http://www.solopassion.com/node/7285#comment-83769

Then further developed here:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/7285#comment-83773

Finally a tail piece here:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/7285#comment-83800

Objectivism does not support a no-IP position – from the founder of objectivism on up – just as the no-IP position could not support a capitalist economy, and is the enemy of individual liberty. I put it to you Mises would also be appalled at the duplicitous anarchist position being promoted on this site.

Your gravity/baseball analogy was brilliant. I think it’s a perfect illustration of the disparity between a deep and principled understanding, and a more superficial one. However, you’ve applied it in reverse. It’s only a superficial understanding of the concept of property that misapplies it to patterns and ideas.

You wrote:
“Property rights are a political concept, they must be based on something hierarchically antecedent. Economics – a special science – is not it.”

Ethics presupposes purposeful action, and any system of ethics is based on an understanding of human action, as such.
Ethics answers the question: “given that action works the way it does, which are the right actions to take?”

While the Objectivist ethics, like your “falling principle” is of course correct, it is based on the science of human action. In other words, it is based on economics (or more generally, praxeology).
The science of human action is not only prior to politics, but it’s required for ethics as well. Mises showed how it was derivable from epistemology.

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2009/12/objectivist-recants-on-ip.shtml

The discussion was fairly intense and (I think) I have managed to dissect the traditional Objectivist position on IP and shown it to be contradictory to basic Objectivist principles themselves.

I am mentioning this so that it enables more people to engage Objectivists they meet and try to bring them around by showing them the folly of treating ideas & patterns as “property” the way Ayn Rand did and Objectivists have been doing since that.

Hope it helps.

The fallacy here is assuming that the prohibition on being able to whack your neighbor on the head with your two by four is a limitation or restriction on your ownership of the two by four. It is not. The prohibition on your harming your neighbor has nothing to do with your property–it is a restriction on your right to action.

Step back for a minute here: look at what you are trying to do: you are trying to refute a position by a relabeling of an event. That should cue you in on something — that you made a mistake somewhere. The person you were responding to was saying that IP’s restrictions on “other people’s property” is not unique, in that physical property rights do this too. It is a point I have made before as well. You think that by shifting the focus of your description of the event — from the two-by-four to the neighbor’s head, you have refuted this. You haven’t. The prohibition pertains to both the 2×4 *and* the neighbor’s head.

As usual, we can see the problem most clearly in the EM spectrum. Like IP, it restricts people

Moreover, you’re begging the question when you call it “already-owned property”. The very question at stake is, who owns what? How far do those rights extend? You are assuming your conclusion when you say someone *already* owns the right to do this or that with “their” property. Even when someone owns e.g. land, it doesn’t mean they get to gun down aircraft above it. Someone who assumed it did in a debate about property rigths would be likewise begging the question. As when assuming that land gets you the right to EM radiation passing through. As when assuming property gets you all IP rights.

By the way, I will repeat my objection to Lord_Buzungulus,_Bringer_of_the_Purple_Light, whoever he is. You need to delete his incivil posts and those which do nothing but insult without adding to the discussion. Don’t try to excuse his behavior by saying you’d “have to” delete mine too. I *want* you to delete the posts of mine that are incivil. But keep in mind, just because they irritate you doesn’t mean they’re agains the rules of this forum. My remarks contribute to the discussion, while Lord_Buzungulus,_Bringer_of_the_Purple_Light’s do not.

Your frustration at the strength of my arguments is not the same as incivility.

If you don’t have a reason to grant Lord_Buzungulus,_Bringer_of_the_Purple_Light special privileges, then please remove the offending comments, because that’s exactly what it looks like.

This IP issue is a red herring. Avoidance. Obsessing on it masks the bankruptcy of the underlying conjectured condition of man under anarchism, which is: victim of multiple gangs/agencies/states frequently at war with each other.

Until that is cleared up, the issue of IP — although denying intellectual property rights would still be wrong — is trivial.

Sure, this is true of Austrians too. But it’s supposed to be true of Objectivists. Objectivists are libertarians on the basics of politics. I’m showing that this basic position is undermined by their IP views. IT’s incoherent.

I’m saying that you would probably agree with me that the basic idea is you can do anything you want, you should not have to live by permission. But then I’m arguing that the Objectivist-qua-IP-advocate ends up adopting the opposite presumption.

“In capitalist systems favored by Objectivists, you can do anything you want, except initiate force against others. It’s an ocean of permissibility or freedom, with little islands of prohibitions–things you may not do. You do not need to ask permission to do something. You may do whatever you want, so long as it does not initiate force–commit aggression–invade the borders’ of others’ property.

The Objectivist flips this presumption and adopts one akin to that of communism: you can’t use your property for “whatever you want”–you have to make sure the way you are using it isn’t similar to some other way someone else used their own property before, and if it is, you have to get permission. This is nonsense–and clearly unlibertarian. The only limit on my use of my property is that I cannot engage in aggression–using this property or other resources as means. ”

Do you stand by the full syntax of this or do you wish to clarify?

You are correct to pinpoint that because libertarians and Objectivists share a certain set of agreement that when we move off of that set there is a jarring disjoint.

The same thing happens between Christians and Objectivists and Conservatives and Objectivists and even Lefties and Objectivists! Just because the paths travel together in certain places does not mean they start from the same place, end in the same place or fully validate each other.

Property rights, as all valid rights, are based on Ethics, not on Economics.

Since libertarian ethics all branch off an arbitrary (i.e. ungrounded, not rationally derived) “non aggression principle”, it is quite obvious why libertarians cannot understand the actual nature of property rights. Their ethics can’t support them – so they try to ground them in economics.

Since the “non aggression principle” is actually right (and an Objectivist knows WHY it is right, and in what context), it is easy to see why the discussion between Objectivist and libertarian becomes so charged.

To use an exagerated metaphor to illustrate the point:

Let us say two people are discussing baseball. One of them understands the principle of gravitation, while the other simply assumes “the falling principle”.

While the discussion is restricted to Earth, they agree completely – their concepts produce the same results. But one day they start talking about how it would be to play baseball on the Moon.

At this point the guy who simply uses “the falling principle” is out of his depth, but he doesn’t know it. The claims of the other guy will seem absurd (mile long home run hits???).

The fact that his “principle” is not grounded in solid understanding, but a floating abstraction, renders him incapable of following the guy who actually understands gravitation. And makes that guys claims seem quite absurd.

In this case the Objectivist, who’s concept of rights is firmly grounded in a coherent ethics derived from basic facts and actual philosophical axioms is like the person who understands gravitation. The guy who blindly applies “the falling principle” because he doesn’t know better is the libertarian.

And when the Objectivist tries to explain to the libertarian that in certain contexts his understanding is incorrect, the libertarian answers “ah so you are in favor of aggression!”. Or, in our metaphor, “ah, so you are saying things don’t fall!”.

” This is nonsense–and clearly unlibertarian. ”

You can’t convince an Objectivist who thinks Libertarianism is nonsense by telling him that this statement is “unlibertarian”. IMO, you need to show him that it is contradictory to basic Objectivist principles themselves (that’s what I tried to do). Just wanted to highlight this for all Libertarians who are still reading this.

The first thing to note is the plain fact that people are routinely prevented from using their material property when it would violate any right — so the protection of intellectual property rights would not be unique in so “controlling” other people in their use of their material property. For example, my neighbor’s person and property rights are not violated when he is not allowed to spontaneously whack me in the head with his fully-owned two-by-four. His rights are not violated in preventing him from using his tangible truck to pull up to my house and drive off with my entertainment center. We are all restricted from using our persons and property to violate the rights of others, and such restrictions do not themselves constitute an infringement of rights because nobody has the right to violate rights.

The fallacy here is assuming that the prohibition on being able to whack your neighbor on the head with your two by four is a limitation or restriction on your ownership of the two by four. It is not. The prohibition on your harming your neighbor has nothing to do with your property–it is a restriction on your right to action. You are not permitted to engage in the action of invading your neighbor’s body–with any means whatsoever. All action employs means. If you are prohibited from committing battery or murder, this implies you can’t use any means to cause this. The means invariably includes scarce resources. These resources may or may not be owned by the aggressor. The aggressor is not permitted to hit his neighbor with his own two by four, or even with the neighbor’s two by four.

If I am not permitted to bash my neighbor in the head wiht my own two by four, that is not because there is a limitation on my ownership rights on the two by four–it it a limitation on waht actions I can perform. And the reason I cannot bash my neighbor in the head is because he owns his body–he has a property right to control his own body. So the inability to use my two by four in a certain way is a result of my neighbor’s property rights in his own scarce resource (his body). This supposed “limitation” on property rights in scarce things presupposes property rights in scarce things.

Note that the reason we all agree I am not permitted to perform this action, is that we all agree my neighbor owns his body. This is not controversial.

But Perkins wants to say that just as your rights in your two by four are limited–you can’t just use it for anything, after all–so your rights in other property is limited. You can’t use it to perform a certain method, say. The problem here is that using the stick to bash in another’s head is aggression, and that’s why it can’t be used that way. But patterning my stick a certain way, or using it to perform a method, or building a machine out of it, does not commit aggression. It does not invade the borders of my neighbor’s property. It does not bash his head in. It does not take any property from him at all. To say that it violates his property rights is to beg the question, by presupposing he has an IP right in some pattern or logos.

Note that Objectivists usually recognize that man has a right to live by right, not by permission. In communist systems you can do only that which is permitted. It’s a sea of prohibitions, with tiny islands of permission. You live by permission of the state-master.

In capitalist systems favored by Objectivists, you can do anything you want, except initiate force against others. It’s an ocean of permissibility or freedom, with little islands of prohibitions–things you may not do. You do not need to ask permission to do something. You may do whatever you want, so long as it does not initiate force–commit aggression–invade the borders’ of others’ property. The Objectivist flips this presumption and adopts one akin to that of communism: you can’t use your property for “whatever you want”–you have to make sure the way you are using it isn’t similar to some other way someone else used their own property before, and if it is, you have to get permission. This is nonsense–and clearly unlibertarian. The only limit on my use of my property is that I cannot engage in aggression–using this property or other resources as means.

@Stephan Kinsella:
Great work on this topic. You are a fascinating guy. But… IMHO your use of STFU is not conducive to moral-suasion.

@All:
How about we all stick to making our own points and skip the time wasted trying to label others or put them in a box?

@Peter Surda,
Great summary of the situation on IP. Looking at comsumer/producer angles brings things into focus. The problem of using an idea is not that I create something that embodies the idea, it is that I try to sell it and therefore devert monopoly rents from the inventor. I can still create my interpretation of my concept of the idea that I picked up from the inventor’s creation. Afterall, I do own the materials used to create it.

@Jay Lakner:
You laid out a great exposition on rights! Loved it. I think history shows how patents and IP have been used as a means of enforcing monopoly rents on the rest of us.

@Pedro:
Jay is right, in a one man world, the concept of rights does not exist. It is similar to Mel Brooks proclaiming, “It is good to be the King”. If you are the King, there is only one of you and you are superhuman, so you own everything. It is only when humans come into contact with each other on an equal footing that conflict arises. Due to scarcity, we must figure out how to peacefully allocate resources. Property rights are an extension of the ownership of your own body, as Hoppe states.

My use of an idea in no way impinges on your simultaneous use of that idea. Therefore the idea is not scarce. The concept of a single inventor of an idea is silly; it would only apply if a new born babe conceptualized the idea, with no prior knowledge. All ideas are built on the ideas that came before.

If IP is valid, then why would it have a time limit? What other property rights have time limits? A time limit is a utilitarian solution to an invalid premise.

The use of IP is a hold over from the mercantilist days of King granted monopolies. Let’s move on to new ways of collecting rents for ideas! If I write a book and post it online for anyone to read, and then contract with companies to advertise on my site, then I am collecting rents on my content without resorting to IP. If someone want to copy my content off to their site, then they are free to compete, but I am free to inform the public of this fact and intice them to be loyal to my brand.

Does anyone have any good ideas on replacing IP rents? Oh, and anarchism does not have to mean lawlessness, just no government authority. Associations would be fine.

Update: Diana Hsieh, the owner of the blog in question, has banned me from commenting there, so I can’t respond or answer questions–so I have to rely on my fellow Misesian commentors here to go over there and make the case.

My comment there was:

Greg,

For those interested, I’ve laid out why I think the entire Objectivist case for IP is flawed and unlibertarian in various articles and posts. I list these below; I encourage those Objectivists seriously interested IP to consider these arguments.

Articles: “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism” (in particular see here and the section on Libertarian Creationism); also “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide”; for an alternative to the Randian approach to rights and politics, see What Libertarianism Is.

Media: I discuss problems with Rand’s view at length on the Peter Mac show and at the Mises University this year; also The Intellectual Property Quagmire, or, The Perils of Libertarian Creationism.

Blog posts: Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and “Rearrangement Rights”; Libertarian Creationism; Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors; Inventors are Like Unto …GODS…. Also these blog posts: Intellectual Products and the Right to Private Property; New Working Paper: Machan on IP; Owning Thoughts and Labor; also Elaborations on Randian IP; and Objectivists on IP.

oxymoron to all but a randian.

“Independent invention must be recognized. However the burden of proof rests on the person claiming independent invention to show that he did not have access to the original. Patent systems usually circumvent this issue by publishing patent requests and assuming everyone has read them (the merit of this solution is debatable).”

The burden of proof rest on the accuser not the accused. Copying without consent is an act of aggression and the person claiming the other person didn’t independently discovered, but copied his original has the burden of proof.

Many people can not seem to comprehend what Pedro is saying because they don’t have a sense of a natural rights ethics based on objective reality. Also Rothbard is a better source than Rand regarding Ethics and I suggest everyone to read more Rothbard regarding property rights, in general.

Whoever uses the the word “assigned” regarding rights, is a positivist that thinks rights are based on social contracts.