[ExI] intellectual property again.

Dan dan_ust at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 9 15:48:28 UTC 2010


Actually, this is not so -- that libertarian societies, to work, require "absolutely equal, mostly honest parties" -- and not believed to be the case by most libertarian thinkers of note. Instead, what's required is that no one is forced into contracts, markets, etc. In fact, most of the mechanisms at work in a libertarian society are just what people would do when they cannot use force against others: they develop and spread habits to vet who they should deal and how to avoid dishonesty and misunderstanding. A good example of this is how the science community tends to work: findings and theories are usually published for review by all and there is no science czar to determine who's got the correct theory or whose evidence is sound. Instead, any party might examine the evidence and arguments, draw their own conclusions, and submit these for others to scrutinize -- to agree with or disagree with.

Regarding intellectual property (IP), there are disagreements amongst libertarians on this, though the more consistent libertarians tend to be anti-IP. Arguments about pragmatics on this -- i.e., what might happen if there's no IP protection in place -- tend to overlook actual evidence. Whole industries seem to flourish with no IP protection today (restaurants, fashion, etc.) and the main driver of IP protection today seems to be not to create new stuff, but to keep competitors out.

Regards,

Dan


From: John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Mon, March 8, 2010 5:26:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] intellectual property again.


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/20100309/674db000/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list