[ExI] intellectual property again

[Spencer Campbell]

JOSHUA JOB <nanite1018 at gmail.com>:
> Well, the government doesn't have to punish itself, because it isn't initiating force (as it is restricted only to punishing other people's initiation of force, it is, in essence, an institutionalized self-defense for the entire population).

I don't buy it. The government cannot perform self-defense on behalf
of other people. Aside from that, ALMOST ALL instances of self-defense
qualify as "force".

Certain martial arts can enable you to sidestep this. Aikido, for
example. However, if you actually looked at all the aikido
practitioners in the world, I expect you would see that the vast
majority are still mostly using force even though they're told not to.

It takes at least ten years to kick that habit. Even then, we relapse.
Frequently. Take it from someone who caught his sensei invisibly
devolving into brutality during a demonstration, for no reason at all,
just enough to fail at throwing me.


JOSHUA JOB <nanite1018 at gmail.com>:
> What exactly do you mean "law that enforces itself", do you mean no government at all? Or just more obvious laws?

Out of the two, I would lean towards "more obvious laws". I think it
would be better to say "more natural laws", however. Laws which not
only aren't arbitrary, but clearly do not *appear* arbitrary.

Generally, people drive on the correct side of the road whether or not
you tell them to. It just makes visceral sense. If you drive on the
wrong side, you will crash into someone. Simple.

The same is not true of, say, littering, or loitering. It isn't
intuitively *obvious* to people that it isn't in their best interest
to do these things, and so it happens a lot. Statistically speaking,
you see many orders of magnitude more litterers than you do malicious
drivers.

The difference is essentially this: an arbitrary law is enforced by
consequences imposed by other people, whereas a natural law is
enforced by consequences of your own actions.

I should stress that this has nothing to do with how "good" the law
is; only how easily the population accepts it. The more natural a law
is, the fewer resources you need to devote to maintaining it. If the
law is good and right in addition to that, implement it.


JOSHUA JOB <nanite1018 at gmail.com>:
> As property rights are vital for a government to enforce (if it is going to be concerned with enforcing anything, really), IP doesn't seem that much more complicated than the numerous issues involved in "material" property.

And yet it is much, much more complicated, for the simple reason that
intellectual property is fundamentally easier to steal. In fact, you
can steal it just by looking at it. Nothing can stop you.

I don't think it's possible, even in theory, to construct a
self-enforcing copyright system. To me, this indicates that we may be
looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Indeed, I think you're
seeing a problem where there really isn't one.