Mnrchst

It sounds like you're just arguing straight-up utilitarianism. Why not say "But why should someone be able to keep a bunch of oil in their basement when this oil could be used to create more stuff?" This ignores the question of *where* the invention came from.

That's true. But suppose that this invention would've ( a ) been invented by someone else 1 year later ( b ) the year-later inventor would've given up the patent or charged less for its use and ( c ) the patent is longer than a year (perhaps 20 years). Now there are a lot of people who WILL lose something relative to the counter-factual. Yes, I agree in principle with what you're saying, but the critical issue is the term of the patent and the context of the invention.

So you're saying that as long as someone isn't threatening your life, they're not violating your rights? I don't see how you can really believe that. Is your life threatened if someone steals one of your socks? I currently am leaning towards opposition to patents (or at least patents longer than a few weeks) on the grounds that the duration of the invention (see my previous posts) can't really be proved. But this scarcity argument ("I'm not losing anything") doesn't jibe for me. This ignores that all property is fundamentally intellectual and that a creation of an invention is fundamentally the same as someone creating a chair with their own two hands--people deserve the fruits of their effort to create something with their minds, which is how all creation occurs.

Yes, I know. I'm just asking *IF* we could know, would you want that as the standard? Here's an analogy: Rand said murderers deserve the death penalty morally but not politically, because of the epistemological problem of not knowing completely for sure (as in metaphysically) if anyone ever murders someone. So isn't it at least plausible to say that there's the moral standard of the patent existing the length of the time until it would have been invented until someone else even though we can't get that politically because we can't know that length of time?

In response: There's the argument that "all property is fundamentally intellectual". http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ls_intellectual_property

You're misunderstanding me. I'm drawing a distinction between the concept "apple" AS SUCH and "Person X is thinking about the concept of 'apple' ". Yes, there can be no idea not in someone's head, but that doesn't mean you can't conceive of the idea of "apple" without it being in someone's head.

*** Mod's note: Merged with an existing topic. - sN *** http://en.wikipedia....mited_liability I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I get why this exists. People don't want people to be fined just for investing in a corporation if there was a disaster that was the result of employees not following protocol. On the other hand, without enough investment, the employees couldn't have made X disaster happen because they couldn't have been in the position to make it happen.

I'm saying *what if* we could know. Do you see my point? If you *could* know, wouldn't you use this as the standard? If not, why not? What would be a better standard? Anyone who benefits from knowledge of the invention, even if its just "I'm glad I know this"

You mean potentially forever? We should have patents on inventions from hundreds of years ago? This is vague. How exactly are we to tell the difference? That there is no right to control the contents of someone's mind doesn't preclude the possibility of ideas (as such) as property. You're confusing ideas (as such) with ideas in someone's head.

They can (as long as it's in the 'will' of the inventor).

I'm saying they ought to reap the profits of their invention. If they invent something that was going to be invented one year later, their invention is the invention of this invention for one year--that's how long it takes until their invention no longer counts as an invention because it was invented by someone else. If someone invents X and someone else would have invented X 5 years later, then the invention of X is more valuable than if it would have been invented by someone else one month later. Do you see my point? That's true and irrelevant to this discussion. I'm asking what ought to be our standard. What do you think is a better standard? Why?

Indefinitely? As for the time period--it's an objective measurement of their contribution of the invention (how long it takes until their contribution stops existing in the counter-factual).

To milked: Then why did Rand oppose indefinite patents? If we can agree that patents should exist and shouldn't be indefinite, then that takes us to the question of how long they should exist and by what standard(s) we ought to use to determine this, which is the point of this thread.

I'm interested in reading this in its entirety. I'd like to do this for free. :|

I definitely think people have a moral right to control the use of their ideas. Translating this into politics in where it starts to get incredibly complex for me. The way I see it is like this: If an inventor invents something and no one else would have invented it for 100 years, then the inventor deserves a 100 year patent. If, however, an inventor invents something and no one else would have invented it for one month, then the inventor deserves a one month patent. This is an objective measurement of their contribution by inventing the invention. The problem then is determining the most likely patent term (that would correspond with reality, which we can't know without the counter-factual). Another way of looking at it would be to err on the side of a short patent term, because if the patent is too short, only one person (the inventor) is harmed, whereas if the patent is too long, everyone else gets harmed. I'm not sure if I prescribe to this way of looking at it. I think I'm more comfortable with the idea of just determining the most likely patent term at the present time. The other problem of course is determining how you would go about determining the most likely patent term. Anyway, my point is this: when you consider that all sorts of people are trying to invent something all the time, it seems absurd to me that the typical inventor's contribution when they invent something is 20 years. Yet, in the U.S. and other countries, they dole out the 20 year patent. But do inventors typically invent something that wouldn't have been invented for another 20 years? That's insane. What we end up with is oil companies buying up patents for alternative means of getting energy and transportation and newcomers to the market unable to get technology 19 years old without getting permission from someone else first. Furthermore, let's suppose an inventor invents something so amazing (perhaps it was dependent on several other inventions of theirs that they kept secret) that the general consensus is that this wouldn't have been invented for several decades. Wouldn't it therefore be wrong to have the patent be only 20 years? These are just some initial thoughts of mine on the issue. Whaddaya guys think?

You're right. What I meant was that they cannot value outside of the context of being alive. In other words, they're not valuing themselves, but they're valuing their own pleasure (which they get from not valuing themselves, as in altruism). What are the errors the article makes about Rand? (other than it's assertion that she doesn't really believe in free will).

http://mises.org/daily/4698 I surmise the author is in Rothbard's camp and deliberately misrepresented Rand's and Rothbard's views in order to covertly promote anarcho-capitalism, but I'm wise to his slight of hand. He presents the discrepancy as "Rand said people don't have complete freedom of choice and Rothbard says they do" in order to make Rothbard's political position seem better. Obviously, people do have complete freedom of choice, but what the author fails to mention is that people are "condemned to be free" as Sartre would put it. We cannot choose to not value ourselves in the sense that we always value what we desire because we're desiring it. Even if someone says "I choose to kill myself because I hate myself", they're still valuing themselves is the sense that they're choosing an action that they desire as opposed to alternatives they don't. So this is what Rand means when she says that people are always valuing themselves, not that they're always valuing rational things, or that they don't have free will. So how this relates to the political debate: Rand recognizes what exists--people are always valuing themselves, and, therefore, there are objective values (i.e. you cannot value without valuing your life, because you cannot value without existing, and even if you choose suicide because you're in a concentration camp, you're still valuing your life because you value your own life enough to not want to suffer as opposed to continuing to suffer unnecessarily). Therefore, because there are objective values (which we deduce from this, like 'don't murder', etc), it makes sense to say that a society should have one set of laws, even if judges and cops compete with one another for funding (because they can only get them from donations), because there needs to be this objectivity in order for there to be a moral society--a society that recognizes that values are objective and that there are therefore things that are objectively wrong (this of course doesn't demonstrate that Minarchist society's laws will be good, but this problem exists in an Anarcho-capitalist society as well, so it's a moot point. No Minarchists ever say "If 51% of the population vote that it's right, then it is"). Rothbard basically says "Sure, you can value the anti-yourself, even though you have to exist in order to value anything. People have free will, right?" He's rebelling against reality. 'Why can't people believe whatever they want?' Well, they can, but it's not necessarily going to correspond with reality, which is what it is whether you like it or not. And now we see how this translates into politics: If there are no objective values, then why would you have one set of laws? This wouldn't jibe with the notion that all values are fundamentally subjective. Instead, you ought to have agencies compete over their various sets of laws, because everyone should be able to compete over what values are good and bad with force, because everyone's values are just as good as anyone else's. As a result, the "market" of everyone's views should determine which laws get enforced and which don't.

Ok, it's a "civil violation" or whatever? Or we're talking about libel? Anyway, are you going to continue to argue your case?

Having thought about this a bit, I've decided that I favor defamation as crime in a very limited way: Let's say there's only one doctor in the world who can cure you of X problem, and I'm his assistant, and I tell you he'll kill you during the operation. That's definitely an attempt at murder because if you act on my information, you have no alternative except the disease harming you.

That's true. However, when I say "The car has brakes" then you're going to get killed if you drive it--that's tangible harm. If I say "This guy has done X Y and Z, so don't buy his stuff, talk to him etc." that's not actually harming someone. They might avoid getting a solution to a problem from that particular person, but you're not actually making whatever their problem is worse. You're giving them a reason to not address it with a particular person, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't address it by going to someone else.

Let me elaborate a little further: In the example you gave, I was provided no additional context. Suppose some guy tells me he collects cars. He wants a car you own towed to his house. He says he'll never drive the car, and there are multiple cars he owns that apparently have never been driven by anyone after he gets them. If you sell him a car that doesn't have brakes (and you know it) and he drives it and dies as a result of the lack of brakes, then you're guilty of manslaughter. If this guy's about to drive this thing out of the lot, then that's murder. If there's a guy who walks by and sees a glass of water and says "Is it OK to drink?" and you say "Yes" and it's actually poisoned (and you know it), and then he drinks it, then that's manslaughter. If he first says "May I drink that glass of water?" and you say "Yes", then that's murder regardless of whether or not he asks if it's OK to drink. Basically, if you have reason to believe someone's going to endanger their life, that's one thing. But what we're talking about is "Don't go to see this doctor--he deliberately murders people". They might avoid getting a solution to a problem from that particular person, but you're not actually making whatever their problem is worse. You're giving them a reason to not address it with a particular person, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't address it by going to someone else. Whether you agree or disagree, do you understand my position? You said: "So far, claims to immaterial property seem to me to be claims to the (otherwise) private actions of others" In other words, you're saying, "If you have property apply to immaterial things, then you're controlling another's material property, so doesn't that contradict that whole notion of property, that you control it because it's yours?" So here's my more elaborate response: There's no contradiction because all property is fundamentally immaterial because it is fundamentally intellectual. The fact that you're controlling another's property with your property isn't a problem--if I own a big hunk of marble, I'm controlling your chisel insofar as I'm preventing it from chiseling my marble. I'm sure you understand this because you recognize that you can't interfere with the marble--by doing so you're interfering with my ability to profit from my productive efforts (which are fundamentally intellectual), which, in this case, is represented by the marble. If you're using an invention I invented (shortly after I invented it and without my permission) with your own physical materials, then you're interfering with my ability to profit from my productive efforts (which are also fundamentally intellectual), which, in this case, is me inventing something. However, if immaterial property were held in perpetuity, then there are two terrible implications: one, that your invention is infinitely more valuable than any subsequent productive effort from using the invention, and two, that no one else would have ever invented the invention you invented if you hadn't invented it (because you get it forever). A 100 year patent therefore implies that no one else would have invented it for 100 years (unrealistic) and a 1 week patent therefore implies that someone else would have invented it 1 week later (unrealistic).

It's not, because all property is fundamentally intellectual--someone's doing some thinking to make a product even in a sweat shop. I will add, however, that this doesn't necessarily mean that every intellectual product must count as property.

No. I think it's manslaughter. You didn't murder the person because they drank the water, but you endangered their life by telling them something that is false (I think this is basically analogous to fraud or a death threat).

Wouldn't this mean that none of us can be held accountable for our behavior? "Prove a negative" means "prove X doesn't exist" which basically means "Prove unicorns don't exist." That's not what I'm talking about. My point is that you're saying "We know person B did so-and-so because person A did AND we know that it would not have happened if person A didn't do so-and-so." You can't prove that. You, in fact, are the one trying to prove a negative: that something wouldn't have happened were circumstances different. Why? No it isn't--how do you actually prove this? Furthermore, C and D are ultimately responsible for their actions. If you don't believe this, then there are no property rights ("you're only successful because you got a good upbringing") or crimes ("We can't punish him because he was abused as a child"). You're not providing a moral context for this. Someone could just as easily say slavery is good because it has "worked" and not led to legal contradictions. Just because it "works well" doesn't mean that it's moral. What do you even mean when you say it "works"? And I know why it works--people fear punishment. That doesn't mean we want to make this illegal. If alcohol were illegal, then would probably make killings caused by drunk drivers go down, but that doesn't mean it's a good law. Are you arguing straight consequentialism? I read these links (http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/libel-and-slander http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/217/ ) and it doesn't explain the position; it's merely an overview of how the law works and makes a couple assertions without clear justification. And I can just as easily surmise you haven't read the link because you're not bothering to justify it. Just make your arguments. Again, all I found that justifies these laws (and you haven't challenged my claiming this yet, so I don't know whether you think that's true or not) is " If the dentist did not have a disease and lost business due to the defamatory reports then the cause can only be those people who spread the false reports, and the dentist should win the suit. " And, again, this has a few problems. 1- you can't prove this and 2- even if it's true, the people who react are the ones responsible for their choices. We don't let murders off scott free because their parents were abusive, nor do we deny property to those who succeed because they had a lot of motivational people in their life. And, again, since we're talking about the withdrawal of value and not the inflicting of harm (you appear to have just conceded this point in your previous post), then we're not talking about damage at all--just the withdrawal of valuing. So even IF you reconcile the two problem I covered in the previous paragraph, this still means that there's no damage. As far as I can tell, in order to be consistent, you'd have to include someone starting a business which leads to the withdrawal of valuing of another's business.

For C and D's actions? How so? C and D decided to change their behavior, not A. Anything? No, my point is only that you can't prove that a person would not have stopped patronizing X business if the falsehoods weren't circulated. But this doesn't really matter--even if you demonstrate that a person made a decision because of the falsehoods, that doesn't mean they aren't responsible for their actions. You didn't address most of my post where I make this viewpoint explicit. Again, it's not damage--it's the withdrawal of value. And you're not explaining why this is a rights violation, just that there are things called rights and we shouldn't violate them. You wanna talk about obtuse? You have repeatedly said "But this is the law today" like that somehow makes it a good law, and I've stated THAT multiple times in this thread.