> I challenge these people to examine the experiences that led them to make this choice
If you make a coffee table out of wood from a sustainable forest, does it belong to you? What causes it to become personal property?
If you make a coffee table out of code from a second life engine, does it belong to you? What causes it to not be personal property?
What if the coffee table you make in VR is made from "wood" tokenized on a blockchain that cost money to generate the electrons for?
Your examination concludes that things made from your invention and/or labor rendered in atoms are property, but from your invention and/or labor rendered in electrons are not? Or one form of labor has a right to earn a living, the other does not?
Until we achieve a post-scarcity world -- where life-time is included in scarcity -- that thinking seems both wishful and facile.
A coffee table made of wood can only be used by a couple people at a time,
and it can only be in one person's living room at a time.
There might be more than a couple people who want to use it,
and they might all want it in their living room.
These are conflicting desires.
To resolve this conflict, someone has to have the authority to decide
where the coffee table will go and who gets to use it.
The most natural choice is usually the person who made it,
although in some cases it might be someone else.
A coffee table made of code can be used by an infinite number of people
in an infinite number of virtual living rooms.
Everyone who wants to use it is able to,
and everyone can have one in their living room without conflict.
Since there is no conflict,
there is no need for anyone to decide its resolution.
These are all excellent epistemological questions.
> What causes it to not be personal property?
My baseline is that things are not property, so justifying the absence of property is a foreign concept to me. I'm curious why people would tend toward assuming property and then rationalizing away property in certain contexts. The assumption of property has consequences so enormous that I cannot authentically assume it as my default. Again, really interested to hear what made people chose that as their default.
If you make a coffee table out of wood from a sustainable forest, does it belong to you? What causes it to become personal property?
If you make a coffee table out of code from a second life engine, does it belong to you? What causes it to not be personal property?
What if the coffee table you make in VR is made from "wood" tokenized on a blockchain that cost money to generate the electrons for?
Your examination concludes that things made from your invention and/or labor rendered in atoms are property, but from your invention and/or labor rendered in electrons are not? Or one form of labor has a right to earn a living, the other does not?
Until we achieve a post-scarcity world -- where life-time is included in scarcity -- that thinking seems both wishful and facile.