[ExI] intellectual property again

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 9:34 PM, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I think the libertarian idea that we can begin with property rights
> and derive everything else from them is elegant, but doesn't work
> (from a utilitarian point of view), largely because of its parsimony.
> It is too simple, and ignores power.

### I am a bit of a strange libertarian in that I don't recognize
property rights as moral primitives from which all else flows. Rather,
property rights are contingent on the interactions of embodied minds
operating to fulfill desires in the physical world, they emerge
because very frequently they work (yes, it's a utilitarian notion,
just as what you espouse yourself). Let me plug for my current
thinking about polycentric law (
http://triviallyso.blogspot.com/2010/01/of-beating-hearts-part-2.html
) as the generator of rules which, as I imagine, would produce an
order most efficiently translating desires into actions in a social
setting. It would also most likely in many situations re-discover
strong property rights, including IP, yet contingent on the desires of
in-group members. The system would not start with property rights and
derive everything else from them - instead it would start with a
procedure for integrating and weighing human desires and derive from
it property rights and other lower-order rules. It's like an
all-ass-backwards type of libertarianism, please see the post and
don't get put off by its length.

Rafal