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There's a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:
I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:
and my personal favorite:
As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:
etc etc.
Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."
Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?
To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.
Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?
If you're prepared to go in and steal scarves, why not steal from a self-checkout machine? The corporation is not going to miss the $20. But when everyone does it, stores close and we have to go back to cashiers rather than an efficient, human-free experience.
Why not just torrent games for free or get repacks? I'm not totally innocent on this but it's still bad to do even if I'm tempted to say 'oh well the marginal cost of distribution is zero and i probably wasn't going to buy it anyway'. When everyone does it, all we get is AAA slop catering to people too stupid to torrent.
Consequentialism should consider the long-term consequences of behaviours.
What kind of machines do they have where you live?
They replace one checkout worker manning a single line with that worker overseeing half a dozen self checkout lines.
It is enormously more efficient.
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I think copyright is state enabled thievery, actually. Art existed before it, and it will exist after it. In fact it is scandalous that I can't freely make, modify and distribute the myths of my people because they have been monopolized by a corporation using the State, or that I can't mod my games without people trying to stop me, all because of this farce.
I think you'll find that even under rule utilitarianism, it isn't justifiable in its current form.
Corporations do not own the copyrights for old works such as myths, traditional stories or even modern 19th century works.
You can make your own Little Mermaid story. Just don't copy Disney's distinctive cartoon styling. Don't draw her with red hair and a seashell bra, or the Disney corporation's lawyers will go after you. Just make up any other possible look and styling.
What stories did you grow up telling and being told? What characters did you and your friends pretend to be when they played? Sure some did come from the old books that have been elevated in the public domain. But most of them were not, were they?
I claim that you're being robbed of a natural part of the human experience in this way, and mostly to support rent seekers rather than the people who originated those stories.
It's been 50 years, you and I should be able to make our own Star Wars if we want, and it is insane that we can not. At the least it is insane that we won't be able to once Lucas is dead + 70 years because somebody paid money to buy an exclusive license to our collective experience.
Owning a 150 year old story is absurd. It's an unnatural privilege borne of proximity to power with not a shred of legitimacy, not to mention a State established monopoly. Whatever minute rules it administers itself with does not change this.
I took "myths of our people" a bit too literally. Sure, copyright lasts too long. As best I know partially the fault of the Disney Corporation. Death of author plus 70 years is excessive.
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Which is why you torrent triple a slop and pay for indies that deserve it. You shouldn't be pirating because you are poor, you can get games cheap easy enough, you should pirate because FUCK THE VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY. Burn that fucker to the ground and salt the earth behind you. Then Nintendo or whoever can start again, again.
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Physical good differ from digital goods that (barring Star Trek tech), you cannot multiply physical goods. If you take a scarf, the total number of scarf stays the same and somebody is short a scarf. With digital good, magical act of multiplication happens and there are more of them than before. Therefore, digital copyright infringement is never equal to stealing. It may still be wrong but it is definitely significantly less wrong than stealing.
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