if none of this hypothetical situation creates for you a moral or ethical dilemma, then we have nothing further to discuss. i say so without a trace of sarcasm or ill-will or judgment of your character. your position would be free market libertarianism; mine would be regulated market conservativism. your position implies complete freedom; my position implies the concept of personal restraint, really noblesse oblige (applied to the economically advantaged). we would simply agree to disagree.
if my argument continues to seem ridiculous to you, then you can simply ignore it, sorry.
I think it's worthy of discussion, because it is a position that is hasn't a logical basis. I do not mean that personally - I'm attacking the argument, not you.
If it were true that by giving away a photograph, a person was damaging a working photographer, then it would also be true for any other profession; it would not just apply to photography.
Therefore, if I change the oil in a friend's car, I'm putting a mechanic out of business. If I cook a meal for my neighbors, I'm damaging restaurants. This is the same logic here - by providing ANY good or service for free that others charge for, I am competing with them in a way that they cannot match; free versus cost.
And as I have previously stated, my very employment would consist of performing what could only be considered a societal ill - making software that allows fewer humans to be employed to do a particular job, or making equipment last longer and require less service, and so on.
The fact is that most of us do not, by the simple act of living, damage the careers and livelihoods of those around us. But the logic you use, if true, is inescapable; nearly every act we perform that could be done by another for a fee is damaging to them.
I would be willing to bet that there are those chefs who bemoan the Food Channel, for teaching people to create gourmet meals themselves. Those who are angry at HGTV for showing people how to hang their own drywall. In both cases, not only might people be doing work for themselves, but they might choose to give away their new-found expertise to help friends and neighbors, who then do not have to hire a professional.
What of the person who gets their daily news from the Internet now, and does not subscribe to a newspaper any longer? Are they taking food off the table of reporters and photographers and editors and printers? Are we morally obligated to have a care for the survival of the New York Times or the local daily newspaper, be it ever so humble?
Changing times and changing technology creates new opportunities for employment at the same time that it makes it harder to compete for other professions. Daily milk delivery trucks just are not on the street in the numbers they once were - clearly the fault of supermarkets. Those same supermarkets, by the way, were the bane of the corner grocery. I believe Stuckeys put local mom-and-pop highway restaurants in jeopardy, until they themselves were overcome by the ubiquitous McDonalds and Burger Kings. All of these things, while at times not pleasant and certainly unhappy for those whose livelihoods are lost, are perfectly normal and do not have a moral component to them.
Your state that your position is 'regulated market conservatism', but in truth, it's anti-competitive. It seeks stasis in free markets which by nature do not do well with stasis. It says that what exists at a particular time and place is what is desired, and we'll lock it in place and not allow change. That would be difficult-to-impossible to actually accomplish, first, and second, I don't think you have thought it through to imagine what the result would be - a country that essentially stops innovating, stops changing, and stops advancing. The technology we have at that point is the technology we keep from then on. Of course, the world outside would not be bound by the same rules, and would soon overcome us economically, while we protect what would be the economic equivalent of a Potemkin Village on a national scale.
New technologies bring new challenges as well as new opportunities. Speaking specifically of photographers, it brings new potential markets for sales, at the same time that it brings increased competition. Photographers cannot simply hang a sign and expect a reasonable flow of business anymore; I have a friend who is a high school senior photographer (she does other work too) and she's constantly having to innovate, be fresh, be bold, be new; because she's competing with others who are found on the web and are willing to travel to compete for her local business, and if the prospective clients like the competition's stuff better, she loses. She has to compete with their prices. She has to have a red-hot website. She has to be flexible and work to new client demands that didn't exist ten years ago in high school senior photography.
She's adapting and surviving - she's actually doing really well. I believe that her success comes from having a superior product and presenting it very well to the marketplace.
That's the nature of the world. Things change constantly, and there is no protection or shelter for those who cannot adapt, or whose professions become obsolete because they want to work in a way that the market will no longer support.
This is not just a political opinion that supports a theory, this is how things actually work in practice. We both observe the same conditions and seem to be reporting them accurately. The difference is that I see no reason to attempt to modify the marketplace (via regulation or well-motivated personal desire) to suit a particular individual or profession, and you think that would be wise. You're certainly free to entertain that opinion, but even your own observations should show you that this is not how things work.
