Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

You actually can make an argument that top-end mass media producers (music, film...) are rent-extractors because they create a social equilibrium where everyone goes to see the thing that everyone else sees so they can talk to each other about it...

... so the private value to each viewer of the film/song/book exceeds the total social value (alternatively stated, each viewer contributes to the feeling-of-missing-out among non-viewers which is a negative externality) ...

To be fair, this is an accurate description of the world before the Industrial Revolution. So he's only about 200 years behind the times.

Harry Potter would have been better had it been written by proportional representative democratic vote.

Reminds me of Hitch’s claim that the only good book ever written by a committee was the King James Bible.

Right, let's choose the exceedingly rarest phenomenon to represent the class, essentially eliminating the ability to make generalized observations/commentary

For JK Rowling copyright would be the monopoly, no?

Naw, because books (or perhaps fantasy books) would be the industry, and her copyrights only cover her own works, and don't prevent others from competing. Copyright is too long, and imprisons culture, but isn't a monopoly and doesn't prevent competition.