Here's an idea I've been kicking around lately that I'm sure I'm not the first to consider, so maybe someone can predict the ways in which it will fail: what if, instead of imposing artificial scarcity and attempting to require before-use licensing on intellectual "property", we allowed free use of all IP and attempted to reward valuable contributions after use?
So a certain percentage of tax revenue could be distributed as awards for the creation of successful software, inventions, music, etc. There are a number of free variables in such a scheme: percentage of economy dedicated to such awards, measurement methods (observed use vs. voting) and weighting of importance (do you get more award for making music that rich people like?). I wonder if some choice of parameters wouldn't make this scheme an improvement over what we have now.
(I'm assuming capitalism remains for scarce goods)
While I'm hardly anti-government, I'm not too confident about its fairness. Who would take care of doing all the work of calculating that? And what happens if an author can't be reached - who takes that money?
Here in Portugal we have two supposedly non-profit associations (one for authors, other for performers) who are legally responsible for receiving the fees whenever a e.g. TV channel replays an old episode and then distributing them to the members, and they seem extremely corrupt.
Personally, I think we don't need any of that. People pay anyway, including the so-called "pirates", and they'd pay more if it weren't for stupid restrictions, like Netflix and Spotify not being available in many countries.
So a certain percentage of tax revenue could be distributed as awards for the creation of successful software, inventions, music, etc. There are a number of free variables in such a scheme: percentage of economy dedicated to such awards, measurement methods (observed use vs. voting) and weighting of importance (do you get more award for making music that rich people like?). I wonder if some choice of parameters wouldn't make this scheme an improvement over what we have now.
(I'm assuming capitalism remains for scarce goods)