Topic: Read this before having an opinion on economics - page 12. (Read 25946 times)

That's as good an idea as any, but it still doesn't solve the problem with regard to the state enforcement of a monopoly.

I could care less about laws. So lets address the morality. You say it would be immoral for me to copy your bitcoin wallet, yet you condone copying of intangible property.


So you are immoral. Excellent. I will be sure to never do business with you.

Immoral? Yes. Unethical? Yes. Criminal? No.


Can you demonstrate there would be a net loss to society? Where's your evidence?

Donations? I'm stunned. This is how you propose all medical research should be done? While they are important, they can't replace the massive amount of research being done by the pharma industry. But you don't want a pharmaceutical industry, atleast not one that makes money.

The companies who manufacture drugs where patents have expired sure don't. Not so sure about the companies who actually do the research. They spend a lot of money developing drugs, and most of them don't make it to the consumer, so the few that does have to carry all costs. It takes about 30 years from initial research to consumer, and you apply for a patent when you have a candidate drug, which is around year 12-15, and then you start clinical trials, if they go well you can have a drug in the market in 2-3 years, so you have about 10-15 years to make enough money to cover your costs and make a profit.

Agreed. That is a risk. And generics are great, they do lower the price for consumers. I do however feel that it's fair to grant a time limited monopoly to allow those who actually do the thinking to reap the rewards of their work. After that time it's free for all.
I don't think the risk is too great at the moment, but I do keep an eye on the market.

The patent system does need a reform, I would suggest that anyone who applies for a patent should pay $1 for this patent. This has to be renewed every year, and each time the cost doubles. It won't be too many years until most patents enters the public domain. Same thing for copyrights I think.
Ok, it's a goofy idea that some friends an me thought up while drunk and should probably be refined, but as a general idea I don't think it's that bad.  

So again, if you manage to photograph my blueprint and build whatever is drawn there, that's perfectly OK?

If I manage to copy your wallet file, the bitcoins are mine? And that's OK?

You own the paper it's made of, regardless of what's written on it.


You own the medium that it's recorded on, regardless if that medium has any data on it.


You own the paper it's made of, regardless of what's written on it.

An idea is one thing, but what about when the idea becomes perceptible?

A blueprint? A music composition? A book?

Are these examples of real property or intellectual property?

I would say that a blueprint of a working time machine is indeed scarce.

I think you're under the mistaken assumption that producing X entitles you to own X but let's say you break into my shop, steal a bunch of my wood and then build a chair out of it. Do you own the chair because you produced it? No, it's my chair plus you owe me for damages to my wood. I collect wood, you see, and I wanted it kept in pristine condition.

I again recommend reading the paper (it's only 73 pages and HIGHLY footnoted, so it's really more like 30-40 without footnotes), especially the sections titled "Some Problems with Natural Rights" and the next titled "Property and Scarcity". Kinsella argues (and I agree), that the need for property rights with tangible goods arises from their scarcity. My use of some object necessarily denies you the use of it. To solve this problem, we label one person the "owner" and in order to use the object, the owner must consent. There is no such scarcity in the realm of ideas, many people can use the same idea at the same time, thus property rights do not make sense.

You just provided excellent counterexamples to your thesis.  Mathematicians and philosophers don't make money by trying to own, and control the use of, theorems or philosophical constructs.  That's why you don't need to pay a royalty to the descendants of Pierre de Fermat and scores of other true geniuses for the use of cryptography and derived inventions, like BitCoin.  Nor you need to pay those of Adam Smith, Marx, or any of the Austrian economists for the use of it, even if some of their work could be proven to have been instrumental in inspiring BitCoin.

Do mathematicians "create" theorems?  What right would the descendants of Pierre de Fermat (or he himself, in his time) have to prevent you from rediscovering, say, Fermat's Little Theorem independently (such things happen in mathematics all the time), or from using it to prove other theorems or to invent new technologies, like public key cryptography?

One argument for patents is that the alternative would be secrecy.  A counterexample would be the RSA algorithm.  It was first "invented" by someone in some British secret agency and kept secret.  Not much later, a group of researchers discovered it independently and published it.  Now everyone can benefit from it.  I don't think their inventors regret the work they put into it.  Actually, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

When was the last time that anybody got rich by patenting a programming language?  Aren't these useful inventions?  Don't they get invented all the time?

In science and medicine it's not the rule either that progress comes from investments motivated by expectations to profit from restricting the use of information.  Your doctor doesn't get his money from trying to prevent others from using his "creations" (whatever this even means) without his permission.  The fruit of the application of his knowledge and intellect is an improvement in your health.  You (or someone) pay him for it because this application of knowledge is not easily reproducible.  If you could reliably heal yourself by checking a website and following simple instructions, doctors would have no business, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.  That talent would find something else useful to which apply itself.

In sum, mathematics, science, and medicine have progressed alright for centuries without anybody really needing to artificially restrict anybody else's use of information.  Information is variably hard to discover/produce, but, by nature, often trivial to reproduce.  You have no right to demand others to artificially renounce the benefits of this desirable property in order to protect a fundamentally unsound business plan.

The pharmaceutical industry does not require IP to be profitable. (Nor does any other industry.)

Right, because nobody would ever donate money to find cures for diseases like cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, diabetes, etc.

You should probably go ahead and withdraw your investements then, since generics are a well established industry.  And since the only thing that prevents this 'pirate' industry from undercutting the market price of any drug in existance is an international network of government enforced monopolies; should any of these major governments fail and be replaced with anything else, none are likely to be too concerned with enforcement of patent laws for a number of years.

Tell me before you abandon IP-law so that I can withdraw all money from medical research. Copying a drug is dead simple but finding a drug that is actually effective takes years of research by highly skilled professionals, not to mention expensive testing and clinical trials.

I recognize tangible property. I don't recognize imaginary property.


The fallacy is assuming that you are required to be successful in your attempts to use said property. You might have x-ray goggles but if I have lead-lined walls, you will fail in your usage.

As I thought, you couldn't care less about what I think, as long as you can get your hands on it. I guess since you don't recognize private property you won't either recognize the fundamental concept of violence, only it's tangible consequence.





Property rights include: the right of exclusion, the right of destruction, the right to transfer ownership and the right to use said property as I see fit, which consist, literally, in profiting from it. You're like telling me "hey see that car? it's yours, but you can't drive it". And anyways, what is this setup? You don't acknowledge my right to profit from my creation because I made it, but you acknowledge yourself the right to profit from it precisely because you had nothing to do with my work to begin with?


I agree with non aggression. The fact that people think they have a right to strip me of my production because they can't physically touch it and can't recognize aggression when it's in their face is beyond me though.

goatpig:

I recommend reading Stephen Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property, though it will definitely be more persuasive if you are already a libertarian and/or agree with the non-aggression principle.

Common sense means that such knowledge is held in common.  Are you suggesting that most people understand economics?



Those three ideas are useful, but I would not say that they equate to an understanding of economics.  What about the subjectivity of value?  The value scale?  Why people save?  The effects of capital accumulation and distribution?   Time preference?  Etc. etc.

You're right.  There's never been a successful operating system created without a profit motive or copyright.  There's also never been anyone who has tried to make a profit with anything in the public domain or with any ideas they couldn't use the gov't to force others not to copy.

If you let photons bounce off your object and those photons leave your property and strike my retinas, again, all bets are off. Keep your photons to yourself if you don't want me making use of the information they carry.


Whether or not you can successfully make use of your idea isn't my concern, you're still free to try which is what matters.


No, it's not.