@Night Ripper,
Thomas wrote:2) When artists cannot create art for money, they'll have to do other work to feed themselves. The time they spend doing this other work is lost for their production of art. These realities of life apply to genius artists as much as they apply to wannabes. In this sense, intellectual property rights can increase even the output of very good artists.
Night Ripper wrote:Again, so what? Bach found time. Botticelli found time.
Although I know nothing about Botticelli's biography, I'm pretty familiar with Bach's. Bach's intellectual production was almost entirely paid out of tax money. He spent virtually all his work life as an employee of various morarchical courts and state-established churches, who in turn raised their money through compulsury contributions from their citizenry.
As a utilitarian, I'd be quite happy with a 21st-century version of such an arrangement. Have government-financed universities develop pharmaceuticals and release their formulas for everybody in the world to copy. Have the National Endowment of the Arts---and its equivalents on the state and municipal levels---give tenured positions to outstanding artists, and make their output free for everyone else to copy.
To me as a utilitarian, the case for doing this is just another facet of the plain-vanilla, economics-101 case for the government providing public resources in general. But since you're a natural-rights man, and a much more hardcore libertarian than I am, I don't see how you could approve of reviving this option. Indeed, I don't see how you could approve of the monarchs and clerics who financed Bach this way. If you want a society that runs on private property and freedom of contract alone, you'll need
some level of intellectual property rights to make it work. Maybe a lower level than today's America has, but at least
some.
