Anti-work piracy is a political ideology that promotes an ethos of maximizing individual freedom in order to harness humanity’s innate ability and drive to create value. It centers on three core policies: (1) universal basic social services, (2) universal basic income, and (3) the relaxation of certain intellectual property laws.
In the following sections of this essay, each of these policies will be examined in detail. Each section will include (1) an explanation of why the general public tends to believe the policy is unnecessary, (2) an explanation of why the general public are mistaken, (3) explanations of why various criticisms of the policy are wrong, and (4) a summary reaffirming why the policy is both sound and beneficial.
No data will be provided to support the arguments in this essay. The intent of this essay is to tell the reader the truth, not to convince them of it. If the reader is skeptical of anything written in this essay, it will be up to them to determine why the author’s statements are true. (For example, if the author makes a statement such as “most people don’t think their Uber drivers are slaves,” it will be up to the reader to conduct a survey to confirm that this is indeed the sentiment of the populace.)
Upon reaching the end of this essay, assuming the reader has comprehended the arguments portrayed, they will most likely wish to join this movement and help bring about the moral, cultural, and technological advancement of the human race.
Most people believe that slavery is a thing of the past—a dark stain on human history that we have since overcome. To the extent that slavery is thought to exist today, it is seen as confined to the darker corners of our world (e.g., developing countries with insufficient labour laws, farms that illegally exploit foreign labourers, the sex trafficking industry, etc.). Most people believe that when a worker agrees to work, the work they perform is consensual. They believe that if a worker doesn’t want to work at their current job, that worker can quit their job and find a new job. People believe that anyone they see performing a job (e.g. a farm labourer, an over-night trucker, a stripper, etc.) has consented to doing that job. Very few people would consider their Uber drivers, for instance, to be slaves.
The general public believes that all of the work performed in the economy is already consensual. Therefore, they don’t see a need to provide all citizens with universal basic social services (e.g. food, shelter, healthcare, etc.) to ensure that all labour performed in the economy is not performed under the threat of starvation and homelessness.
An enlightened human species would understand that much of the labour performed in our economy resembles slavery. Labour that is performed under the threat of death or physical abuse would be considered slavery. Labour performed under the threats of starvation and homelessness should be viewed as equally coercive as what is traditionally thought of as “slavery.”
As an analogy to the consent to labour, consider sexual consent. At some point in human history, kidnapping and rape was a common form of mating. Sometime along humanity’s path toward modernity, it was determined that kidnapping and rape were unacceptable, and the concept of courtship was formed. Still, until quite recently, vestiges of the brutal, non-consensual history of human mating lived on. Views such as “She’s married to him, so she consented” or “She got drunk with him, so she consented” or “She went up to his hotel room, so she consented” were commonplace until only recently. Only in the last 100 years or so has humanity developed a morally sound understanding of what constitutes sexual consent. It is now understood that sexual consent must be continuous, explicitly stated, revocable at any time, and respected in all situations.
Similarly to how views on sexual consent have progressed, society is in need of an update to views regarding the consent to labour. It is now understood that labour should not be performed under the threat of death or physical abuse, yet labour performed under the threats of starvation and homelessness is seen as acceptable. For a labourer to truly consent to their work, they must be free from the threats of starvation and homelessness. If society offered free food and shelter, universally, to all citizens of a country, then all employment contracts in the economy would be free from the coercive threats of starvation and homelessness. This would make society more ethical.
Critics of this policy may argue, “The threats of starvation and homelessness exist in the state of nature, and therefore it is not the government’s responsibility to remove them. Even without government, humans would still need to work to secure food and shelter.” While this argument might hold in a world with unclaimed wilderness to which economic dissidents could be expelled, it fails in the modern world, where all land is owned. In the modern world, no citizen can truly “opt out” of the economy. If someone were to say, “I refuse to work,” society cannot reasonably respond, “Then go fend for yourself,” because there is nowhere left to go and fend for oneself. There is no wilderness to retreat to; every parcel of land is owned, privately or by the state. Homeless individuals who attempt to live outside the formal economy come closest to “opting out,” yet since law enforcement removes their makeshift shelters everywhere except in small, tolerated enclaves generally referred to as “slums”, their existence resembles life in a prison more than life in a wilderness.
A second argument that could be made against providing food and shelter universally to all citizens is that doing so would cause people to stop working, leading the economy to collapse. Ignoring the blatant disregard for human rights embedded in this statement—imagine a Southerner in 1800s U.S.A. saying, “But, who will pick the cotton fields!?” as an argument against abolition—there are three reasons why society would not collapse if free food and shelter were available to everyone.
Firstly, the extent of the social safety net provided by the government would depend on the overall productivity of the economy. In a hypothetical utopian future, in which there is abundance, it might well be feasible to provide every citizen with a home, a secondary residence, a vehicle, and sufficient disposable income for leisure, travel, and luxury goods. An economy as productive as that of a modern day G7 country can support a more modest basic standard of living for all citizens: housing in a boarding-style arrangement (a private bedroom with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities), access to basic sustenance (rather than restaurant meals or specialty products), and essential healthcare (limited to matters of health, life, and death, rather than cosmetic or elective procedures). Even in the absence of the threats of starvation or homelessness, there would remain substantial motivation for individuals to work. Workers would be motivated to obtain superior housing, dine out, enjoy entertainment, acquire new gadgets, or travel. A social safety net like the one proposed would eliminate only the most exploitative forms of employment currently present in the economy. Any resulting loss in productivity (or increase in prices) due to the loss of this source of cheap labor would be a cost that a morally conscientious society should be willing to accept.
The second reason society would not collapse if basic food and shelter were universally provided is that much of the work currently performed in the economy is unnecessary. The concept of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has conditioned people to view it as the sole measure of material well-being, when in fact it is a narrow and often misleading metric. To illustrate this, imagine two birthday celebrations: one hosted by Jenny and another by Jamie. Jenny’s celebration involves dinner at a restaurant, a concert, and a visit to a spa. This event contributes significantly to GDP—attendees collectively spend thousands of dollars on services that employ numerous workers (chefs, waitstaff, bartenders, bouncers, stagehands, cleaners, etc.). Jamie, by contrast, invites everyone to a backyard barbecue, where her friend (a musician) performs a few songs. Afterward, guests visit another friend’s backyard to enjoy a cedar sauna. Although both celebrations offer comparable enjoyment, Jenny’s party is a significant boost to GDP, while Jamie’s is not. But is it really such a bad thing to live in a world with more birthday celebrations like Jamie’s? This example illustrates that much of the labour driving GDP growth does not meaningfully enhance human well-being. Many forms of unpaid or informal labour—which people would have more time to perform if they were not compelled to work for food and shelter—are just as socially valuable as their paid counterparts, even if they are not captured by market transactions. Children caring for their aging parents is no less valuable than healthcare workers doing the same. Mothers raising their children are no less valuable than nannies raising children. If implementing universal basic services means some restaurants could no longer find low-paid servers to exploit, customers could simply retrieve their own food, as they already do in food courts. If homeowners could no longer find cleaners to exploit, they could clean their homes themselves, have their children help, or downsize to a more manageable space. As for low-paying but essential jobs, such as agricultural labour, the solution is simple: pay these workers fairly! If this leads to higher prices for food or other goods, then so be it. Perhaps the convenience of a cheap, fast-food burrito is not worth the deep exploitation that makes it possible.
The last point to consider for why society would not collapse if food and shelter were universally provided is that an economy with this social safety net would allow citizens to engage in projects that improve collective well-being, offsetting any loss of productivity from currently-exploited workers ceasing their labour (though, this “productivity” would not be recorded as part of GDP). With basic needs secured, people would have time to pursue meaningful and creative work that raises the standard of living for all. It's a tragedy that humans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into thinking that they are naturally lazy, gluttonous, addicts who would gamble, do drugs, watch porn, scroll on their phones and play video games all day if they weren't forced to work. The truth is that these vices are often coping mechanisms for the despair produced by poverty and unfulfilling, forced labour. In truth, humans are inherently motivated to create and contribute; nearly everyone knows someone who enjoys knitting, gardening, painting, hosting parties, woodworking, or coaching sports—not for profit but for satisfaction. That people rarely engage in such fulfilling pursuits stems not from apathy but from the exhaustion and time scarcity imposed by wage labour. Freed from the need to work for survival, individuals would not become idle but would redirect their efforts toward valuable projects. This shift would constitute a genuinely democratic and ethical allocation of labour, as the labourers themselves would decide how to invest their time and energy—rather than being directed by capital allocators. Currently, to start a business one must raise capital from banks, venture capitalists, or governments. Imagine if, instead, one could simply pitch an idea—say, building a community garden—directly to labour. Universal food and shelter would make this possible, liberating society from the yoke of traditional capital allocators (i.e. banks, venture capitalists, and governments) and leading to more ethical—and possibly even better, in general—allocation of capital.
In summary, governments should provide all citizens with universal basic social services (e.g. food, shelter, healthcare, etc.) in order to ensure that employment contracts are consensual. It is the responsibility of the government to provide these universal basic social services because the government enforces property laws that remove the option for citizens to naturally procure food and shelter from the land. Society would not collapse if there was a universal social safety net because (1) the level of the social safety net would be low enough to incentivize work, (2) a lot of the work that would no longer be done is not important, and (3) people with extra free time would be productive in ways that raise the standard of living for everyone.
The general understanding of how the economy functions is that capital is allocated by free market demand, which is perceived to be a somewhat democratic process. In an election, each citizen has one vote, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. The economy is thought to operate in a similar manner, but with people “voting with their wallets.” For instance, imagine two neighbouring businesses—a pizza restaurant and a sushi restaurant. If the pizza restaurant is highly profitable while the sushi restaurant is not, it’s more likely that a new entrepreneur will open another pizza restaurant nearby, rather than another sushi restaurant. In this way, consumers collectively “speak with their wallets,” signalling their preference for a new pizza restaurant over a new sushi restaurant. While this process is not perfectly democratic—it may be the case that more people prefer sushi, but wealthier individuals, who dine out more often, cast more “votes” for pizza—the decision to favour another pizza restaurant over a sushi restaurant is nonetheless viewed as community-driven. It is thought of as being somewhat democratic.
Firstly, the immense gap between the wealth of the rich and the poor means that our free market is completely undemocratic. The wealthiest 1% of households in the USA own ~30% of the country’s wealth. In fact—thinking back to the pizza vs. sushi example in the previous paragraph—total money spent on food-away-from-home in all of the USA is only 3X the total wealth of the richest man in the USA. That means that the richest man in the USA (a country with a population of over 300 million) could cast 1/3 of the “votes” that determine which restaurants succeed (if he wanted to).
Another way to consider the undemocratic nature of capital allocation via free market demand is with this following thought experiment. Imagine a neighbourhood of 100 residents situated on an island. All inhabitants earn their income through remote work. The island has space for only one restaurant located at the center of town. The entrepreneur planning to establish this restaurant conducts market research and discovers that 99 of the residents prefer pizza over sushi. These individuals are each willing to spend $100 per month on pizza but only $50 per month on sushi. At first glance, it might seem obvious that the entrepreneur should open a pizza restaurant. However, one resident is significantly wealthier than all the others combined and has a strong preference for sushi. This individual would be willing to spend $10,000 per month on sushi and only $1,000 per month on pizza. Assuming that pizza and sushi restaurants have identical costs, the entrepreneur would rationally choose to open the sushi restaurant, earning $14,950 per month instead of $10,900. This disproportionately weighted “voting power” of a single affluent individual, though exaggerated for illustration, reflects the real world more closely than one might assume. The free market is not a place where citizens “vote with their wallets.” It’s a place in which a minority of very rich people allocate resources as they see fit. It’s essentially a dictatorship of the wealthy consumers.Technologies such as AI, space travel, weapons, anti-aging pharmaceuticals, and electric vehicles receive funding not because the general public demands them, but because the wealthy consumers (and governments) controlling vast concentrations of capital determine that these are the areas where resources should be directed.
The second point to consider when evaluating why free market capital allocation in the current economy in no way resembles a democratic process in which citizens “vote with their wallets” is that—wealth disparity of consumers aside—much of the capital deployed by capital allocators is not even pursuing profit in the first place. Consider, for example, the production of a Hollywood film. Every year, Hollywood produces hundreds of films that receive theatrical releases. Most people believe that producers—motivated by profit—allocate resources toward films that will deliver a safe and/or high return on their investment. While it’s true that producers do consider a potential film’s expected profitability, it’s also true that—out of the millions of potentially profitable films that could be made in a given year—producers only have the capital to fund a handful of them. As a result, various decision criteria that could be thought of as “arbitrary” end up determining which films get made. In addition to a film’s expected profitability, decisions about which projects receive funding may reflect the producer’s personal preferences, such as: which actors or directors the producer likes, which messages (e.g. religious, political, etc.) resonate with them, what subject matter their children happen to be interested in, or even which film’s setting aligns with a vacation they’d like to take. Even if no selfish intent is involved, the simple fact that producers must choose among the countless potentially successful projects means that it’s the whims of capital allocators, not consumers, that determine which films get made. It’s true that if a particular film generates overwhelming audience response, studios may respond by allocating future capital toward similar projects. But for the most part, moviegoers simply consume what is offered to them. On any given weekend, there are only a dozen or so films that capital allocators have decided to put in theaters, and consumers choose among those. There is no way of knowing how successful the countless unproduced films might have been.
The phenomenon described above is not unique to the film industry—it occurs in every industry. Take grocery stores, for example. Customers may have their personal preferences for one brand over another, but ultimately they will buy what is available at the store nearest to where they live. If a customer prefers Brand A frozen pizzas but the store next to them only carries Brand B, that customer will end up buying Brand B. Consumer packaged goods companies understand this, which is why they are willing to pay for premium shelf placement, positioning their products in small shelves or fridges near the checkout rather than deeper in the aisles. Although we like to imagine that any mom-and-pop salad dressing company, for example, can get its product on a grocery store shelf and have a chance to compete, fairly, with larger companies, the reality is different. Supermarket buyers act as gatekeepers for new food brands. If the buyers at these oligopolistic supermarket chains don’t choose to buy a certain product in bulk, that product never reaches shelves, and customers will never have the chance to buy (i.e. “vote for”) that product in the marketplace. Even if these buyers are not corrupt (i.e. even if they’re not favouring brands owned by people they know), the fact remains that they can only select a limited number of items for logistical reasons. As a result, their inherently subjective decisions determine which salad dressings get the opportunity to succeed or fail.
Probably the most egregious example of capital allocators arbitrarily (or corruptly) distributing resources rather than responding to market forces occurs in the job market. Consider a newly founded furniture company. After a successful first year, each employee of this company asks for a raise. How does the CEO decide which employees were responsible for the company’s success and therefore deserve a raise? Was the company’s success due to the furniture designer, whose beautiful designs attracted customers? The marketer, who got the brand’s name out into the world? The web developer, who created a seamless online shopping experience? The sales team, who guided customers on the floor and over the phone? The truth is that CEOs—the capital allocators—do not actually know the answers to these questions. They make subjective decisions about who they believe contributed most to the company’s success, and they pay those employees more while paying others less, often without solid evidence. A traditional economist might argue, “Companies always want to pay as little as possible, and therefore the market determines the compensation for each role.” But this view is oversimplified to the point of being inaccurate. Every role at the furniture company can be filled by either a novice (for low pay) or a veteran (for high pay). Likewise, roles can be expanded or contracted to justify a certain level of compensation. For example, the CEO could hire a digital marketer who understands every new technology and manages complex ad campaigns, or they could hire someone who simply posts monthly social media ads. What ultimately determines whether the CEO keeps the furniture designer who wants a raise or replaces the marketer with a cheaper intern? In practice, this is a largely arbitrary decision. The traditional economist might reply, “Even if this furniture CEO made random decisions about which employees to pay more/less, firms that make good labor-allocation decisions will succeed over time, and those that make bad decisions will fail.” But this ignores the reality that the economy is filled with companies that are constantly starting up, shutting down, succeeding, failing, or experiencing turnover so rapidly that they essentially become a new organization every few years. These ever-changing firms are the ones hiring real workers. At any given moment, CEOs are making near-random decisions about who they believe is responsible for the company’s success, and therefore who deserves to be paid more. The decision-makers at these companies think they’re responsibly allocating labour capital to maximize profit, but in reality, they are often assigning compensation randomly.
Capital allocation should be more democratic for the same reason society values democracy in general. People don’t want to live under a dictatorship—they want freedom. People don’t want the production of goods and services in the economy to be determined by a small group of wealthy consumers or by capital allocators who have little interest in the public’s wants/needs. People want to have a voice in what products and services the economy produces.
Universal basic income (UBI) would promote more democratic capital allocation from both the consumption and production sides of the economy. On the consumption side, UBI would put more money (i.e. “votes”) into more hands, allowing more people to direct capital toward what they want the economy to produce. On the production side, UBI would provide greater optionality for entrepreneurs seeking to start businesses by reducing their reliance on traditional capital allocators (i.e., banks, venture capitalists, and governments).
In the following example, which explains how UBI would promote democratic capital allocation via the consumption side of the economy, consider a UBI funded by a sales tax or value-added tax (VAT). This version of UBI is essentially a wealth transfer from the highest spenders to the lowest spenders, with average spenders coming out roughly unchanged. (UBI could be made even more progressive by exempting necessities such as groceries from the tax, and by increasing the tax on luxury items like watches and yachts.) In this imagined economy, there may be many low-income individuals who decide to buy a bicycle now that UBI has provided them with a bit of extra money. If enough people begin buying bicycles, bicycle manufacturers will see the uptick in demand and begin to expand production capacity. At the same time, a wealthy individual might decide not to purchase a private jet because the additional sales tax or VAT would push it out of their budget. In this scenario, UBI would have the downstream effect of directing more aluminum toward the production of bicycles rather than private jets. (Though, it could also be the case that the private jet is still manufactured, but UBI enables otherwise idle aluminum and labour to be directed toward bicycle production. This argument, however—that real resource constraints, rather than dollars, are the true limit on economic production—is beyond the scope of this essay.)
On the production side of the economy, UBI would promote democratic capital allocation by giving entrepreneurs greater opportunity to invest in themselves, rather than requiring them to persuade gatekeepers—such as banks, venture capitalists, or government program administrators—to provide funding. Imagine an economy in which ten artists could pool resources to fund their own gallery; five chefs could collectively open a restaurant; four landscapers could jointly purchase a truck and equipment to start a company; or a couple with an idea for a new food cart could finance it themselves. This freedom to launch businesses without needing approval from gatekeepers would unlock substantial latent human potential. The current economy is inefficient insofar as it often requires entrepreneurs to secure approval from intermediaries who may lack both the incentives and the informational advantages necessary to evaluate novel ideas. Individuals with strong business ideas should not have to convince a bank, the government, or venture capitalists to allow them to realize their visions. Instead, the economy should give these individuals the ability to act directly. It should allow builders to build, coders to code, artists to make art, etc.
The short answer to the question, “How could we possibly have a UBI without causing massive inflation?” is that UBI can be implemented in a way that does not increase aggregate nominal demand. People who fear that UBI would lead to inflation often imagine the government printing new money and distributing it for free. A more conservative approach (from the perspective of inflation control) would be to fund UBI through a sales tax or VAT. This implementation could be made even more progressive (if that is the desire of the population) by eliminating necessities like groceries from the sales tax or VAT. Under this implementation, total spending on goods and services in the economy would not increase; rather, there would be a shift in who controls that spending power. In effect, this form of UBI would function as a transfer of wealth from high spenders to low spenders. One way to understand this is by analogy to tipping in restaurants. A tip is a transfer of spending power from the customer to the server. If tipping were not customary, a person who normally tips 20 percent could theoretically afford to dine out one additional time for every five meals they consume. So, instead of the customer eating that extra meal, that money is used by the server on whatever goods and/or services they wish to purchase. UBI could operate similarly: high spenders would, in effect, be “tipping” lower spenders through the sales tax or VAT, enabling poorer people to purchase more goods and services, while high spenders would have correspondingly less discretionary income. Average spenders would break even, as the amount they pay in consumption taxes would roughly equal the UBI they receive. (It is important to note that this implementation of UBI minimizes inflationary risk but is not necessarily the most politically feasible approach. Many people struggle to understand how the combination of a universal payment and a consumption tax redistributes wealth, and therefore may not recognize that this structure would primarily shift resources away from the richest members of the economy, rather than impose broad-based costs.)
More broadly though, it’s important to point out that the question “How could we possibly have a UBI without causing massive inflation?” is a loaded one that implicitly reinforces a status quo that is detrimental to society. Concerns about inflation are typically framed as fears of government spending outpacing real productive capacity—essentially, an excess of nominal demand chasing the same amount of goods and services. However, price increases arise from many mechanisms beyond aggregate nominal demand expansion. Monopoly power, for example, is a significant and often under-discussed source of price inflation. When firms operate as monopolies or cartels, they can engage in monopoly pricing—a phenomenon sometimes described colloquially as “greedflation.” Despite its prevalence, this form of price inflation is rarely emphasized in political discourse. Numerous sectors exhibit concentrated market power, including professional licensing bodies that function as cartels and highly consolidated industries such as eyewear manufacturing. Another major driver of inflation, particularly in housing, is bank lending. Commercial banks are granted the legal ability to create money through credit issuance, and mortgage lending injects large amounts of nominal demand into real estate markets. Unlike business loans, which are constrained by the borrower’s ability to generate profits, mortgages are secured by assets that can be resold to new buyers, often financed by additional mortgage credit. This structure allows housing debt to be perpetuated even when individual borrowers fail, contributing to persistent upward pressure on housing prices in a manner that closely resembles a pyramid scheme. Given these realities, it’s unclear why the burden is placed on UBI proponents to demonstrate complete immunity from inflationary effects, while far more significant and demonstrably inflationary mechanisms—monopoly pricing and bank mortgage lending—remain largely unaddressed by policymakers. Governments should first confront the structural drivers of housing inflation and monopoly pricing before focusing on the hypothetical inflationary risks of UBI.
Lastly, it’s important to note that many of the benefits of UBI would not be captured by GDP (e.g., dinner parties and barbecues at friends’ and family members’ homes, blankets and cabinets made by hobbyists, art and performances created by amateur artists, applications developed by open-source contributors, etc.). As a result, comparing inflation in a UBI economy to inflation in a non-UBI economy is inherently unfair. If, for example, the price of food were to increase by ~10% due to UBI, the additional dinner parties, barbecues, furniture, art, performances, web applications, and sports programs consumed in a UBI society would still be free. If these outputs were included in GDP, overall inflation would likely be lower. In other words, who is better off: someone who pays ~10% more for groceries but receives many other goods and services at no cost, or someone who has cheaper groceries but must pay significant amounts for those same goods and services because no one has the time to produce them for free without UBI?
In summary, governments need to provide some level of UBI—in addition to any universal basic social services provided—to ensure that all citizens have a meaningful say in the capital allocation process. This would make capital allocation more democratic via both the demand side (by increasing individuals’ purchasing power and thus their ability to “vote with their wallets”) and on the supply side (by giving aspiring small business owners the option to self-fund their ventures). UBI would not necessarily cause inflation if implemented in a conservative manner, such as via funding from a sales tax or VAT. Even if UBI did contribute to inflation, however, there is little justification for policymakers to prioritize UBI-related inflation over more significant drivers of price increases, such as monopoly power or bank mortgage lending. Moreover, it would be unfair to monitor UBI’s impact on inflation or GDP without accounting for the many social and economic benefits it provides that are not captured by these measures.
The general public believes that the incentive of owning intellectual property rights over one’s innovations is what motivates people to innovate. They believe that, if there were no payoff in the form of a complete monopoly over the future production enabled by an innovation, there would be no motivation to innovate at all. As outlined in the opening section of this essay, the general public believes that: no one would develop new pharmaceuticals if they couldn’t get rich from the patents on those pharmaceuticals, no one would build a web application if they couldn’t get rich from the ownership of that application, no one would write a song if they couldn’t get rich from the copyright of that song. The general public does not see humans as intrinsically innovative or curious. Instead, it assumes that people are lazy, gluttonous, and unproductive—and that without the promise of potential monopoly-derived wealth, no one would be motivated to invent anything.
There are three main types of intellectual property: copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Trademarks differ from the other two in that they serve the interests of consumers. For example, it is important that consumers can trust that the medicine they purchase comes from a reputable manufacturer. Consumers who choose to buy from ethical clothing brands should be able to trust that the T-shirt they purchase was in fact produced by a company that has been third-party verified to avoid environmental harm or worker exploitation. It’s important that a parent buying a children’s book knows that the book comes from a reputable publisher that specializes in safe, age-appropriate content. For these reasons, enforcing trademark laws is important. Copyrights and patents, however—while beneficial to intellectual property owners—do not benefit society at large. Society doesn’t need copyright and patent laws.
The reason society does not need copyrights or patents is that humans are a naturally innovative species. Humans are naturally innovative because a significant portion of the population possess a natural predilection toward innovation—the inventors, engineers, scientists, builders, and artists. These individuals do not require external incentives to innovate. What they do require are the means to innovate—namely, access to capital and resources that allow their ideas to be developed and deployed. Claiming that a person with a disposition toward innovation would not innovate without copyrights or patents is akin to claiming that no mother would give birth to a child unless she were entitled to a percentage of that child’s future earnings; it’s an absurd proposition.
Copyrights and patents exist not because these laws are needed to foster innovation, but because capital in our current economic system tends to be allocated by people of a miserly disposition who demand ownership and monopoly rights in exchange for their funding. These actors are motivated by the accumulation of wealth and power rather than by the act of creation itself. Intellectual property rights primarily serve the interests of these empowered capital allocators, not the inventors, engineers, scientists, builders, and artists who actually perform the innovative labour. This is to say that, it is not the innovation creators who are rewarded by copyrights and patents, but the capital allocators who allocate capital towards the innovation.
If society did not rely on miserly capital allocators—who demand intellectual property rights as a condition for funding innovation—where would the resources for large-scale projects come from? The answer is governments, universities, and not-for-profit institutions. Governments have a mandate to improve the lives of their citizens and would therefore be incentivized to fund innovation that serves the public good. Universities would support innovation to enhance their prestige, attract top students, and ultimately justify higher tuition. Not-for-profit organizations would fund innovation if doing so advances their founding missions. Society does not need miserly capitalists to drive innovation. Innovation can be funded through governments, universities, and not-for-profits—and, to a lesser extent, through crowd-funding enabled by UBI.
Copyrights and patents are not only unnecessary; they actively harm innovation. Rather than encouraging creativity, they suppress it by restricting the free exchange of ideas. Innovation thrives when humans can share, copy, and iterate on existing work. This process of cumulative improvement is how technological progress has always occurred. Consider the most significant technological investment of the past decade: large language models. These systems were built by learning from vast amounts of existing information, much of it having been supposed to be protected by copyright. The most transformative innovation before that was the internet itself—another technology that enabled widespread illegal copying, remixing, and distribution of information. Relaxing intellectual property laws surrounding copyright and patents would usher in a new golden age of creativity, innovation, and competition, resulting in rapid technological and cultural advancement and lower prices for consumers. While this shift would reduce the ability of some miserly individuals to extract passive income through ownership alone, the broader benefit to society would be substantial. There is no shortage of creative and innovative humans ready to build, compete, and lead society into the next golden age of technology and art, and society should let them do just that.
Forms of intellectual property law that hamper creative and technological innovation (copyright and patents) should be relaxed so that entrepreneurs and artists can thrive. The innovation that society would reap from giving freedom to the natural-born inventors, engineers, scientists, builders, and artists—who are currently checkmated by oppressive intellectual property laws—would vastly outweigh the measly crumbs of innovation we are afforded by the capital allocation of the natural-born misers who fund innovation only as a means to secure personal wealth.
That’s it! Hopefully this essay has provided the reader with enough information to have a good understanding of why society needs to implement: (1) universal basic social services, (2) universal basic income, and (3) the relaxation of certain intellectual property laws to help bring about the moral, cultural, and technological advancement of the human race. Hopefully the reader now considers themself an “anti-work pirate”.
If you would like to contact the author for any reason, please send an email to: antiworkpirateparty@gmail.com.