Intellectual Property and patents are capitalism. Capitalism has always required exclusionary property rights to function, and these property rights have always been allocated and enforced by the government, starting right at the Enclosure of the Commons. Without government intervention, capitalism cannot exist.
Without IP and the artificial scarcity enforced by it, capitalism simply cannot function for digital goods. In particular, "digital capital" cannot be accumulated, because all digital goods can be replicated infinitely.
I don't understand how you can reconcile the notion of capitalism with artificial scarcity.
I understand property law as a means of dealing with real scarcity but it seems so antithetical to capitalism to conjure up some laws to create scarcity.
> it seems so antithetical to capitalism to conjure up some laws to create scarcity.
That is precisely what Enclosure(pretty much the birth of capitalism) was. Land was made artificially scarce by concentrating it into the hands of the few, creating a landless working class that had to move to the cities and work in the factories to earn their living. At the time Britain also had something akin to an internal passport system, so that movement of labor between parishes was also restricted.
For a bigger, well researched exposition of this, see Kevin Carson's essay "The Iron Fist behind the Invisible Hand".
"Capitalism" isn't synonymous with "free enterprise". After all, a countryside full of hardworking farmers and craftsmen might exemplify free enterprise, even if no one got rich. Capitalism on the other hand is primarily concerned with capital and its returns. Those returns require a certain level of scarcity. Thus every capitalist society has instituted "artificial" scarcity. E.g. in USA, how many different occupations require licensure?
No patents go into the category of crony capitalism. Lets not pretend they are the same thing as pure capitalism since patents prevent free market mechanisms.
Without IP and the artificial scarcity enforced by it, capitalism simply cannot function for digital goods. In particular, "digital capital" cannot be accumulated, because all digital goods can be replicated infinitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure