Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 110. (Read 105893 times)

You keep expressing this opinion as if it were incontrovertible fact. It might interest you or others reading that at least one person with personal experience in pharmaceutical research disputes it.

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2009/03/25/mary-ruwart-deadly-secrets-behind-soaring-pharmaceutical-prices/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yvt8CsujzY
http://www.youtube.com/v/0Yvt8CsujzY

Shoes vs. roads. You're right - we don't buy our shoes from the government. Ever stop and wonder why shoes are free market goods and roads typically are not?


Sounds like a misguided attempt to confuse consumer dissatisfaction with massive and redundant construction projects.


Where exactly was someone telling you that you couldn't wear shoes in your house, and furthermore, why are you implying that we're scared of such choices?


You've used the word 'we' several times here. Who is 'we'? Do you mean, 'we, the people', as in a declaration of independence? Do you mean 'we', as to imply that we all will run our businesses according to some set of laws - you know - like a set of laws enforced by a government?


You mean you're describing how you fantasize it might work, without really factoring in anything that has been presented to you here.

That depends on the nature of the ownership. Since property can only be homesteaded by a single individual. At some point, all shared property will have once been owned by a single person. When ownership is first becoming shared it will be decided how it will be managed, by unanimous vote or majority vote.


You're responsible for the damage caused. It's still the case that railroad cars emit sparks that land on other people's property and causes fires. The government doesn't allow them to be sued as long as they follow regulations and have spark suppressors. That wasn't always the case and wouldn't be the case otherwise.


There are no rules on unowned land other than the default rule of non-aggression. I can't shoot you or slam into your car at high speed. I can drive drunk if I want to though.


It's not an improvement in that one regard. It is, however, based on moral behavior of non-aggression and it puts a mechanism in place, market forces, that tends to give people what they want at certain price.


It's unlikely that would be the case. Remember, different shopping centers are competing. Let's say you open a shopping center like that and since it's the only one in town everyone just suffers through it. Being a smart guy, I get investors to help me build a new shopping center with a standardized set of terms and conditions where you have roads that are paid for by a monthly membership fee. I'll make a fortune by attracting people to my new and convenient shopping center. If you had some bizarre terms and conditions like allowing the the staff to hunt customers for sport, you can be sure that information would spread far and fast. Then nobody would go there because you'd be out of business. That's the brilliant thing about competition. It puts a limit on the kinds of things that business can get away with. If the price and service don't match. People will go elsewhere, attracted by other businesses trying to make a profit by being better.


Yes, the transition from public to private would be different than if it was private from the start. Ideally, whatever solution we come up would be something close to how it would be if it was always private. Perhaps we can give all the businesses a share in the roads and they can vote how they are maintained or vote to sell them to the highest bidder. It's definitely something to consider but not a huge obstacle.


I doubt that would be the case. Remember, road owners are trying to make it convenient, not inconvenient. There could be maybe three or four different chips and all the roads use them as a clearing house. I don't know how breathalysers would work. That's ultimately something that the market would settle on. Look at it like this. Let's say that shoes were made by the government and then I suggest they are privatized. Then you have many questions.

"Who will make the shoes? How much will they cost? What styles will be available? Where will I buy them? What sizes will they be in?"

The response is, I don't know, honestly. I can give you some ideas but ultimately it will be the market that decides all of that. Which it has, obviously, since we don't buy our shoes from the government.


You're not thinking three dimensionally. Don't like the current road owner? Think you can do better? Tunnel under it. Build on top of it. If that doesn't work and you don't want to go a different way to work then you must not care that much. If the conditions aren't bad enough to add 10 or 20 minutes to your commute, how bad are they?


"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

Freedom can be a scary idea. I won't lie to you. But if I own property, isn't that how it should be? Isn't that what ownership is all about? If I own a house and you tell me I can't wear shoes inside or smoke in it, how exactly is it my house?


Come on, we wouldn't throw informed consent out of the window. If you don't like the terms and conditions then you can leave. If you can make a reasonable argument that you were unaware of them you can still leave. We would recognize the difference between buying a ticket to a mall and becoming a slave vs. signing a contract three times, with witnesses and a recording of your declaration that you wish to become a slave.


I'm not trying to con you into becoming a libertarian. I'm not a salesman. I'm trying to accurately describe how libertarianism would work. If you don't like my answers then you probably don't like libertarianism. However, there is a chance you might find better answers elsewhere though I doubt it. If you don't like what I've said, you're probably not ready for this ideology. Good luck to you and thanks for the conversation.

You make two interesting points here.  One is a quick suggestion that an "owner" of private property is a human.  Let me go out on a limb here and say that this suggestion has merit, when the ownership conflict in question affects humans.  However I don't see this one becoming mainstream in the immediate future, after an open system of money becomes mainstream if at all.  Currently, fictitious persons such as LLCs, AGs, etc. usually have full rights of ownership and often more rights than humans (lower taxes on ownership, lower liabilities).  As a bitcoin enthusiast we might define ownership of an object as the ability to create a recognized valid transaction of said object. 

The second is that intellectual property pertains to an object, as you put it:  "an object that resembles [] characteristics [] of an object owned by another []".
This might not pertain to e.g. a band performing a song for which ownership is claimed by a fictitious person, or a teenager who had chunks of bits which could be encoded to recreate said performance whiz through the random access memory of her computer.  However, it may be a good way to think about it, for the RAM itself is an object, as is the band on the stage.  In some sense then, it is the shirt with the Carmody number on it which is illegal under US law..  not the abstract number itself    a little better?

It is important to distinguish that if I sell you a product, and and lie to you about its manufacturer, I have committed fraud.  Further, if I claim your work is my own I have committed plagiarism.  Fraud and plagiarism are crimes in their own right with their own retributions from different institutions.  Intellectual property laws outlaw activities that are not fraud and are not plagiarism, and it is those aspects of intellectual property laws which stifle innovation and lead to gross inefficiencies:   


"There was the American public service National Public Radio / This American Life with the longer in-depth When Patents Attack. New York Times is calling the whole deal “disturbing”. The Economist has a piece which explains why patents hinder rather than help innovation. The Guardian notes that patents make companies find it more valuable to sue each other than “actually making things”, and calls the whole construct “foolish”. Washington Post writes that “instead of spurring innovations and entrepreneurship, patents are being used … by cynical lawyers to stifle and discourage them.”"

(last paragraph taken from http://falkvinge.net/2011/08/24/sudden-mass-support-from-oldmedia-patents-do-prevent-innovation/
)   




     

In re, IP vs. Private Property.

In this context, an object is a thing comprised of physical material matter. It is tangible.

Private Property: An object within the exclusive control (to use, compose, recombine, dispose, exchange, divide, or destroy) of the owner (a human), excepting only, that said control not effectuate tangible physical and material perturbations (physical force) upon another man or his possessions, is Private Property.

Intellectual Property: The object of one owner that resembles the material characteristics or composition of an object owned by another who was not the originator of said object's composition, pattern or function is prohibited.

Resolve the dichotomy. Those two types of "property" conflict. Please don't summarily dismiss the concern as it is pertinent to the discussion at hand (IP law).

Fergalish,

The individual bad actors of society are the ones ruining it for everybody else. Society is only as good or as bad as it's individual actors. Don't blame the ideology, (Libertarianism, or any other -ism) for the horrible outcomes that spring forth. Punish the criminal, but first and foremost, define the crime. Being consistent with the fewest dichotomies and oxymorons helps.

Libertarianism attempts to reconcile and reduce laws into their component parts attempting to not produce violent outcomes or illogical conclusions. It wouldn't make sense to have two laws in conflict with themselves. If it does conflict, go back to the drawing board. Don't ignore it; explore it, resolve it, or rescind it.

EDIT: Try it sometime, it's quite a refreshing eye-opener.

So then... some group of people, somehow sharing ownership of some property, get together and collectively decide the rules that all owners of any part of that property should follow.  What if you don't agree?  Are you somehow restricted from using your property as you wish so?  I'll leave you to complete the thought.

Suppose, let's continue with the lake analogy, that you don't dump your toxic chemicals in the lake, because you don't agree with the vote.  You just dump at the edge of your land, close to the edge of the lake.  Rain, of course, washes it into the soil, and it leeches into the lake.  Now what?

And what if it's unowned?  You didn't say what happens then.  If property can be unowned, who decides the rules for appropriate behaviour thereon?  Vote again?  By who, the whole world?  What about the drunk driver example, but on an unowned road.

Yes, you would have to agree to the terms and conditions and buy a ticket signifying your acceptance much like any other private park, Disney World, etc. By the way, where would you rather meet me after dark openly holding a hundred dollar bill, in Disney World or Times Square?