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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 9:20amSanction this postReply
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FYI, a previous version of this paper was discussed on the Mises blog in the comments of this thread, New Working Paper: Machan on IP (http://blog.mises.org/archives/005960.asp), and my comments in Trademark and Fraud (http://blog.mises.org/archives/007409.asp), where I wrote:

Well, let me say that in a way I agree--one source of disagreement lies in differences over whether rights come from scarcity, or from "creation" (Rand's "man's needs" type of argument).

I've tried to show that it's a mistake to think of creation as a source of ownership of property. Often it's said that you can find/appropriate something, create it, or buy/receive it from a previous owner. But "creation" is not really a third way of acquiring ownership. In fact, it's neither necessary nor sufficient. Appropriation of unowned goods, and contractual acquisition of goods from previous owners, are the only ways to acquire property rights in things. I discuss this in detail in the section "Creation vs. Scarcity" et pass. of Against Intellectual Property. Also, note that if you say that we have property rights to "things we create," you indeed open the door to a horrible pandora's box of things that people have monopolistic rights to, which would entangle and ensnare all use of scarce resources, thus leading to the entire human race dying out. See, e.g., the examples of Galambos and Schulman, noted in my article, who advocate protection of a very broad range of mentally "created" patterns, ideas, "logos," what have you.

Tibor Machan has alluded to this in some of his writings, where he basically wants to say that there are all kinds of "things" that "exist"--poems, trucks, etc.--and since "The tangible-intangible distinction is not a good one for what can and cannot be owned", then we need to focus on "intentionality"--things we intentionally create or produce, whether they be "tangible" or "intangible"--indeed, intangible things like poems, computer games/programs, novels, songs, arrangements, etc. are more completely "intentional" and "created" than are tangible goods. I.e., Machan's theory seems to be that any "ontological type of thing" that we can identify, and that was intentionally created or produced by man, is owned by man. For more on this, see: New Working Paper: Machan on IP; also see the criticism and discussion in the comments (e.g., those of Carl Johan Petrus Ridenfeldt at November 30, 2006 4:59 PM); see also Owning Thoughts and Labor and related comment thread; and the comments in The Copyright/Baseball Analogy. I think if you review the criticisms of Machan's view here (and my discussion of "Creation v. Scarcity" in my longer paper noted above), you'll begin to see the magnitude of problems that accompany looking at property in this way.

***

In Owning Thoughts and Labor, I wrote:

I think Machan also makes the mistake of implicitly assuming that that any "thing" you can conceptualize or name "exists" and "thus" can be owned. Such as a novel, or poem, or invention. And if these things are ownable, naturally, the person with the best connection to or claim to this thing is its creator. As Machan notes,
the status of something as private property appears to hinge on its being in significant measure an intentional object—its status as a private owned entity has to do with in what mental relation is stands with an agent. But then it would seem that so called intellectual stuff is an even better candidate for qualifying as private property than is, say, a tree or mountain. Both of the latter only come to be related to human intentions, whereas a poem or novel cannot have their essential identity without having been intended (mentally created) by human beings.

(This is somewhat reminiscent of what Rand did when she actually elevated patents over mere property rights in tangible goods, when she wrote that “patents are the heart and core of property rights.” See. p. 18 of my Against Intellectual Property article linked above.)

The problem here is it just assumes any "thing" you can identify conceptually may be owned. One problem with this is that it seems to make reality depend on the way we name or conceptually identify things. If I call or understand your output as a "novel," then the "novel" is the unit. But just because this suffices for conceptual understanding of the world does not mean there is some "ontological" class of entities called "novels" that may be owned. In fact our concepts are use to refer to many phenomenon in or aspects of reality--truth, love, the-fact-that-I-woke up this morning, the age of the earth, my favorite drink. Are these things ownable just because they are "things" that can be conceptually identified? I don't think so.

When you ask what things are ownable, before asking who the owner is, you realize the criteria is bound up with the purpose of property rights, which is to assign owners to avoid conflict; that is, they pertain to the types of things over which there can be conflict--that is, to rivalrous (scarce) resources. Clearly not to facts or memories or recipes or patterns or information. So you never get to the question of who owns a poem. It is simply not part of the class of ownable things. Call it a thing if you like; say it "exists"; fine by me. But it's not an ownable thing.

If you restrict the ownership inquiry to scarce resources, you see the question of "creation" never really comes up, strictly speaking: as I have noted before, the focus on "creation" as an independent source of ownership is confusing and flawed. Actually, it is first use that is the key (as elaborated in my article How We Come To Own Ourselves). This is sufficient to allocate title to any particular scarce resource in question (the body is a special case). Creation, it turns out, is neither necessary nor sufficient: for example, if I am the first to homestead an apple, I own it even though I didn't create the apple (yeah, you can torture language to try to say you "created" it in a sense since your creative efforts or "labor" were needed to recognize the opportunity etc., but let's face it: you didn't create the apple). So creation is not necessary. And if you create a statue in someone else's granite slab, you don't own it--so creation is insufficient. By contrast, if you create a statue in your own granite, you own the resulting statue, but not because you created it--because you already owned the granite, but merely changed its form.

Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach. It is what leads them to focus on creation as the touchstone of ownership; and this is why they are so eager to grant rights in IP--because yes, these things are "created" moreso than unowned scarce resources in the wild that are found and homesteaded.

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 11:18amSanction this postReply
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Also, see my Powerpoint presentation at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2008 for some brief criticism of some Objectivist views on "creation" as the source of property rights, esp. in the context of intellecutal property (slides 91-97 in particular).

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 11:47amSanction this postReply
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Stephan wrote:

Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach. It is what leads them to focus on creation as the touchstone of ownership; and this is why they are so eager to grant rights in IP--because yes, these things are "created" moreso than unowned scarce resources in the wild that are found and homesteaded.

This sounds like a post that belongs in the Dissent Forum.


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Post 3

Friday, April 4, 2008 - 12:21pmSanction this postReply
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I believe Rand once said no need to examine a folly, just ask what it accomplishes?

And what would be accomplished from the abandonment of legal protections for intellectual property rights?

It would destroy the following industries that produce billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

Music, movies, television, books, pharmaceuticals, etc. What is the incentive to create if someone can just mooch off of your ideas? Why would Pfizer spends millions of dollars on a drug if a rival who spent no money on research and development could essentially bankrupt Pfizer through offering the same product and not have taken on the cost of research and development? If there was no recognition of these rights, there would no more incentive to create something that takes a great deal of mental, physical, and financial effort.

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 12:44pmSanction this postReply
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I was simply replying to Tibor's article; shouldn't the reply to an article be here...?

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 12:49pmSanction this postReply
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John Armaos:
"And what would be accomplished from the abandonment of legal protections for intellectual property rights?

"It would destroy the following industries that produce billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

"Music, movies, television, books, pharmaceuticals, etc."

I realize this is a common belief, but I do not believe it is true. Pharmaceuticals are hampered by the FDA. If you removed these shackles, and high state taxes, the "need" for them to have a patent monopoly (also grated by the state) would be much lower, no? Why have the state grant a monopoly to make up for other penalties imposed by other state actions (taxes, FDA regulation, etc.)?

"What is the incentive to create if someone can just mooch off of your ideas?"

I thought the Randian argument was a moral, principled one, not utilitarian. Anyway, using words like "mooch" and the possessive "your" (as if it's similar to ownership) is question-begging, is it not?

Shouldn't the case for patent rights be principled? But who can come up with a principled argument for a 17-year patent monopoly administered by a state-run bureaucracy?

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 1:05pmSanction this postReply
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"And what would be accomplished from the abandonment of legal protections for intellectual property rights?"

Actually, you should reverse the question - what would be accomplished if the principles of intellectual property was consistently applied? This is actually the argument put forth by Kinsella in a previous post...

Please, do examine the folly of a consistent application of the principles of IP.

"It would destroy the following industries that produce billions of dollars and millions of jobs."

That is beside the point. Either intellectual property rights are real rights or they are fake rights, whether they create economic value is irrelevant if we are to discuss their legitimacy.

While we're at it, forgive my nitpicking but "creating millions of jobs" besides not being a moral criterion is not even a good utilitarian criterion. A cataclysm would create million of jobs ! The scarcity if labor is an economic bad, not a good.

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 4:28pmSanction this postReply
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Arthur wrote:

Either intellectual property rights are real rights or they are fake rights, whether they create economic value is irrelevant


This is where I believe the problem lies. I'm not proposing a utilitarian notion of rights, I'm proposing that there is a reason why they have been constructed as moral principles. The notion that rights are just simply arbitrarily arrived at without regard of whether they further an individual's values seems to be yours and Stephan's position. If there exists a harmony of interests between men where trading goods and services leads to the continued promulgation of those values, then this good, and thus ought to be a right for individuals to trade freely with one another. They are not just simply arbitrarily chosen. So if pharmaceuticals are required to further our values (obviously the value of life by staving off disease) then to try to destroy the incentives that exists for producing pharmaceuticals, such as the enormous costs associated with research and development and the recuperation needed to make it a worthwhile venture, then you propose the destruction of values. Something contrary to why we have rights.


Stephan:

"It would destroy the following industries that produce billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

"Music, movies, television, books, pharmaceuticals, etc."

I realize this is a common belief, but I do not believe it is true. Pharmaceuticals are hampered by the FDA. If you removed these shackles, and high state taxes, the "need" for them to have a patent monopoly (also grated by the state) would be much lower, no? Why have the state grant a monopoly to make up for other penalties imposed by other state actions (taxes, FDA regulation, etc.)?


Stephan I believe this is a rather superficial analysis of the profit motive for pharmaceutical companies. Let's get the following out of the way first so we don't bog ourselves down in non-sequiters. I don't like the FDA, they are overly restrictive and deny millions of Americans experimental drugs that can save their lives. They have many times in the past used faulty science.

So, now that we have that out of the way we can go on to the question of what it takes to make a viable drug that cures an ailment or disease. The research and development costs associated with this are enormous but not just because there is an FDA or taxes. Many drugs never make it to the market because there are so many dead ends to research that do not produce a fruitful drug. If a pharmaceutical company does not enjoy a protection of their intellectual discoveries for at least a temporary period of time, then any company can take those intellectual discoveries, make a product completely identical in every way, and not have to worry about spending any money on research and development. The fact that we have "sales tax" makes absolutely no difference as sales tax are imposed on any product, for any reason regardless of what the costs associated with that product. I don't see how taxes make any difference to the cost of having to research an idea for a drug first before ever getting to the process of making one. Nor do I understand the appeal to the additional costs that are imposed because of FDA standards. Research and development with or without taxes and an FDA are still quite high a cost. If a rival company does not have to spend any money on R&D they are at an advantage over the company that does spend money on R&D. Pharmaceutical companies don't just spontaneously come up with drugs, it requires scientific research, the salaries of those scientists, the research equipment, the endless dead ends of that research that could yield no results, these are all very real costs that exist regardless of whether there is an FDA or sales tax. The mental effort expended by these companies are their own, and ought to be justly rewarded for the fruitful production from that mental work.

You seem to have a notion that there is no such a thing as the fruits of one's mental, physical or financial effort, and that they are not entitled to trade the fruits of that effort for a value.

What is the incentive to create if someone can just mooch off of your ideas?"

I thought the Randian argument was a moral, principled one, not utilitarian. Anyway, using words like "mooch" and the possessive "your" (as if it's similar to ownership) is question-begging, is it not?


It is a moral argument. But moral arguments must not be arbitrary. We don't have rights for the reason "just because we have them, their moral". Why are they moral principles? If anyone can steal from you, they have destroyed a value, they have destroyed the ability for you to survive on this planet. If you are saying I'm begging the question because I haven't first established a company is stealing another company's ideas if they don't have to recognize intellectual property, then I can only say that you take the idea that mental effort, the costs associated with that, are not real, and the accomplishments from that mental labor, are not worth any value.. But with just a cursory examination that notion reveals itself to be patently absurd. Of course there is value created from taking granite and altering it into a statue. If you bought that statue, are you just paying for the value of a hunk of unsculpted granite? Why do you think a sculpted piece of granite has a higher price than a hunk of unsculpted granite? Physical and mental effort was exerted in producing that finished product of a sculpted granite statue, something that the sculpter is entitled to the fruits of that mental and physical exertion.



(Edited by John Armaos on 4/04, 4:34pm)


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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 6:36pmSanction this postReply
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I was simply replying to Tibor's article; shouldn't the reply to an article be here...?

Yes, you should. It's okay. 

Luke, Stephan isn't a troll. Relax.


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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 8:29pmSanction this postReply
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Kinsella: Pharmaceuticals are hampered by the FDA. If you removed these shackles, and high state taxes, the "need" for them to have a patent monopoly (also grated by the state) would be much lower, no? Why have the state grant a monopoly to make up for other penalties imposed by other state actions (taxes, FDA regulation, etc.)?

Answer: taxes and regulations are irrelevant to this discussion (unless you want to admit into the fellowship of the immoral and perverted). I'm not a patent attorney, however it appears to me that an individual or group of individuals file for a patent or copyright for the protection of their creation. The state is not granting them a monopoly. The state is recognizing their right to first use and benefit. If the state were blind to the rights of creators then there would be no use in creating. And certainly no use for a state.

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Friday, April 4, 2008 - 8:37pmSanction this postReply
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Stephan,

Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach. It is what leads them to focus on creation as the touchstone of ownership; and this is why they are so eager to grant rights in IP--because yes, these things are "created" moreso than unowned scarce resources in the wild that are found and homesteaded.
Unowned scarce resources in the wild aren't homesteaded by being "found." If that were true, then American Indians (Native Americans) would own America outright. In order to homestead something, from the Objectivist point of view, you have got to mix your labor with it for a productive purpose. The purpose needn't be utilitarian (whatever is "supposed" to be good for many if not most folks), but it does need to be productive. Just like man needs to be productive -- a natural need that won't ever go away.

In a Buck Rogers sense, for instance, you couldn't ever "homestead" a planet by blowing it up -- only by using its material for a productive purpose.

Stephan, could you produce a logical syllogism justifying man's rights?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/04, 8:42pm)


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 4:45amSanction this postReply
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Stephan,

 

"The problem here is it just assumes any "thing" you can identify conceptually may be owned. One problem with this is that it seems to make reality depend on the way we name or conceptually identify things. If I call or understand your output as a "novel," then the "novel" is the unit. But just because this suffices for conceptual understanding of the world does not mean there is some "ontological" class of entities called "novels" that may be owned. In fact our concepts are use to refer to many phenomenon in or aspects of reality--truth, love, the-fact-that-I-woke up this morning, the age of the earth, my favorite drink. Are these things ownable just because they are "things" that can be conceptually identified? I don't think so."

 

Rand is very clear about the fact that an idea or concept as such cannot be legally protected until it has been given a specific physical form.  It is this specific form which endows it with value because that had to be created, and property rights apply only to that material forme.g. books, magazine articles, audiotapes, etc.  This material form cannot be reproduced without permission and/or compensation.

"When you ask what things are ownable, before asking who the owner is, you realize the criteria is bound up with the purpose of property rights, which is to assign owners to avoid conflict; that is, they pertain to the types of things over which there can be conflict--that is, to rivalrous (scarce) resources. Clearly not to facts or memories or recipes or patterns or information. So you never get to the question of who owns a poem. It is simply not part of the class of ownable things. Call it a thing if you like; say it "exists"; fine by me. But it's not an ownable thing."

 

This is a typically libertarian approach to rights, implying that the only issues involved are purely practical and dropping the context of the moral basis of rights.  In Objectivism, rights are conditions of existence required by mans nature for his proper survival.  Man survives through the use of his mind, and property rights amount to a legal codification of the connection between mental effort and material values.  They assure that the material products of a mans mental efforts will be his to dispose of as he see fitsto serve his life and needs.  It is a kind of contract which the creator of a novel or article or poem or inventionall of which are very much ownable--makes with anyone who might use it to agree to compensate him for his efforts.

 

Man must create the values his life requires, but it would be absurd to say that he can only own those things which are entirely of his own creation.  The monetary compensation he receives for his material creations can then be used in exchange for goods created or produced by other men (e.g., food products which must be grown, farmed or manufactured).  

 

"Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach"

 
So what constitutes a rigorous approach, in your view?  From your above cited article on self-ownership
 
"Recall that the purpose of property rights is to permit conflicts over scarce (rivalrous) resources to be avoided. To fulfill this purpose, property titles to particular resources are assigned to particular owners
"what distinguishes libertarianism from all competing political theories is its scrupulous adherence informed by sound, i.e., Austrian, economics to the idea that property rights in scarce resources must be assigned to the person with the best, objective link to the resource in question; and that, in the case of bodies, the link is the natural connection to and relationship between the occupant and the body, while for all other resources, the objective link is first use."
 
Your approach is purely utilitarian: rights are to be assigned in a way that best reduces conflict.  The objective requirements of human life have nothing to do with it.  So if someone can find a more practical way to distribute property, that would obviously be preferable, given your rigorous libertarian views.  Consdering the virtually limitless kinds of conflicts which people would obviously have over such things as land boundaries, waterways, roads, vertical space, air waves, et. al, ad infinitumand the endless litigtion such conflicts would entail--it would be much more practical to let the government allocate such scarce resources.  And that is exactly where pragmatic principles such as yours would quickly lead in the absence of a moral approach to rights based on mans needs.
 
Libertarianisms focus on 'utility' and 'practicality' will lead to the exact opposite of the libertarian political ideal of so-called freedom.  Unless we define rights from the objective moral perspective of the requirements of individual surivival, the all-powerful state will continue to grow and thrive, and libertarianism will have helped pave the way to tyranny.     
 


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 10:00amSanction this postReply
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Since I am both Objectivist (in philosophy) and Libertarian (in political theory), and see absolutely no conflict between these--indeed, consider the former a necessary support for the latter--the last part of the exchange here leaves me nonplussed.  As far as IP is concerned, my point may be summed up as that whenever someone creates something of value, one owns it.  Even some values not created by one but constituting one (say, one's life or liberty) belong to one so others, in order to gain from it, must obtain one's consent.  If one creates a novel, it belongs to one; same with a poem or song or game.  How one will protect what one owns is a subsequent problem--just as it is with the right to one's life or liberty. The protection of these is a problem that arises only once the right is acknowledged to exist. It is furthermore clearly an intervention in one's life to have others obtain one's creations, products without one's consent, be these a home, a car, a computer, a song, a design for some device, etc.  Such taking would be no less theft that any other kind of taking to which the owner hasn't agreed.

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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 10:27amSanction this postReply
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Regarding this last point, there ought to be a short, single-word political term for what is denoted by the phrase: "Radical for Capitalism." The term "libertarian" seems to be the best of all those available. Sorry if this is construed as a thread hijack.

Ed
[Objectivist libertarian]


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 1:07pmSanction this postReply
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Stephen wrote,
Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach. It is what leads them to focus on creation as the touchstone of ownership; and this is why they are so eager to grant rights in IP--because yes, these things are "created" more so than unowned scarce resources in the wild that are found and homesteaded.
Here is Rand's justification for rights:

"The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave." ("Man's Rights", VOS)

What's flawed and non-rigorous about that? In your linked article on intellectual property, you say that property rights are applicable only to scarce resources, on the grounds that if resources aren't scarce, then no conflicts can arise over their use, and that since intellectual property is not "scarce," there should be no property rights governing its use. Does that mean that if I produce a non-scarce resource, I have no right to it and that you can rightfully deprive me of it without my consent?

You also say, "Ayn Rand mistakenly assumes that the first to file [instead of "first-to-invent"] has priority (and then she is at pains to defend such a system)." I think Rand would agree that ideally the first to invent should have priority. The problem is, how do you establish this priority legally? You do so through a filing process.

- Bill


(Edited by William Dwyer on 4/05, 1:12pm)


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 1:09pmSanction this postReply
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As I think Tibor and others have made clear, this problem is simply not solvable within the framework(s) provided, for the simple reason that they all ignore the most fundamental fact about property.

PROPERTY ALWAYS TAKES WHAT WAS COMMON AND MAKES IT PRIVATE.

Note that I didn't say that there is anything whatsoever wrong with this.  I am a great fan of property rights.  Most of human progress can be traced to them.  But every idea had its predecessors, and all physical objects were in some way either in direct use, expected use, or potential use by other people.  ANY private property then involves the act of removing that thing - idea or object - from common availability.

The simple solution, then, is for any private property claim to involve paying compensation to those who are the losers.  Take the example of the Scandinavian study that looked at the total impact of privatization, as in converting a wetland into a condo complex.  When the impacts upon the fishermen and others who had been directly or indirectly benefiting from the wetlands were taken into consideration, then the net profit for the developers and purchasers became a net loss of millions of dollars.  In a legal model in which privatization required purchase from the commons, that condo complex would never have been built, and we would collectively be better off for it. 

Not that I'm against condos and for wetlands, as such.  I LIKE technology.  I'm just for justice - for accurate accounting.

A second fallacy is the idea of perpetual or immutable property rights.  You can't very well contract away the rights of future generations or citizens of other nations, or the aliens who may very well visit us one day, if only via information packets offering trade in intellectual properties.  All intelligent life jointly owns the entire universe as a commons.  Any local solution on the planet earth only binds those presently alive and living here.  Thus, the privatization would never be an actual transfer of all conceivable rights, but rather a lease contract.

Under a general social contract, issues such as rights to a poem's distribution would likely be worked out in advance as subcontracts binding everyone to what would hopefully be a rational accounting that preserved the value added by the poem's creator.  I.e., you could always make a special contract that bound all the people to whom you had personally sent the poem, and it would only apply to those people who had signed it, and it would be enforceable.  However, if you simply published the poem with "copyrighted, etc.," attached, then all signatories to the social contract would be bound by a set of general rules specifying use rights and compensations.

This approach, you may note, completely bypasses the dichotomies that Tibor so effectively presents.  It's much easier and cheaper to specify things in advance than to go to court and try to resolve them.  Under this approach, there would be just as much freedom to acquire property and use it for whatever you wanted, just not at the expense of your neighbors.

Tibor: "One cannot grab a hold of a portion of a novel, such as one of its characters, as one can a portion of a house, say a dresser or the garage."

Not so!  I recall a conversation I had with sf author Larry Niven in the early '80's, in which I pointed out that many of his novels had such interesting universes that a whole lot of other authors could easilly take advantage of his ground breaking work in constructing them and write their own novels in the same universe, even with perhaps some of the same characters.  Niven took exception at the time, informing me in no uncertain terms that they would have to create their own universes or be sued.  Later, however, he chose to do exactly what I had suggested and so a whole series of novels and short stories were written by other authors in his "known space" universe - altho he never credited me, so far as I know.



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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 2:25pmSanction this postReply
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Since I am both Objectivist (in philosophy) and Libertarian (in political theory), and see absolutely no conflict between these--indeed, consider the former a necessary support for the latter--the last part of the exchange here leaves me nonplussed

 

..there ought to be a short, single-word political term for what is denoted by the phrase: "Radical for Capitalism." The term "libertarian" seems to be the best of all those available.

 

 

The term libertarianism is claimed by anyone who asserts a belief in individual liberty, and includes those who deny the philosophical foundations of such libertye.g., individual rights, the principle that man has a moral right to exist for his own sake and to own the products of his mental effort; and capitalism, which requires a government to bring the use of physical force under objective control. It is a totally corrupt umbrella term that now denotes a philosophy that cannot even provide a coherent definition of liberty.

 

To say that Objectivism is a precondition ("necessary support") of libertarianism is like saying that rationality is a precondition of atheism, which is obviously absurd.  Atheism is a negative term which simply indicates what you do not believe.  You find the same rampant irrationality among non-believers that is common to religionists.

 

All you are saying when you identify as a libertarian is that you do not believe the government should initiate force.  And to tacitly endorse the subjectivism, immorality and anarchism of so many libertarians by calling yourself one of them is to subvert the principles of a rational philosophy. 


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 5:42pmSanction this postReply
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This post is teaming with insults and lacks any arguments.  But for those interested, I have for 45 years defended Objectivism and Libertarianism, in some 35 books and hundreds of scholarly pieces, so I am certainly no supporter of subjectivism, etc.  Furthermore, if libertarianism means, as it does, a political system that is founded on the right of every individual to his or her life, liberty, property, etc., and these are principles Objectivism supports, the fact that there are many who embrace libertarianism without Objectivism means no more than that those folks (mistakenly) believe they can defend libertarianism from a different base, including utilitarianism, subjectivism, etc.  But that belief does not imply that libertarianism can so be defended.  (BTW, Rand identified herself as a libertarian back in the early 1940s!) One can be a capitalist, too, without embracing Objectivism, although one will lack good backing for it.  One can be a Republican, Democrat, monarchist, etc., based on a variety of arguments, just was one can be a libertarian and capitalist for different reasons.  Not that this is going to serve to demonstrate the soundness of the system, of course.  But to claim that because non-Objectivists can be libertarians, libertarians cannot be Objectivists is a gross fallacy.

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Post 18

Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 5:46pmSanction this postReply
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Hijack alert!  It's very brief.
 
To say that Objectivism is a precondition ("necessary support") of libertarianism is like saying that rationality is a precondition of atheism, which is obviously absurd.
 
I don't think it's absurd. I think saying that makes a lot of sense. People identify with different ideologies for a reason. Those reasons don't come from nothing. It isn't what, but how that matters.
 
Atheism is a negative term which simply indicates what you do not believe. 
 
This is exactly what should be changed about the concept, in my view. Nothing would make me happier than to have Objectivism take ownership of the idea, and for Objectivists to stop treating it like a meaningless bromide or pariah with no rational base. That's absurd to me.  Atheism isn't merely a "negative term"  for Objectivists anymore than selfishness is a negative term. Rand showed that atheism is a coherent conclusion, one that can only come from a rational mind.  This is far away from dismissing it as just a negative term. 
 
For Rand, having the right answer was never enough. She was insightful to demand that students "show the math" with regard to conclusions.

 
That's all.
 



Post 19

Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 6:01pmSanction this postReply
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Excellent point Teresa. I also like Tibor's comments.

Regards,
--
Jeff
(Edited by C. Jeffery Small on 4/05, 6:03pm)


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