Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Nope.
If you inherit a huge fortune you can just live your entire life on the interest, without ever lifting a finger.
How much labor is Paris Hilton doing?
You've just defined the idle rich.
They made money the old-fashioned way, they inherited it.
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The distinction is that the "idle rich" are not perceived as being able to control access to average individual's choices.
The fact that, say Paris Hilton, does nothing but sleep around, does not affect my ability to, say, raise petunias. Or at best only indirectly.
Copyright and patent
does affect the control access to individual choices. And that grates on many people.
If I buy a car, I can drive it or push it over a cliff. My choice, I bought it. Same for any physical item.
But I lose all my choices when I buy something copyrighted. I can do what I want to the physical wrapper (if it exists) but nothing to the information itself.
My choices, (which didn't exist 50 years ago), have been limited sharply.
Now, I can see benefit for limiting my choices for a period of time. It get me more information to access. But it should be limited.
The result is the economic equivalent of feudalism, with the copyright holders being the lords, and the consumers being the peasants. And the power (copyright) getting passed down to the next lord as inheretance. Just like countries used to be.
I don't believe in the Divine Right of Copyright....