Name one (legitimate) business that doesn't rely on government enforcement at some point. If you think about it, you'll find that even subway buskers can operate with the confidence that their hat full of quarters and singles won't get stolen from under their noses. Stores everywhere allow prospective customers everywhere free, direct, and anonymous access to merchandise, confident that if any prove to be thieves, they can delivered into the hands of people with the legal right to inflict serious damage on their life prospects.
Given that not everyone is good, you'll find that "giving people (in general) a reason to buy" comes down to carrots for most and sticks for some. If you fail to get that balance right, your losses will drive you out of business.
Of course, society can't tolerate merchants who hunt down, attack, torture, maim, or kill transgressors. Nor can it tolerate the existence of crime syndicates that will handle this dirty work for a price (offered willingly or otherwise). So we've come to a pretty good arrangement where the labor involved in "giving people a reason to buy" gets divided between the private businessperson, who focuses on carrots like a more competitive product / service / price, and the State, which handles the stick.
Assuming that the State, in turn, remains generally accountable to the people, this arrangement works well. What doesn't work well is telling one group of producers "sorry bitches, but technology has changed and now you need to adapt" while glossing over the subtext that the "adaptation" you're referring to is the invention of a business model that's all carrots and no sticks. In a market where everyone else still gets the benefit of legal protection, this is both unique and unreasonable.
That doesn't mean IP businesses don't need to adapt at all, or that they should be given special consideration that retards the general progress of the arts and sciences. But how they do this depends largely on whether or not they receive legal support in situations where they are faced with jerks who refuse to pay.
>>Name one (legitimate) business that doesn't rely on government enforcement at some point.
That's not what he said. It's a matter of scale. Surely every company benefits from the government at some point. But some companies have their entire business model dependent on government aid. I'm not talking about having the government as a customer, mind you. I'm talking about companies that became monopolies only because their lobbyists convinced lawmakers to protect their businesses.
"I'm talking about companies that became monopolies only because their lobbyists convinced lawmakers to protect their businesses."
Don't be ridiculous. No American media company is, or is ever likely to become, a monopoly. What they depend on is a limited set of property rights in products they make or buy. That's very different from being a actual monopoly.
This is patently false, as "the concept of property" predates all governments.
Coming from an ex-communist country, comments like yours that assume property/life/liberty must be somehow graciously "granted" by the big brother make me sad.
The concept of "natural property" exists, it describes what you can personally secure, by any effective means (violence, intimidation, cunning, alliances...)
In the natural order, a predator who killed a prey loses it as soon as a bigger animal comes and takes it. Even before that, the prey who's been killed in the first place lost property on its carcass as soon as the first predator caught it. None of those had any "natural property right" on the carcass beyond its physical ability to secure it.
Property as we casually understand it (a right so effectively enforced that you can take it for granted, even if you don't have the personal means to defend it) is government-issued: it works because it's backed by the threat of government's violence, in the form of police then correction officers beating up most thieves into submission.
And there are ways to transfer property which are admitted as legitimate by the government; among those ways, some are bound to piss off some people. The definition of what kinds of transfers are legitimate is political, i.e. somewhat arbitrary.
So the concept of property not based on permanent mob violence does not predate governments.
I see what you mean. Only the size of the group that stands behind you when someone challenges your property is a matter of scale, not principle. Is it only you? Your immediate family? Pack? Your country? There's always someone with a bigger club...
I believe the GP simply meant that when you base your entire business on extortion (regardless of the group size perpetrating it, incl. governments), you shouldn't complain when another tentacle of the same machinery slaps you in the back.
