Communism

Just wanted to vent about this topic for a bit, because this is something that annoys me to no end. You see so many people complain nowadays about how China "stole" something from the West, whether that's technology or just some idea for a product.

So many times this is just racism, but yes, there are times when Chinese manufacturers were very likely inspired by a Western design. So what? Let's even assume that they added nothing of their own to it and just took the idea as-is (which is not usually the case; as we have seen by now, imitation is only the first step; eventually China learns and starts to innovate and even advance ahead of the West).

Even in those extreme cases, either the original product was not made anywhere near as cheaply, or as efficiently, or maybe even mass produced at all. Let's say someone showcases online some artisanal design of something cool they made, but never tried or intended to mass produce, and some manufacturer (doesn't even have to be in China, can even be in a Western country) decides to take that design and mass produce it and sell it, did they really do something wrong?

Did they "steal" anything? As in physically take something away from the original creator that they now no longer possess? No. On the contrary, they worked out how to actually produce that design in a way that is commercially viable, and provided the world with a product that people would not have had if this manufacturer had not taken up that idea and actually made it a mass produced reality.

So where is the "crime"? What would have happened if the first hominid who discovered how to make fire told all the other hominids: "Hey, you're not allowed to make fires, this was my idea and if you use it for your own benefit, it's stealing!". How about the first inventor of the wheel? "No, no one else can make wheels, else you're stealing my design! Even if i decide not to make any more of them than this one prototype."

Why do so many people nowadays accept this argument, when all throughout human history this sort of behavior would have gotten you laughed out of the village? Humanity progresses by sharing knowledge, by imitating and copying other people's ideas. And if someone can implement your own idea better than you yourself can, why shouldn't they?

This isn't theft. "Intellectual property" is the real theft: theft from humanity. Holding back progress because you could have made money off of it first, or even just because your ego demands recognition, is that justified? Is that something that we as a society should accept?

This criticism of course extends even more so to the level of corporations which go absolutely crazy with hoarding patents and copyrights, often to things which they didn't even create but just "bought the rights" to (a crazy, absurd concept btw...i mean even if you believe the originator of an idea should have a special right, how can anyone believe that this right is something that can be bought and sold!?), even long past the point when they themselves are no longer using these IPs to make money. I call this is a crime against humanity.

Also, so-called "piracy" of digital media has nothing to do with actual piracy, which is actually physically taking something by force from someone else. You don't take anything from anyone when you copy a sequence of ones and zeros. The original sequence is still there, you didn't delete it, you just duplicated it.

One of the biggest psyops ever pulled on us as a society is convincing us that making copies of existing digital media is somehow equivalent to "theft".