Yes. Absolutely we need to make rules! Stateless warlordism is not good for innovation. An otherwise decent state that did nothing to address the implications of the fact that innovation is costly but copying is not would be stagnant. 1/

But there are lots of ways to address those implications. We've become grandly proud and ideologically wedded to one approach, intellectual property "to benefit creators", which in practice is doing an increasingly poor job of that while extracting increasingly exorbitant rents. 2/

If we want to transition from this approach, we absolutely have to start adopting alternative, intentional, solutions. (@deanbaker13.bsky.social is very good on these.) Going laissez-faire (in a way most libertarians wouldn't recognize as laissez-faire) would not be sufficient. 3/

But the evidence grows ever stronger I think that the costs of our approach are very high, and we should be looking for better means of achieving (and hopefully surpassing) its benefits. /fin