[csallen]

Hilariously, half of the examples you cite are laws created/influenced/strengthened by incumbent businesses of the past with the explicit goal of reducing competition and making it difficult for new entrants to compete.

Let's take copyright law for example. Set aside the fact that the entire basis of copyright law is EXPLICITLY to give businesses a "monopoly," which is the exact opposite of competition. Your issue with AI is that they are violating or trying to change the meaning of copyright law? How do you square that with the past 250 years of history of businesses successfully lobbying to strengthen and change copyright law in order to protect their monopolies and weaken competition?

Or let's look into taxi laws. Where for decades taxi medallion owners and fleet operators in NYC lobbied to prevent the city from issuing new medallions.

You seem to believe that laws increase competition and that resisting/changing/lobbying against the laws is meant to decrease competition, which is plainly untrue. Often the exact opposite is true, which is the very definition of regulatory capture.

Capitalism is a system that seeks to benefit the common man by incentivizing profit-seekers to compete to create new innovations, to deliver goods faster/easier, and to lower prices. It also seeks to disincentivize profit-seeking through non-competitive means that don't benefit consumers, e.g. monopolies, oligarchies, regulatory capture, false advertising, etc.

[_DeadFred_]

Please follow HN etiquette and respond to my position not call it hilarious. Also sorry for the wall of text.

You ignored my point on copyright and 'what about'd your own as if that makes copyright law somehow not currently exist. Without copyright you would have market failure. Who will invest in Bob's business if Tom can just undercut him? Who would make a multi-million dollar movie in your world? Write text books? How can Bob start a business doing those things if he can't get investment? This is a BASIC premise of the modern economy. Modern society wouldn't exist, and historically western society (starting when first applied in the "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning" in the early 1700s) has understood and embraced it's benefit. Business can't build their business around ignoring the law and then say 'our business model won't work under the current law' and then benefit from first mover advantage because they started by making illegal moves. Capitalism is not anarchy, it works within frameworks and constraints, including the law. Rewarding lawbreakers with 'first mover advantage' or additionally in AIs case special new legal carvouts creates INCREDIBLY perverse incentives.

For NYC you are arguing that it's OK for businesses to ignore laws that impact them. I disagree, I don't believe capitalism is 'anarchy'. Capitalism MUST exist in a framework with government regulation, as classical capitalist philosophy points out. Again all you are saying is 'tech is above the law because I don't like the law' and 'breaking the law if it means profit is TRUE capitalism'. Business was free to push to change the law NYC. They are not free to just ignore the law. They should definitely not benefit from first mover advantage when they got to be first by breaking the law.

Please don't say what I believe, but instead respond on substance. I believe businesses should not build their business on ignoring the law, using BILLIONs in funding (which combined with business corporate legal protections shields them from consequences of breaking the law), in order to distort the market and force a carveout for themselves and give themselves an unfair first mover advantage. I don't think lawbreaking is competition or capitalism. I believe if a business created their market penetration through breaking the law that even if the law is changed after the fact that specific business should be banned from the carveout as they had an unfair/illegal first mover advantage versus those that followed the law. Your model encourages and rewards law breaking and unfair competition, not healthy competition/capitalist growth.

I seem to believe that we are a nation of laws, that capitalism exists with in constraints, on of which are laws, and that breaking laws that get in the way of billionaire founders wishing to exploit an industry segment isn't competition/capitalism. Breaking laws to get an unfair competitive and/or first mover advantage should be punished not rewarded, as to do otherwise creates horribly perverse incentives.

I notice you didn't point to a single legitimate/untarnished unicorn.

[csallen]

1. Capitalism

I think you are misunderstanding a fundamental part of capitalism and markets, which is leading you to incorrect conclusions.

You seem to be assuming that there are a limited number of business models out there, and that they need to be very specifically (and legally) identified and protected in order for the economy to thrive. Or how else could you come to the conclusion that the market would fail without copyright?

Not only is this not true, but it is exactly backwards. The precise opposite is true. There's an unlimited number of business models that are possible, and for the vast majority, government involvement and specific "protection" only serves to limit competition and thus innovation and to hurt the economy.

"Who will invest in Bob's business if Tom can just undercut him?" With this question, you neglect the obvious possibility that Bob simply will choose a business model that can't be easily undercut. The vast majority of business models do not rely on copyright law.

"Who would make a multi-million dollar movie in your world? Write text books?" This particular quote requires multiple responses:

(1) First of all, who cares? These are arbitrary business models, and it should not be up to you or me or the government to legislate them into existence. There are a billion trillion quadrillion business models that could theoretically exist that do not exist today, and the world is just fine. For example, imagine a world where you could copyright recipes, and the first person to make a pizza could make Pizza Inc., and they'd sell all the world's pizzas or license them out, and it would be illegal for anyone else to copy. And then I came along and said, "Hey, let's get rid of recipe copyrights." You would be sitting there saying the exact same thing, "@csallen, who is going to make Lasagna LLC or Salad Inc.? Who is going to invest in a huge recipe conglomerate if any tiny restaurant could just undercut them?" And I would give you the exact same response: who cares? We do not need some particular subset of business models to exist for the world to be okay, it is a failure of imagination to assume that particular business models that thrive in the current timeline are necessary or even ideal relative to what could be.

(2) It's arrogant for any of us to think we know so much about market dynamics that we can confidently predict that BusinessModelX cannot survive without CopyrightLawY. The entirety of the world's information exists online for free, and yet textbook companies still make money. You can get free online courses from MIT, yet colleges still make money. These things are easy to explain with the benefit of hindsight. But I bet you before the existence of the web in 1992, few experts would have predicted this to be the case. It's incredibly difficult to predict how market dynamics will play out because of the limitless ingenuity and creativity of the human mind multiplied by tens of millions of profit-seeking individuals trying to seek out an edge in the market. Even barring my "who cares, other alternative business models will pop up" argument, the idea that you or I know enough to have a top-down decree about what will happen to the economy if a particular business model disappears is incredibly unrealistic. The economy is formed in a bottom-up way, from trillions of individual actions made daily by consumers and businesses.

"Capitalism MUST exist in a framework with government regulation, as classical capitalist philosophy points out." This is one of the few points you made that I absolutely agree with, and that I think is fundamentally ignored by many supporters of capitalism, especially the libertarian types. Capitalism is essentially created by laws, and made possible by laws. I 100% agree. However, this brings me to the second part of my response to you.

2. Laws

I think you possess a fundamental misunderstanding of laws here as well, or at the very least, a severe difference in our attitudes and how we view the law.

Per my view, laws are imperfect. They are self-evidently imperfect. I can find any number of laws on the books right now that you yourself would agree should probably be broken because they are so ridiculous and in need of update, revision, or repeal that it would be unconscionable to actually follow or enforce them. Once you admit that even one such law exists, and yet remains on the books (and trust me, that number is much greater than 1), then it follows when and whether it is best to follow the law is a matter of subjective judgment. It is not a black-and-white issue.

Even our courts and legal systems believe this, and are organized around this principle. Laws can and have been thrown out as unjust or unconstitutional by the judicial branch, despite the fact that they were clearly violated. Laws can and have been ignored and unenforced by the executive branch and the forces it controls, despite situations where the law is clearly being violated.

Now, I am not an anarchist. I believe in the rule of law, and I believe that it makes life better. But again, it is completely subjective which subset of the law actually does so. And I don't think it's possible for any human to live without their actions agreeing with this, even if they ideologically pronounce a black-and-white stance.

Personally, when it comes to capitalism at least, the laws that matter to me are the laws that increase competition and that protect consumers. The entire goal is to incentivize people/companies to profit by competing, innovating, improving products/services/delivery, and lowering prices. And to outlaw every other form of profit seeking that doesn't benefit consumers (monopoly, collusion, bribery, sabotage, false advertising, regulatory capture, etc), in order to disincentivize companies from taking that path. In addition, there are regulations that exist to protect consumers and keep them safe. I'm a huge fan of this kind of law.

However, there are lots of unjust and poor laws that get put on the books, as I have already mentioned. Regulatory capture is a tremendous problem in a capitalist society: using the law to reduce competition for one's own benefit, at the expense of consumers, the market, the economy, and the country. This is not some rare, exceptional thing. It's a persistent problem that must be fought against. And the primary means by which unjust laws are fought and challenged is by breaking them (peacefully), and then taking things to court.

This is not anarchy. This is how the system was intentionally designed, and how it's been upheld.

So no, I don't subscribe to any sort of oversimplified black-and-white thinking about whether or not it is okay to break the law. Every case must be assessed and adjudicated on its own.

Personally, I don't care that much when Uber and Lyft deliver a product that people want, and it flies in the face of laws that were essentially written by the taxi lobbies. While there are exceptions (as I said, these things must be looked at on a case-by-case basis), I largely see those as unjust and anti-competitive laws, created in order to serve other corporate interests with millions or billions of dollars in backing.

While I agree with you that I don't particularly love the idea of companies using billions in funding to flaunt the law for their own benefit, I find it hard to understand why you are simultaneously so happy with companies using billions of dollars to write the law in a self-serving way. When these two forces go head-to-head, I will almost 100% side with whatever promotes competition and aligns with what consumers are demanding to pay for.

[_DeadFred_]

I am saying existing laws exist, businesses must be required to follow them or we create perverse incentive like the entirety of modern tech which 'optimizes' by breaking the law. I am saying any company that breaks the law to get it's 'first mover' position should lose that position.

I in no way championed rent seeking laws. You diverged into that discussion to what about my position. I simply stated that laws exist and ignoring them to gain an upper hand on your competition who follows the law isn't actually real competition, with the added position that copyright for the majority of modern western civilization was an understood compromise that benefits/has created modern society, modern capital markets, etc and therefore works in parallel to capitalism (capital markets don't work without copyright and patents except to fund thing like existing businesses such a bakers).

[csallen]

> * I in no way championed rent seeking laws *

You're simply saying "laws should be followed", and my retort is that different laws are different. You aren't really acknowledging that point, or any other points I made in defense of breaking some laws, and so our conversation has reached a standstill.

> (capital markets don't work without copyright and patents except to fund thing like existing businesses such a bakers)

I don't understand this point of view. Take software, for example. Websites have been copying each other's designs for ages, with minimal actual use of copyrights or patents. Almost no startup founder who creates a new web app is counting on defensibility coming from IP law. In fact, quite the opposite, the ethos is that whatever functionality and interfaces you develop will likely be copied by competitors, and that "moats" should come from things like a first-mover advantage, social features, brand loyalty, customer relationships, etc.

I'd say that, for the vast majority of business models that power the economy, it's obvious they could and would continue to exist without IP protection. Consulting, coaching, legal services, design agencies, marketplaces (e.g. eBay and Crisglist), social networks, online forums, SaaS tools, DTC brands, Amazon-like retail sites, food delivery, freight companies, logistic companies, live events, news coverage, platforms (eg. Shopify), restaurants, cafes, apparel companies, gyms, most apps, festivals and shows and live performances, etc. I could go on.

For those business models where it's not obvious, I'd still bet money that they would continue to thrive, and might simply take a different shape or require some creative pivots, rely on trade secrets, etc. Except to prevent bad actors and consumer abuse, the market does not need government simulation to inspire people to do business. And the vast majority of all profit models are discovered by creative individuals, not mandated by unnecessary laws.

IP law is largely just rent seeking created via regulatory capture by incumbents who stand to benefit from it. These incumbents have spent decades trying to convince the public that IP law is necessary for the economy (it isn't) and that it's also morally just because copying and riffing are identical to theft (they aren't).