[hellojesus]

> Copyright is bad like inheritance is bad.

How is inheritance bad? Imo, estate taxes are more immoral. Why should the state be allowed a cut of my private assets? Gift taxes are also immoral. Why should I have to pay taxes for giving away assets?

[Ekaros]

To me the giver paying taxes is wrong mindset. Maybe they should be collecting them. But paying taxes on earned money seems reasonable and has long history. It can be earned from work, or inheritance or gift. Actually maybe paying income tax on inheritance would be best.

[fc417fc802]

The argument is that taxes were already paid when the relevant work was performed. Transfers of ownership that don't involve work (ie economic activity) shouldn't be subject to government interference.

The obvious issue is that if you don't tax gifts it becomes far too easy for people to dodge taxes (or at least much more convoluted to enforce payment).

Inheritance is much more complicated and controversial. There's an argument to be made that it results in social ills if left unchecked, an argument that estate taxes fail rather spectacularly to address those ills, and an argument that the ills tend to be self righting given how easy it is to lose money. And probably several others.

[thedevilslawyer]

Why should we accept assets can be owned? Your life is a meaningless speck of time in eternity.

[TeMPOraL]

I suppose because we're wired this way. Can't think of any group or society that didn't have some notion of private property that wasn't just a huge (and brief) humanitarian tragedy.

[hammock]

Yes, private property enables human civilization, all the good and the bad. Before the agricultural revolution led to protected and exploited stores of grain, we were far smaller tribes of hunters and gatherers with far less technology

[hellojesus]

Those smaller tribes were continuously at war over resources... It's exactly the behavior we observe in nature whenever resource scarcity presents.

A world without private property leads to a world of pure lawlessness. Sure... We could do that, but it would quickly devolve into forever warfare where only might wins, and even that for only fleetingly small timeslices.

History's progression has proven that exploited workers still prefer to exist in that system vs one of continual peril.

[hellojesus]

My life, yes, but my genetic lifeline exists up to and including eternity if luck and good decision making are on the side of my generations of offspring.

Let's consider the most basic form of ownership: that over one's body. By your logic, my life is a spec on the eternal timeline, so why make it a crime to harm or murder my physically?

[Quarrelsome]

> Imo, estate taxes are more immoral. Why should the state be allowed a cut of my private assets?

To prevent family dynasties from building more and more economic power over time and threatening the state in the future due to the forces of compound interest. To be fair, most family dynasties don't do this, but others can wreck exceptional havoc just by wanting to, due to the generational power they've amassed. The damage they can do is further accelarated by them lacking understanding of how people without generational wealth live.

We already see this happening in our society as most media organisations are run by billionaires or multi-millionaires. News organisations are run less and less by journalists or normal people and the headlines are set more and more by people with very keen and niche vested interests.

This specific issue is being played out in real-time in the Murdoch succession as he attempts to leave the propaganda firm in the hands of his most idelogically similar successor. Yet the majority of his children see the world differently from their father and are challenging this. On one side we have natural break up and change occuring due to generational shifts, and on the other the strong desire of the ancestor wanting their legacy to remain unspoilt after their death.