant. Intellectual property is not property, and is therefore not private property.

[kurikuri]

What about this is ‘Marxist?’

[pitaj]

The parent comment linked to "personal vs private property" on the page. The section specifically cites "socialist, Marxist, and most anarchist philosophies".

[scythe]

This is indeed a battle. One could even, by identifying patterns, refer to it as a "class struggle". But isn't it a little bit too telekinetic to suggest that the World Economic Forum is working to advance its ideology through Harley-Davidson?

What's happening is more like a lot of bugs trying to get into a box of food. The marketers and their lawyers have always used whatever tricks are at their disposal to sell one product and ship another, and if the latter is just a use license, so much the better. They don't need to be actively coordinated; their actions naturally support one another by damaging the box.

>The FTC also alleged that Harley-Davidson failed to fully disclose all of the terms of its warranty in a single document, requiring consumers to contact an authorized dealership for full details.

>By telling consumers their warranties will be voided if they choose third-party parts or repair services, the companies force consumers to use potentially more expensive options provided by the manufacturer. This violates the Warranty Act , which prohibits these clauses unless a manufacturer provides the required parts or services for free under the warranty or is granted an exception from the FTC.

The Warranty Act was enacted in 1975. This is not a new fight. It is an ongoing conflict that requires each generation to be engaged in defending the box and repairing it.

[unlikelymordant]

The whole "you will own nothing and be happy" was part of what amounted to a creative writing exercise by economics researchers on possible futures. Certainly not some guiding principle of the world economic forum.

[segfaultbuserr]

+1. I think it’s misinterpreted without context. The quote came from a thought experiment about an extrapolated and exaggerated version of the future based on current tendencies in society. In that universe, everything is provided as a service, SaaS-style, and gives no control to their customers. Other topics in the same presentation included "what if personal privacy becomes a luxury?", where most people accept the invasiveness of such services in exchange of convenience, and only a minority can even afford their alternatives in practice.

The authors were not saying it’s the society that the World Economic Forum should be working to create, just that it seems remotely possible, certainly not a plan for a conspiracy. Rather, it’s more similar to a fiction like The Brave New World... On second thought, regardless of whether you treat it as a fiction or as an actual conspiracy, you get the same message, so I’d say the thought experiment is successful in that aspect.

[userbinator]

Do you think it was a warning, in the same way as 1984? Perhaps if it came from the EFF, FSF, or similar groups I would think of it as such, but given who the WEF represents, I highly doubt that. It is as much a thought experiment as it is an invitation to advance the state of "Everything as a Service" rent-seeking among those in power. Their vision of utopia is our dystopia.

[unlikelymordant]

It wasnt written by the WEF or anyone who works for the WEF, the story was written by danish MP Ida Auken. The stated goal of the exercise was to provoke thought. Which Id say it has done.

[alexvoda]

The point segfaultbuserr and unlikelymordant are making and I support, is that the WEF is not a conspiracy.

Yes, it is in the interest of many owners of corporations that own IP to push for XaaS model, a rent everything model. And some of those may attend the WEF.

But the WEF is not a conspiratorial group. And that often quoted and misunderstood fragment is not some declaration of their values.

People like to hate the WEF, or Soros, or the illuminati, or whatever because it gives the enemy a face and it directs the anger.

The reality is that most of the things damaging humanity are not masterminded by someone or some group. They happen organically due to the various self-interests of individuals.

Edit: Just to make it extra clear.

The difference is not in the interestes of the members of a group. You will find wide agreement that wealthy and powerfull people are interested in getting even wealthier and even more powerfull. Or at the very least retain all of their priviledges.

The difference is that conspiracy theories presupppose that the group has a structure, that the group can coordinate. And by extension, that the group has a leader, which if only you could KO, all of the worlds problems would be solved.

The structure is not there. And even if you eliminate all the individuals designated as enemies by a conspiracy theory, the greed and the pride is still there and they will be replaced by others.

[segfaultbuserr]

> Do you think it was a warning, in the same way as 1984? [...] Their vision of utopia is our dystopia.

I think it was a neutral thought experiment, and you're free to make your own interpretation, it's neither an utopia nor a dystopia.

> It is as much a thought experiment as it is an invitation to advance the state of "Everything as a Service" rent-seeking among those in power

I don't disagree here.

[lelandfe]

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the...

"We asked experts from our Global Future Councils for their take on the world in 2030" is not much of a preface, if this was as purposefully exaggerated as you're saying.

[petre]

Isn't this something communists strived for? Common ownership of the means of production. It's interesting to see it in a capitalist context.

[glogla]

Communists strived for common ownership by a classless society. They believed the progress would be feudalism -> capitalism -> communism.

In this new vision, the billionaires own everything and others owning nothing - at which point they become serfs. It is a regression to feudalism.

[wongarsu]

If anything the means of production are even more owned by capitalists. A copy of Photoshop is arguably a mean of production, but where previously everyone owned their copy they now rent it from Adobe for a fee.

If anything, it's the logical continuation of the trends Marx saw.

[ratww]

Even under communism the collective ownership was for the "means of production", not for they call "personal property" aka "things you bought".

[drstewart]

>"You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF

And studies show the more stuff you own, the happier you are, so this is a direct attack on happiness. Experiences don't matter, stuff does.

[cptskippy]

> I fully agree that this is just one of the many battles in a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely. People call it a conspiracy theory but the trend is very clear to see, and has been accelerating for the past few decades.

I think the conspiracy theory is imagining a bunch of wealthy elites sitting around in a dark room Illuminati style discussing how they can turn everyone into serfs renting everything from them.

The reality is that our capitalist economy is very short sighted and wants quarterly profits and returns. Subscriptions provide predictable and constant income, you can tweak the later both by raising prices or increasing subscribers.

[trhway]

>a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely

well, according to Marxism that is a way to socialism :) And USSR was exactly it - a country of wage-slaves not owning anything and ruled by the elite.