Wal-Mart Is Right

[Lloyd Danforth]

Let's take real life:

Why should one person throw another in jail for copying his book?

I agree. No Jail.  No Gov interference.  Steven King should come down from Bangor and kill Alan for coppying and underselling his book.  I would.

[JonM]

Building a table is not intellectual?

Skill != creativity.  Copying a design takes far less than creating a design.  And your basic table is a flat piece of material with 3 or 4 legs attached to it.

[Zork]

So I should spend years and millions of dollars making a drug and then have someone copy the drug and then I don't get to recoup my investment?  What incentive do I have to make more drugs?

I know this conversation has moved from drug patents to copyrights, but I just wanted to mention that the solution to a situation like this is name recognition. If your drug company has a good reputation, people will support you and buy your products, even if they can find the exact same product cheaper. A huge example of this is Tylenol. You can buy the exact same medicine cheaper, but people still buy the Tylenol brand simply because they trust the name. I could start my own company today and sell the exact same medicine as Tylenol, but I won't run Tylenol out of business, in fact, it'll probably be exceedingly hard to get my foot in the door.

Which can be applied to this copyright debate also.  Stephen King's publisher can simply advertise as the only publisher of King's novels that pays him money, so readers who wish to support him, will buy from the official publisher instead of the knockoff.

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Edit:  Always preview your post first!

[fourthgeek]

I definitely like the idea of abolishing patents (as much as I like the idea of anarchy), but there's an interesting trend when a government becomes more libertarian.

Pragmatically speaking, reducing government size from huge to medium would make things so much better. Reducing government from medium to small would have many benefits, as well. But how many benefits do we really see, going from small government to no government? Very likely some improvement, but the debate is, of course, at what cost.

My point is, as the government gets smaller and smaller, we have less and less to gain, and possibly more and more to lose.

Thus, while anarchy and no patents might operate perfectly fine, it is probably most expedient to keep the strictest of controlled governments and the shortest of patent lengths. If medicenes are patented for a maximum of one or two years, we are preserving the profit motive at little cost to society.

[Caleb]

Governments DON'T get smaller and smaller gradually.  The whole premise is off.  Freedom is seized in huge chunks during short periods of times (called Revolutions).  Then gradually, things get worse and worse until they have to seize another chunk of freedom again.   

So the question is:  This time, how big of a chunk do you want to seize?

Caleb

[Zork]

Thus, while anarchy and no patents might operate perfectly fine, it is probably most expedient to keep the strictest of controlled governments and the shortest of patent lengths. If medicenes are patented for a maximum of one or two years, we are preserving the profit motive at little cost to society.

But the point is, governments are like a living thing, with a need to grow and continue it's own existance.  Thus, if government is allowed to exist, you must constantly fight it to keep it from growing back into the bloated mess that exists today.

[fourthgeek]

I wasn't neccessarily suggesting that governments do become more libertarian, but I was theoretically comparing different stages of growth.

Which, yes, they do grow. Always have, and I'm sure they always will. The struggle for liberty will likely be eternal. No matter how much we limit a government, if the people want communism they will get it one way or another. No constitution (and no anarchy) is going to hold them back from that.

All we can do is define what we want for ourselves, and I still firmly hold that as good as anarchy may be in theory...the same can be said of all political ideologies. Most pertinent is that we get a small government, and if our society can withstand an even smaller one - great. If it can handle none - all the better.

It's just nearly impossible to visualize whether or not it will work since we are so far from it. There are much more important battles to be fought than minarchy vs. anarchy at the moment. Let us fight those battles when they are more than an intellectual debate among us extremists.

[FrankChodorov]

Right I am not talking the govt either.

Stealing is stealing.

When you pass on a joke you have heard, do you call it stealing? Thoughts are thoughts. If we didn't use other folks thoughts we could not gain knowledge or communicate.

where exactly do we draw the line?

are paragraphs intellectual property?
are sentences?
are words?
are letters?

why some libertarians are so good on understanding the salient issues around monopoly privilege as it relates to non-rivalrous intellectual property and so many are so bad at understanding the issues around monopoly privilege on rivalrous land ownership violating labor-based property rights of those being excluded is beyond me...

[tracysaboe]

We've been over this numerous times. Proerty is a scarce resource and hense private property rights develope naturally around them. Patent law and Copywrites aren't scarce and hence property rights don't develope naturally around them.

They're too completely different things. And you know that. Copyrights and Patents violate the rights of actual property owners.

Get a life.

Tracy

[AlanM]

Intellectual thought (property?) existed pre-copyright protection. If copyrights were to be discontinued, intelectual thoughts/writings would still continue to exist. (They existed pre-copyright) Therefore, one is not dependent on the other. Copyrights and patents are merely Gov granted monopolies.

[FrankChodorov]

We've been over this numerous times. Proerty is a scarce resource and hense private property rights develope naturally around them. Patent law and Copywrites aren't scarce and hence property rights don't develope naturally around them.

They're too completely different things. And you know that. Copyrights and Patents violate the rights of actual property owners.

the economic rent and the symbols used to communicate are both socially created not individually created.

therefore private enclosure of both violate the equal access opportunity rights of those who are being denied.

[FrankChodorov]

Intellectual thought (property?) existed pre-copyright protection. If copyrights were to be discontinued, intelectual thoughts/writings would still continue to exist. (They existed pre-copyright) Therefore, one is not dependent on the other. Copyrights and patents are merely Gov granted monopolies.

same is true of land as it pre-exists human labor and even in an anarchy economic rent would still exist.

ever heard of "land patents"?

[AlanM]

Intellectual thought (property?) existed pre-copyright protection. If copyrights were to be discontinued, intelectual thoughts/writings would still continue to exist. (They existed pre-copyright) Therefore, one is not dependent on the other. Copyrights and patents are merely Gov granted monopolies.

same is true of land.

ever heard of "land patents"?

Before there were "land patents" (Gov granted monopoly) there was private property. Property was controlled by defending it. It would continue to exist without Gov granted monopoly.

[FrankChodorov]

Intellectual thought (property?) existed pre-copyright protection. If copyrights were to be discontinued, intelectual thoughts/writings would still continue to exist. (They existed pre-copyright) Therefore, one is not dependent on the other. Copyrights and patents are merely Gov granted monopolies.

same is true of land.

ever heard of "land patents"?

Before there were "land patents" (Gov granted monopoly) there was private property. Property was controlled by defending it. It would continue to exist without Gov granted monopoly.

and even in the absence of the state (anarchy) economic rent collected by the landowner is a tax (forced) on the wages of those being excluded.

[AlanM]

Intellectual thought (property?) existed pre-copyright protection. If copyrights were to be discontinued, intelectual thoughts/writings would still continue to exist. (They existed pre-copyright) Therefore, one is not dependent on the other. Copyrights and patents are merely Gov granted monopolies.

same is true of land.

ever heard of "land patents"?

Before there were "land patents" (Gov granted monopoly) there was private property. Property was controlled by defending it. It would continue to exist without Gov granted monopoly.

and even in the absence of the state (anarchy) economic rent collected by the landowner is a tax (forced) on the wages of those being excluded.

Fact of life.
Your solution grants another type of monopoly, be it by Gov, or some other "authority" over the individual. Your perceived "unfairness" of the situation leads you to wish to control others property. Your solution is all about control, nothing more.