[moate]

>Why not do away with patents and IP altogether if the standard is that as soon as someone makes something needed it can be stolen?

laughs in anarchist don’t threaten me with a good time!

We also need to differentiate “theft” (actually taking a tangible thing) from “ripping off” (stealing an idea and making that thing yourself).

Theft is bad (depending in who you steal from and why), ripping off is only bad if you believe current economic models/practices are good. But

I’m only talking about conceptually since this doesn’t account for the consumer’s safety. In practice one downside to unregulated markets is they get exploited by bad actors for profit by making inferior products that harm consumers, unlike regulated markets that get exploited by bad actors for profit through regulatory capture.