| > I agree musicians aren't generally IP maximalists, but most musicians aren't generally capitalists either, so that doesn't say much. Songwriting etc seems like a very capitalistic enterprise to me. You evaluate the market then invest X hours making something that is then judged on the open market. This is very different from most people simply work for someone else. The parts of the music industry that’s IP maximalists on the other hand tend to simply buy existing IP rather than create it. They essentially face zero risk from infringing on others copyright because they aren’t creating anything. While that’s a form of investing there is several forms of investment in feudal society like making loans etc. Investing on it’s own doesn’t necessarily mean capitalist. > a society that abolishes private property I was suggesting it as a prerequisite rather than the only need. Obviously a communist society can enforce it’s laws without being capitalist. That said there are many online communities which promote creativity etc based on acknowledgement and social credit rather than ownership. I don’t know how you could end up with a stable capitalist post scarcity society without any form of private ownership, but it’s one of those things we don’t have any direct evidence for either way. Academia may actually be relevant model here. Mathematics isn’t owned by the individual who discovers it, but they still control and can invest in the means of production Aka themselves. Calling that capitalist doesn’t seem to fit, but it seems closer than the other options like socialism, anarchy, etc. Hopefully that’s taken as food for thought rather than just being a ridiculous argument. |
I see where you're coming from with many aspects similar to say, starting a business [0]. But why is the specific label "capitalist" appropriate for songwriting, rather than songwriting merely being compatible with capitalism? Or describing it with similar terms like marked-based, enterprising, or something else? Without having "ownership" of the song afterwards, then the only resulting capital would be "social capital" for their name/reputation. But the term social capital is a stretch, as it cannot be freely traded with someone else the way a property right can be.
Would a songwriter in the SU, NK, or China do something different such that their songwriting isn't capitalist? Would a songwriter writing a song for a king be capitalist? Or even market based? It would be a stretch to call pleasing just a king and his court "a market", or preparing for it as "investment". So we're down to just human interaction of "is this other person going to appreciate what I've done", which "capitalism" can't really take credit for as a prescriptive paradigm. (There is a difference between using an -ism for analyzing traditional cases through its lens, and using it as a prescriptive model for shaping society)
> I don’t know how you could end up with a stable capitalist post scarcity society without any form of private ownership
This seems like another statement of a fundamental characteristic of capitalism that I agree with, but which supports my initial comment. If capitalism requires private ownership, then doesn't it stand to reason that a society which is more capitalist has more types of private ownership?
> Academia may actually be relevant model here. Mathematics isn’t owned by the individual who discovers it, but they still control and can invest in the means of production Aka themselves. Calling that capitalist doesn’t seem to fit, but it seems closer than the other options like socialism, anarchy, etc.
But the workers own the means of production, and can't really part with it (unless mathematicians were chattel). To me, it seems quite close to the ideal envisioned by communism [1], where individuals have implicit bodily autonomy but the fruits of their labor are shared for all to use.
[0] I've long said the SV startup scene is directly modeled on the LA music biz.
[1] I haven't read Marx and I'm definitely not implying that communism in practice could live up to this ideal across many types of endeavors!