Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 111. (Read 105893 times)

And your theory is overly simplistic. Study ecology.

Your posts are becoming less about debate and more about abuse. If this is all you have to offer, you will be ignored.

Property ownership is the key to determining what is aggression. If you take the shirt I'm wearing, are you the aggressor? Well, it depends, if it's my shirt, yes. If I stole the shirt from you yesterday, you're just reclaiming your property. We can't even determine which acts are acts of aggression without a theory of property rights.

There's your fixation on property ownership again. The world is more complex than your simplistic paradigm allows for.

Who owns the lake? The guy dumping chemicals or the fishermen?



Are you telling people how the meat was produced when they ask or are you lying to them?


Who owns the road and what rules did they set?

There's nothing new you've presented here. These are all questions that have been asked and answered many times. I can point you to a few books if you like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur

You don't know what that means.  OR else you are being obtuse.  Please answer instead of dodging.

Here is the question you are avoiding:
"For medicine that means we have to employ large teams of people.  And if one person can simply take the result of that research, the investment in salaries will never be recovered.  If the investment can't be recovered, it will never happen and people will have to do without medical research.

Be honest - your idea means people will be materially worse off.  Its a bad one.  Why waste your time on something that is a step backwards?"

I inserted the bolds to respond to you in context.

I notice you haven't answered.  Stuck?

I have this idea and it needs a really vast, smart and expensive research team to investigate it.

Here's my idea... I want to design a device using cats and mice for the mentally challenged human. I need the cats to chase the mice in alternating concentric circular motions (this is to mesmerize and soothe the human).

The mice cannot be consumed by the cats, and the cats and mice need to follow the obstacle course as prescribed. Some time and resources should be spent on drugs that convince the cats to not eat the mice, and drugs used on the mice, so they become stronger and faster than the cats. I'll also probably need to do some gene splicing so that the offspring of these cats and mice will only chase in circles. And last but not least, I'll need human subjects to determine the validity of my work (you know, for double blind testing).

This research will probably take years, and I consider it extremely valuable to cat and mouse trainers, and of course, for the improvement of the mentally insane the world over. It will cost billions (insert currency of choice here) and I will have to recoup my investment, or the world will never be the same...

I need a politician, a lobbyist and a few lawyers to help me out. Any takers?

For medicine that means we have to employ large teams of people.  And if one person can simply take the result of that research, the investment in salaries will never be recovered.  If the investment can't be recovered, it will never happen and people will have to do without medical research.

Be honest - your idea means people will be materially worse off.  Its a bad one.  Why waste your time on something that is a step backwards?

The mechanism chosen to do research is to take what you've learned, expound upon it if you can, and then apply it to the physical material matter in your possession. How hard was that?

I use "childish words" because most people don't understand the purpose and proper role of law.

Your right, the core issue is freedom. Don't take my freedoms from me and I won't take them from you.

You are free to start your own collective and convince people to join you. I don't want to be a part of your collective as you've described it, so don't force me.

You are again correct in not allowing me to prevent people from having new medicine. Go right ahead and take whatever medicine you have and exchange it with whomever you may, I won't stop you.

I do have a proposal, I've already provided it. Start a solidarity society , viz., an association of like minded individuals and combine your efforts together to produce medicines to help those in need.

Libertarians want to be able to do as they please, as long as they don't engage in 'violence' or 'coercion' against others.  This is certainly very noble and, indeed, a place without any violence or coercion would be very very nice.

The problem lies in defining what is violence or coercion.  Here are some simple situations:

• You might feel you have the right to set up a factory on your lakeside property, and dump chemicals in the lake while fishermen on the lake might feel this constitutes an act of violence against their livelihoods.
• You might feel you have the right to sell meat from hormone-pumped animals even though those hormones can cause damage to the human biochemistry.  No 'violence' involved, you're not coercing them, though victims might feel they have no option but to seek medical treatment, and would probably be quite angry at you.
• You might feel you can drink your alchohol and then drive your old broken car at high speed, but pedestrians whose families are maimed or killed will certainly feel aggrieved.
• And many many more...

Even whole countries can have problems:

• your country might think to take all the water from the river and use it for irrigation, or maybe pollute it with nuclear waste, while downstream countries might not be best pleased about that.

So, not only is it difficult to get everyone to agree on what constitutes "violence", "agression" or "coerce" (just like "good" and "bad", there are no absolutes), but there are also clearly non-coercive, non-agressive, non-violent acts which *nonetheless restrict the freedom of others*.  This can be the case *even when contracts are formulated and signed by all parties*: there can be unforeseen consequences which damage one party or another.  In such circumstances, it's enough that each side thinks the other should shoulder the responsibility and BANG! conflict arises from an entirely voluntary, contractual interaction, and the libertarian utopia disintegrates for another two citizens.  Libertarianism does not solve situations where conflict arises though unforeseen consequences of voluntary interactions.  There has been another thread about this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3772.0;all
(look towards the second half of the thread) and here are the replies of those who were defending libertarianism at the time, to a simple problem posed to them:


Way to go, libertarianists!  Ignore the problems, and hope that someone else will solve them!  Right now society already has a system for dealing with conflict, unforeseen or not.  I'll be the first to admit it's less than perfect, but the libertarianists wouldn't even suggest an alternative!



YES! YES YES YES! YESSSSSSSSS!  There IS a line drawn in the sand.  It's called "The Law".  The line itself is more-or-less arbitrary, but it's the same line for everyone.  The world couldn't suddenly decide to "rob, assault, maim and kill" you, without also allowing *you* to arbitrarily "rob, assault, maim and kill" them at the same time.  Or maybe you mean society could suddenly re-enact laws enslaving (e.g.) black people.  In principle yes, but that would require *everyone* to ignore their conscience, and to ignore 200 years of advance in science, morality and the human condition, and suddenly start thinking again that black people aren't really people after all.  All we can do is hope that doesn't happen.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6

You misunderstand me - if you want your libertarian utopia, you'll have to start somewhere.  Buy some land so, make a new private road and start making people pay to travel on it.  Buy more land, build a power plant and sell the electricity.  Staying paying for private health care.  Go, do it.  You'll fail.  Not because the idea is fundamentally flawed, but because you need critical mass to make it work.  Only then will we find out if the idea is fundamentally flawed or not.  Libertarianism could well be great, so get started!  I'm definitely curious.

In this case, we  are talking about a democratic society where people want to have research that leads to benefits such as improved medicines.  The mechanism chosen for this is intellectual property.  When you are sick and get the benefit of these medicines you will call it a "solidarity society".  But you also want to be able to take the profit of someone else's intellectual property and if you are told you can't you will call it a "gang society".  Same society - only difference is that your needs.  

You are free to make a factory that sells medicines.  You are free to do employ teams of staff for years on research and make better medicines.  If you sell them at a loss or profit, no-one cares.  But what you want is that you be free to take the results of someone's else's research and resell that for your profit.  That's in your childish words "Bad bad, naughty " and society rightly stops you.

The core issue here is freedom.  We have to choose between your desire for to profit from someone else's research with our collective desire for the benefits of research.  It can't be both; either we have medicines or your "freedom" to take the output of other people's work.

In this case, your "freedom" is the loser.  You have no right to prevent people having new medicines.  Unless you have some proposal that allows us as a society to have the benefits of medical research, your ideas are worthless and we are done with them.

Depriving people of the right to organise themselves in a way that benefits the entire society is a greater injustice.  If the choice is between you losing the freedom to profit from copying the output of someone else's research and the rest of us losing access to new medicines, you lose.  You are deluding yourself if you think your "right" to be a freeloader is somehow more important than our right to organise ourselves to support research and innovation.  That would be a real injustice.

So far, all your ideas seem to amount to is you having free access to unearned profit and everyone else having their freedom removed to facilitate you.  Unless you have some proposal as to how the rest of society can have its medical research and its branded products, I think we are done with your ideas. 

I also claim that 1 individual has the right to prevent the rest of society from murdering, enslaving, raping or stealing from that person. It doesn't matter how many people want something that's an injustice. It's still an injustice.

I've noticed a lot of issues (errant definitions and meanings) regarding the net resultant effect "society" has on it's members. It seems like there are two types of societies. The friendly type of "society", and the other type of "society" which I like to call gang (criminal hoodlums) organized society.

If society can coerce you to do something with your person or property without your express permission, your "society" is a gang organization. Bad bad, naughty

If on the other hand, your society allows it's members to freely join or dissociate and not affect their person or property, then your society is one of mutual solidarity. Good, good, keep it up

Please help yourself make that distinction when you wish use the term "society" so we all know what you mean.

Use "gang society" when you mean the nasty kind of society, and use "solidarity society" when you mean the benevolent kind of society.

Thanks, and happy discussions...

It's not at all clear to me what organization you are being coerced to join, nor is it clear to me how you think I implied that organization is about coercing others to join organizations.

To be clear, if you opt to be part of an organization, it is because you want to benefit from the power that the organization can bring to bear on problems that an individual cannot. By virtue of being part of that organization, it is virtually inevitable that it will make decisions that all members of that organization are not in favor of. Once the organization acts on those decisions, those that weren't in favor of those decisions might feel coerced.

So what you're saying is I can't convince other people to freely join an organization, sans coercion (i.e. "society-like"), without having to force them to do it?

This puts nothing to rest. I am a society of three. I have friends too -amazingly hard to believe isn't it? If you want to join me you can, if you don't, I don't care, neither will I force you. There I just did it.

The definition of contract (of which organizing is a primary feature) is the mutual consent to be bound by an agreement and it's terms or covenants between two or more persons. It cannot impose anything other than that which is clearly stated and agreed to. Anybody violating that agreement would be incurring a breach of contract.

To wit, if "society" breaks the terms of the agreement I willfully and freely entered into, they are in violation and should render to me proper restitution for their folly.

Organization does not imply coercion, they are just better at it than the individual solo actor. You wouldn't happen to be a member of a gang would you?

Anything that requires more resources than one can muster requires organization. Any organization, by virtue of its existence, is a decision making body. Any organization greater than a size of two likely will require some type of system that allows it to act on decisions that all members might not be in favor of. Voting is one example.

I hope that answers your question. And I hope it pretty much puts to rest the ongoing discussion that has been occurring in countless threads here as to the slim viability of organization without coercion.