Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 40. (Read 105875 times)

He hasn't been given a better option because we lack imagination and faith.  Or so he thinks

Why haven't you been given a better option?

You can answer but you won't because the fragile edifice of your argument that we have no right to enforce regulation for the greater good fails at that point.

Then we are in agreement.  I don't want regulation.  You don't want regulation.  But if its the best option, we both agree that its right to regulate.

Is gravity the best way to keep me from floating off into space? I don't know. I can't know. I haven't been given any other option to find out.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't answer your question. I can't answer the question. It's like asking if you still enjoy beating your wife. It's a loaded question.

That's a lot of work, and I gain nothing by the efforts.  We have Google and Wikipedia now, use the modern technology.


The FAA could just as easily be a privately provided pay-for-use service, because it largely is.  The federal government pays for federal burecrats in Washington that private airports have to respond to, but the federal government does not pay for the wages of the air traffic controllers.  Those wages are, generally speaking, provided for via the per-seat airport fees that the airports charge the airlines; not via taxation.  The rules of air traffic were largely settled by hobbyist pilots back in the early 'barnstormer' days, as a matter of self preservation; so there is plenty of evidence that a federal agency isn't necessary for the development of new public safety rules.  The pilots and airlines can work out those issues effectively enough amongst themselves.  BTW, my aunt was the first female flight instructor in the city of Louisville, Kentucky.  Photos of her in her mid 20's hang in the lobby of Bowman Field.  If the same rules existed back then for the qualification of pilots as exist today, she would likely never have been able to get a pilot's license.  Most of those rules don't make you safer, most just create an artificial scarcity of experienced pilots, supporting wages.  This may or may not be in the best interests of public safety, but generally speaking they are only in the best interests of the pilots' union.

The same artificial scarcity of skilled labor exists in the medical field as well, but in that case government is more of a tool, not an active co-conspiritor.  The AMA sets the standards for medical practitioners, and states merely back them up with force of law.

Damn. Spanked my arguments down well. Thanks for pointing me in the direction to figure these things out (though they seem like no-brainers to you, the idea of "Oh yeah, the FAA could just as easqilly be a privately provided pay-for-use service!" is hard to get to when you are, as you say, congitively programmed.)

That's not what I'm saying, either.  I'm saying that regulation is okay if it actually is the best option, but that you have no way of knowing that because you are unwilling to consider alternatives.

What you are saying is that yes regulation is OK if its the best option but no you won't allow it because you think I am a statist.

That is irrational.  Sorry.

I'm not being irrational.  Irrational would be to assume that regulation is the best option, without due consideration of other avenues.  Irrational would be to assume that seeking a middle ground compromise with a statist is going to result in an improvement in individual liberties, when it never has before.  You don't have to be a statist yourself in order to advocate for statist goals.  It's the default position in the modern world, perhaps throughout history.  It takes a lot of work to convince a single, rational and educated individual that libertarian social theories are even possible, much less the better method, as you are an example.  This is partly due to the fact that many of the libertarian social theories seem counter-intuitive at a casual overview, and partly due to the fact that the modern adult citizen has been educated within a government institution for at least tweleve years, and has a lot of cognative programming to overcome.

It is my experience that, given time to consider the arguments, and a real willingness to consider the arguments, almost everyone is a libertarian in most areas of their life.  They just don't know it.  Most have their little 'core issues' that they believe cannot be handled effectively without a government monopoly on force, despite eventually accepting that it their issue is not logically different than any other.  Your's seems to be the prevention of low-tech terroristic bombings.  I've seen others argue that only a government can regulate air traffic to prevent collisions, or that only governments can regulate drug or medical safety standards, or the electromagnetic spectrum as a commons, or scientific inquiry of various forms, usually outer space.  None of these almost-libs can ever quite get past the idea that these very pet issues of theirs are already regulated by organizations other than governments in many direct or indirect ways.  They are just set in their viewpoints on these particular issues. 

Now you are being irrational.  What you are saying is that yes regulation is OK if its the best option but no you won't allow it because you think I am a statist.  Even if I was, the fact that lives are saved is nothing to do with my motivation and presumably saving lives is what we both want.

It's still a 'no' because your default position, and the default position of most every statist on Earth, is that if regulations (enforced by government agents) are possible, we will try that first.  If it works okay, we aren't going to "fix what ain't broken" in order to consider any other alternative; whether it would increase freedom or not, or whether it could increase effectiveness or not.  Do the Irish people have a right to regulate themselves?  Yes.  Does the Irish parliment have the right to regulate the Irish people on their behalf?  Not necessarily.  Do the Irish people have the right to regulate my business relationships with an Irish importer?  An unqualified no. 

The question I asked you was " If I can demonstrate that regulating fertiliser sales saves lives compared to any other solution, are you happy to allow regulation of fertiliser sales?"

Still waiting for your answer. 

I believe in magic...

The more principled way takes more effort and introspection. Tyranny and slavery requires neither.

If I read correctly, that's actually a 'yes.'

As I said earlier, if a way can be found to keep car bombs from being assembled that doesn't involve regulation, of course I would prefer that.  No-one wants regulation.  If it does exist, you have to worry about things like regulatory capture and raw incompetence.  So of course safeguards are needed.  But the key issue here is whether you accept that people who already are regulating fertiliser sales to prevent themselves being killed have a right to do so.  It seems to me that you think they do so we are in agreement.

It's relevant because it calls into question regulatory nuances. The collar represents regulation. I may not have phrased it that way but that's what it implies.

The government could just as easily lop our pointer fingers off because it's the finger most used to pull the trigger on a gun (hence, trigger finger). By doing so, there is a greater likelihood there will be less violent gun crimes. Funny thing is, gun manufacturers and criminals will find another way around given enough persistence.

The examples are numerous.

I've already answered it three times.  The answer is a qualified no.  For many of the principled and practical reasons that have been presented to you, that apparently you have failed or willfully refused to consider.  For some it would be an unqualified no, but I'm not willing to undermine the 'good' in pursuit of the 'perfect'.  But I'm also openly stating that, by compromising my own priciples for a pragmatic victory, I'm still compromising my principles.

On the other hand, statists don't really have any principles to compromise as far as I can tell, so I'm not willing to meet in the middle either.  You're going to have to come a lot farther to my side with checks and balances against government abuse before I am willing to concede that the benefits to public safety outweigh the risks of future government "mission creep" or deliberate government corruption.

Regulation of fertiliser sales was 1975.  Car bombings became rare within a month.  The IRA reached a political settlement in 1997, 22 years later.

Rather than worry about Irish history, how about answering the question; if I can demonstrate that using government agencies to regulate fertiliser sales saves lives compared to any other solution, are you happy to allow government regulation of fertiliser sales?

A simple 'yes' or 'no' is all that's needed.

And the same would happen in a libertarian society, despite the objections of an absolutist minority.  I'm not going to say that b2c or Fred are wrong, because they are not wrong from a principled perspective.  They are just not pragmatic.  A mostly libertarian society is still much more free than what exists, and is one major reason that the framers of the US Constitution advocated for that document despite it being a relative centralization of political power as compared to the Articles of Confederation.  Precisely because under the Articles the states bickered like EU member states are now bickering over the sovereign debt crisis over there.  They both seek a perfect libertarian society, wherein the state is actually small enough to drown in a bathtub should the need arise.  Much more realisticly is that the drive towards more individual freedom and personal responsibility begins to approach a condition of diminishing returns.  At which point, most practical libertarians are satisfied with the achievements and leave the perfectionists to battle with the "social democrats" in the political realm while the vast majority returns to simply ignoring politics and pursuing their own personal interests.  That really is the end goal.


You have cited this before, but corrolation still isn't causation, even in Ireland.  The subject is too complex to attribute to a single regulation, and without even checking, I'm pretty sure that the political issues that motivated much of the IRA were resolved around that same time, were they not?


No one has the power to stop you, which is not the same thing.  The framers recognized the need to incentivize creative works, and established both the 'authority' of Congress to establish a term limited copyright monopoly but also the Library of Congress (and thus the exceptions that libraries and schools enjoy) as well as explicitly rejecting the notion that copyright was a natural right.

Correct.  So you are I are in agreement.  Regardless of the tool used, you cannot allow car bombs to be assembled too easily or life simply won't be worth living.

Fred and b2c have a very different view.  They believe that taking real world consequences into account is wrong and that all that counts is principles.  In principle regulation is bad so they will never agree to it.

I'm sure you see why the distinction matters