• commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    11 months ago

    not the owners: the designers. what if I copy the bridge and put it in my front yard: do you think I owe royalties to the engineering firm?

    • shrugal@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Yes, of course. They created the design, it cost them time and money, you want to use it, so you should pay part of those costs. Or to put it differently: You both use the design, why should they be the ones to pay for its creation, and not you?

        • shrugal@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Who says you can only owe something if you take something away first?

          Think about how rent works. The building or appartement will still be there, loose value over time and need repairs whether you live there or not, yet you still owe the owner rent if you do.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            11 months ago

            your might owe under almost any circumstance, but almost all of them have to drop with a mutually agreed contract or transfer of property. what circumstance do you think created the debt here? and what if someone walks across my front yard bridge? do they owe the engineers too? it’s just silly.

            • shrugal@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              This is going into feasability and away from morality, but ok.

              The law is the “mutually agreed contract”, and the usage created the dept. You can be expected to know that the design of a bridge might be copyrighted, you can’t be expected to know that a bridge is private property and crossing it requires a fee. Ergo it’s on you to contact the owner of the design, and it’s on you to collect a fee from people using your bridge if that is what you want to do.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                11 months ago

                Ergo it’s on you to contact the owner of the design, and it’s on you to collect a fee from people using your bridge if that is what you want to do.

                why?

                • shrugal@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  Because of the sentence before the one you quoted. I’m sorry, but this is getting silly.

            • shrugal@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              No it’s not. Why should someone let you stay in a building they payed and/or worked for, without you paying for a share of the upkeep, repairs, insurance etc., and the fact that the building exists in the first place?!

              • adderaline@beehaw.org
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                11 months ago

                if you feel like rent as it currently exists even vaguely approximates the kind of model you claim you haven’t been paying attention. rent is, at its core, having other people pay for something because you own it. landlords are infamous for not paying for upkeep and repairs. the incentives behind owning property that other people live in lead to bad outcomes for people who can’t afford to own.

                • shrugal@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  I’m talking about rent in principle, not how it is often perverted today. You can make just about anything immoral if you add price gauging and not-fulfilling-contractual-obligations to it. There are a lot of rents with fair prices, e.g. almost everything that’s not housing, but also apartments from social housing or housing associations.

                  • adderaline@beehaw.org
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                    11 months ago

                    rent doesn’t exist in principle, it exists in practice. and in practice, the history of rent is a history of wealth extraction. if its “perverted” today, it definitely was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. if you aren’t aware, this is a pretty basic leftist thing. if property can be held privately, those who own the property can use that ownership to extract wealth from people who need water, food, and shelter, but do not themselves own property. they can use that extracted wealth to buy more property, depriving ever more people of places in which to live their lives without paying somebody else for the privilege. and so on. thus “private property is theft”.

                    in any case, rent isn’t an uncontroversial example of how to fairly pay people who do things. rent is deeply political, and has been for most of modern history. it isn’t just common sense that we ought to allow people who own things to make money off that ownership, that’s a political statement, and one that should require some justification, considering its material impact on poverty, homelessness, and the accumulation of wealth.