[ExI] intellectual property again.

[John Clark]

On Mar 6, 2010, at 5:01 AM, BillK wrote:

> All their [libertarian] contracts, fair markets, fair dealing, etc. only works
> between absolutely equal, mostly honest parties.

There is some truth in that, in the libertarian utopia you can only get perfect justice if the parties involved are honest and equal in power, but even without that restriction the free market can still provide pretty good justice. That's not as good as a system of regulations enforced by a national police force that is infinitely powerful and infinitely ethical, but it's still pretty good, and is rather easier to actually achieve on Planet Earth.

As for property rights, if we're talking about objects, some one person is required to control them and I agree entirely with standard libertarian philosophy on who that person should be, but when you're talking about intellectual property things become much more murky. One voice is not required to control intellectual property, and yet if it is not allowed to do so the growth of that very nifty intellectual stuff is likely to decrease. I also feel in my bones that it's true that information wants to be free and everybody should own it, but I also believe that we ourselves are information and we should be the exclusive owner of ourselves. I can't tame these contradictions and don't imagine anyone can until after the singularity. And perhaps not even then; it is not a question of how the universe works but only a question of how we think we should behave, and there is no reason to believe that will be consistent.

 John K Clark



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20100308/45e2488c/attachment.html>