howardofski

Real life is lost? That's a bit of overwrought rhetoric. Without IP law (and 99+% of ideas are NOT protected by IP laws) human beings are free to use the best ideas available to them - whatever the source. Today's innovator is tomorrow's imitator - and visa versa. That we all learn from one another is one of the benefits to being humans. It is not a dilemma, except for those who want to corner markets by coercively controlling other people's lives and property. IP law is not a protection of rights. We do not have a right to the effort or material of others. We do not have a right to customers or market share. But we do have a right to use our own effort and materials in imitation of others when we recognize a superior way to live our lives. This is not parasitism; it is education. Education does not victimize teachers. The desire to turn learning into a crime for the benefit of market share requires the metaphorical pretense that actions and ideas are scarce objects and can be owned.

If I take your car, you no longer have it. If I imitate your idea, you still have it. How long will you continue to write as if this is not a glaring and important moral difference?

Exactly right. The most difficult debate position, though, is where a great idea must be made public in order to be put into use. The pro-IP position is that violence may then be used to stop other people from implementing the great idea so the originator of the idea can win the human race, not by going fast, but by slowing everyone else down. The pro-IP argument paints imitators as 'thieves', but it is the pro-IP position which is that of a thief who believes that he, not you, should be in control of yourself and your property. He wishes to steal your liberty to use your property in what you think is the best way, so that you remain dependent on him.

No one is questioning the value of good ideas. What's being questioned is your right to prevent people from acting on good ideas using their own property because you want to corner a market by force. To earn is to receive a voluntarily given reward from someone else. It doesn't mean to decide for yourself how valuable you are to others and then force them to pay you accordingly or force everyone to deal only with you.

Actually, no it isn't. Firings of your brain are actions of an object. Actions and objects are not the same thing. If I imitate you, I have in no way taken anything from you which is yours by right. You retain your ideas, your materials, your freedom to act. You write: "Using an idea formed by another man that was intended to be sold to support him... is the same thing [as] stealing his car." No it isn't. His intentions are not moral laws governing others. That he thought of an idea does not give him the right to take control of other people and their property. He has the right to apply his idea to his property and offer the result on the market. He does not have the right to restrict others in their use of their own property.

Your desire to own customers, their wealth, other people's materials is alarming. To earn is to receive the voluntarily given. You are not talking about earning. You are claiming the right to force the market on your behalf.

A pattern is an arrangement of objects or parts of objects or the actions of objects and their parts. Action, pattern, color temperature, size - and dozens of other descriptive terms are all abstractions referring to attributes of objects. An idea is an attribute of a body. It is a pattern of action taken by a body. An idea is not an object. A pattern can be imitated, but it can't be stolen. I can take an object away from you. I cannot take an idea away from you.

Yes, existence is primary and what exists are objects. Their attributes are abstractions, not separate entities. Objectivism was a philosophical term before Ayn adopted it - quite accurately - to refer to her position. Objects can be owned by one person, excluding ownership by another - this concept usually being referred to as 'scarcity'. But attributes can apply to unlimited objects - objects can share the similarity of an attribute. Attributes are not 'scarce'.

No. I own my head. An idea is a pattern of activity - an attribute of what I own.

This sort of psychobabblistic epistemological diagnostics are what "objectivists" do when they run out of logic. Ayn discussed - at great length - the idea of a "floating abstraction". A perfect example is the abstraction of pattern or motion floating free of the object of which it is an attribute. To claim that you can own a pattern when the object forming that pattern is not your property is a prime example of a floating abstraction. Objectivism is so named because it begins with objects. To claim that you can own the attributes of objects without owning the objects is to float free of Objectivism, logic, and property rights.

Your ignorance of Libertarianism is what is silly. It begins with property rights. I'm amazed that you are that ignorant..

Exactly - there you have it. You just can't own an idea in my mind, much as you may wish to own it.

You did not say "my monopoly control...". You said "The govt gunslingers having a monopoly on the use of force in retaliation against aggressors...". You are dropping your own context. A gang calling themselves government does not have a right to monopolize the use of force - for any purpose. You of course have a right to monopolize your use of your property. But ideas are not your property when they are in someone else's head.

In addition to our own bodies, all physical goods that we have traded for or homesteaded or received as gifts. We own our own minds and have the right to use our property in accordance with the best of our knowledge. If someone tells you that you may not use your property to the best of your knowledge because he owns your knowledge, explain to him that he will never own anything that is in your mind, that he does not own your physical property and does not "own" your use of it. Explain to him that he has no right to force you to do what is stupid with your property because he claims to own what is smart.

No it isn't. Monopoly is a violation of rights.

No, he isn't.

No, it isn't.

I do not own what "could have been". I do not "lose" when I do not get what "could have been". To claim that I am losing because I have competition and would do so much better without the competition is absurd. To claim that customers have been "stolen" from me is absurd. I do not own potential customers. You are not "practically" taking money from my pocket.

After you reveal it to me, it then becomes one of my ideas as well. If you want to be paid for revealing it to me, get a contract first or keep it to yourself. There is a political system that says government will decide who can make what and who can trade with whom, but it isn’t Capitalism.

No, they won't stop that because it is the whole secret to the pro-IP argument. It is to pretend that ideas, like material things, can be owned, and then to pretend that customers can also be owned. Without those two errors, the whole IP argument collapses.

The debate here is about whether ideas can be property. To continue assuming what is being questioned and then compare ideas to farms and bicycles in order to explain what stealing is, misses the debate entirely. To argue that when I imitate you I am causing you to lose sales, is to argue that you own those sales in the first place. But you do not own those sales or those customers or their choice to buy from you or me. Insisting that since you were the first to think of an idea, you "deserve" those customers is a specious argument. You will never "deserve" other people or their money (except where voluntarily contracted for). Your life is filled with the benefits of the thinking of other people, which you received for free. That is one of the wonders of being human. We learn from others and humanity progresses. Referring to learning as "stealing" so as to excuse the desire to get rich by means of a coercive monopoly is not rational or moral. You have the right to keep your great new idea secret, but once you make it public, you do not have the right to pull a gun and claim to own an idea which is now in the minds of others. Also, you will not be able to prove that you thought up the idea or that you thought it up first. All you will ever prove is that you got to the government gunslingers first, so you win the prize of a coercive monopoly.

In the example we are discussing, there has been no mention of force. No one is proposing that you not benefit from your actions, nor that your farm be stolen. The question here is what have you lost if someone imitates you? That simple question assumes nothing about stealing your farm or forcing anything on you, let alone taking the life that should have been yours. If you have an idea and implement it, what's the problem? If I imitate you and implement the same idea, how have you lost the life you should have had?

What contract are you referring to? If I imitate you, I have not breached a contract unless I signed a contract in advance.

Time, money, resources are not lost to you if I imitate you. If I benefit from your idea, how is it that you lose? Can you name what you used to have, that you no longer have - what you used to own, that has now been taken from you?

Pro-IP thinkers really should be able to answer the simple question: what is lost to the originator of an idea when his idea is imitated? What did he used to own, that he no longer owns. Pro-IP thinkers consistently fail to answer that question.