“Interesting how Rothbard talks about possible extensions of praxeology as well as “axiomatics,” the logical-deductive approach of Hoppe that is compatible with, if not a type of, praxeology.”

http://blog.mises.org/archives/005430.asp

On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property:

http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-10.pdf

Björn Lundahl

What’s funny here is that Mises would agree that understanding particular subjective motivations (or valuations) are irrelevant to the scientist and should be left to those who do endeavor in psychology.

Amen to that, JIMB.

In a pure free market without government enforcement of copyright laws, it might not make a great difference or at least not in many cases.

This because of the reason that producers of, for example, intellectual property would, in a free market, have the legal rights to stipulate in contracts that customers would not be allowed to copy the products and not either to resell them to third parties without stipulating the same terms. Secondly if third parties would make copies knowing those restrictions (that is being aware of the fact that the original owners did not sell all the rights to their properties) without any restrictions on their purchases, they might still be in trouble.

In a free market the flexibility of the participants are nearly unlimited and the market solves economic problems when it is profitable and needed.

Björn Lundahl

More importantly, the very notion of “property” is completely incompatible with the nature of ideas. Not only is it impossible to achieve the desired artificial scarcity without resorting to draconian restrictions enforced by Leviathan’s threat of violence; but also the closer we come to achieving this, the fewer benefits we reap from the very ideas whose creation we are trying to encourage.

The most wonderful thing about ideas is that they are nonrivalrous: any number of people may “possess” and use the same idea at the same time without interfering with anyone else’s ability to do so. If that were true of physical goods, we would have no need for property at all! And yet we view this marvelous property of ideas as a problem to be solved, because we fear that supply and demand won’t operate “properly” on them!

But I would very much like to know how the problems that IP is meant to solve can be solved without violating the non agression principle.

Answers on a postcard please…

This does not mean, of course, “that not even the sun has its dark spots.”

Björn Lundahl

So murder = manslaughter ?

This is what we get when a good economist tries to become a lawyer …

I am so ready for MISES.org to get back to MISES.

But there is no such property right as the “right” to make a copy of something; the only thing that keeps Green from doing so is that as a condition of buying the mousetrap from Brown, he had to agree to a contract that restricted him from doing so. But as Black has made no such contract, he is bound by no such restriction.

Copyrights are an unnatural, unenforceable mockery of real property rights; moreover, the information age is increasingly demonstrating that they are counterproductive, stifling innovation and entrepreneurship. Libertarians should understand this better than anyone.