A holistic perspective on intellectual property, part 1

A philosophical exploration of property as a social construct, building toward a critique of intellectual property. Starting from first principles, the post examines how property rights emerge from social convention rather than natural law, how scarcity justifies property norms, and how these concepts extend from material goods to immaterial things like domain names and creative works. The author draws on Marxist labor theory of value to explain why intellectual property creates artificial scarcity to reward intellectual labor within a capitalist framework. This is part one of a planned four-part series, with future installments covering the modern IP regime, a critique and reform proposals, and implications for open source software and LLMs.