Greebo
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Posts posted by Greebo
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And why should the Government refuse to recognize a contract between two parties if those parties did so willingly and with full understanding of the nature of the agreement?
Don't introduce an arbitrary third party slave again - this is a contract between two people about a piece of property and what one party will not do with it.
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Yes, people have free will - and if someone else comes up with my invention entirely on their own, that's possibly another matter - but you're saying that I cannot, as a part of the sale of my invention, ask for a commitment from you to not profit from my invention.
Unless you can prove that me *asking* for that commitment and someone else *voluntarily* agreeing to that commitment is an initiation of force against me or them, you cannot create a moral case for *stopping* us from reaching that mutual agreement.
So - can you make that case?
Because if you cannot, then I *must* be allowed to require that commitment as a condition of sale because the only way you can stop me from asking for that commitment and stop my customers from agreeing is by executing force against us.
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Are you even reading my posts? "Dear Government, I bought a slave the other day, the seller signed a contract with me saying the slave was in good health, and it wasn't. I want compensation" or "Dear Government, I sold a slave the other day, and the buyer signed a contract with me saying his gold saw legit, and now I found out it's fool's gold!" No one has the right to set any terms on a contract.
If in the 1700's such a transaction occurred, the Government WOULD have enforced it.
What no one has is the right to set terms they have no moral RIGHT to on a contract. For instance, no person has the right to own a slave, and so such a contract SHOULD not be enforced.
But if I contract you to play for my ball team for five years and I'll pay you a million a year on condition that you play for me exclusively and I find you've been moonlighting for the Mets, I'm gonna sue you for breach of contract and I'm going to win, because I bought something from you that YOU owned - YOUR PROMISE, and you broke it.
And that's all a copyright or a patent is - it's recognizing that THE ONLY way you're going to get your hands on something I produce is with the implicit agreement indicated by the © and the ® that you recognize and accept that requirement I've set on the sale of my product.
Yes, you possess it. That doesn't necessarily means the idea itself is your property. I've already addressed this point. Please read over this thread.No need. The idea exists in my head alone, and you've guaranteed that you'll never see how it works because I'll never sell it to you, or ever let you even see it in operation.
And that's me exercising my right to set the terms I like on MY idea. Congratulations - now the world may never get the cure for 4th stage lung cancer, cause I can't be guaranteed to make a profit on my effort.
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Not at all. But how can they be true Obj.ists and be making irrational decisions to leave Obj.ism?
To think is a choice.
To think requires work.
To be rational requires work.
We are O'ists because, among other things, we value being rational.
So couldn't an O'ist simply become *TIRED*? Tired of arguing? Tired of living in a world surrounded by people who don't give a fig about being rational? Tired of fighting against the current?
Can an O'ist make a deliberate choice to stop thinking - and thus deliberately choose to stop being an O'Ist because they believe that not in their own lifetime nor many to follow will mankind change its course enough to sufficiently make a difference?
I mean - it's EASY to be an O'ist when you're surrounded by other O'ists - Rand herself illustrated that in AS - that's what Galt's Gulch was - respite for O'ists to recharge, renew, be around like minded people, be AWAY from the world for a while. We don't have that option.
So what if an O'ist just gets tired of it all and simply chooses, irrationally, to give up the fight and play by everyone elses rules?
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You have the right to make certain stipulations and have the government enforce them.
I'm sorry? What in your opinion is the origin of rights? The Government?
Also, if I'm allowing you to refuse to sell a product on your terms, then how does it follow that I'm saying you should be able to sell it on the "you can't reverse engineer it" stipulation?You're refusing me the right to set the terms. You're saying that I cannot rightfully require that you agree to the only terms under which I would agree to the sale.
You claim I do not own the idea - but I'm the one who has it, not you, but if I sell you the product, you'll be able to figure out how the idea works NOT by figuring out the idea but by figuring out what I did and working backwards. You'll be taking my work and reverse engineering it, not coming up with something original.
If you had the idea yourself, you wouldn't need my product. I want to sell my product but not w/o the promise from you NOT reverse engineer the idea (or at least not to profit from doing so).
By what right do you tell me that I CAN NOT ask you to voluntarily agree to my terms?
And if the basis for your standard of a contract is purely legal enforceability, and my requirement can't be enforced, then what, you'll agree to my terms under false pretense, then say, "Oh well you can't really enforce that anyway" and so then violate our contract and there will be nothing I can do about it? Hence - you'll force me to sell you my product by deception and legal technicalities.
EITHER I can ask you to respect my wishes wrt reverse engineering or I can't. If I can't, then I can't refuse to sell you my product BASED on those terms (just like I by LAW can't refuse to rent my apartments to a black man because he's black (not that I would mind you but thats the perfect analogy to what you've set up here)). So if a black man wants to rent my apartment, and I don't want ot rent it to him because he's black, but only because he's black, I have no choice under law, I MUST rent it to him. Likewise if patent enforcment isn't legal, I CAN'T REFUSE to sell to you simply because you won't promise not to steal my idea.
Hence, force.
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This is the more important message here, not the issue of percentage.
To you, perhaps, but not in the original question, and you redefined the context so that all other answers were "wrong".
I even made the express point early on of making it clear what my SPECIFIC context was - and you proceeded to deliberately drop that context to apply your own contextual standard to my statement.
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To be fair, it's not really a contradiction. It would mean you can choose not to sell, that ownership transfer of a widget is fine, but not any conditions about use of the widget. Probably something like: "I should be allowed to reverse engineer the product regardless of what you would like, but if you don't sell me the widget, that's fine. I can't reverse engineer without the product. Protect your idea and no one will reverse engineer the widget."
It *is* a contradiction, because what he is saying is that I cannot (or specifically, have no right to) stipulate my conditions as a term of the sale, BUT I can refuse to sell the product IF he doesn't agree to those terms.
If "You will not reverse engineer my product" is a stipulation, I cannot both be prohibited from exercising it AND be allowed to exercise it.
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I wasn’t trying to start a debate about anarchism, but if you’re going to say GHS’s reasons aren’t “rational”, you’ve got a big task ahead of you. And that task starts with understanding his position, which no one here has (that I’ve seen) bothered to do.
And I don't claim to know his argument - and I didn't say he was absolutely irrational, I said "if" - he may very honestly consider one or more of his premises to be correct where we would disagree. I was, in other words, allowing for the possibility that he wasn't rationalizing, just mistaken.
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You said "Lets approach the question from another direction" so I assumed you were trying to make an argument. My bad.
If I write a piece of software, or design a new widget, do I have the right to sell either of those to you with a clear requirement that you NOT reproduce my efforts without my permission?
No.
I don't?
So if you want to buy it, and I say, "you can buy it but only on those terms" - you're actually saying that I DON'T have the right to offer those terms. By which you're saying that YOU have the right to force me to sell it to you on YOUR terms alone?
Or are you confusing the *right* to require those terms with your unwillingness to accept those terms?
And if you refuse to my terms, do I have the right NOT to sell my invention to you?
Yes.
See now you've just contradicted yourself. You've told me that I *DO* have the right not to sell my invention to you - which means I *DO* have the right to set terms on that sale. I think what you really meant by "no" above is, "YOU aren't required to accept my terms", but that isn't the same as me not having the right to say "these are my terms, take it or leave it".
If you DID mean the latter then you've just said that I do and don't have the right to sell the product to you, and that's impossible.
Now assuming I do have that right, then can I further require that not only do you not reproduce that item, but that if you sell OR give that item to someone else, that you do so only on the condition that you make the SAME requirement of whoever receives it?No.
And again, if you refuse to those terms, do I have the right not to sell the product of my creative effort to you?
Yes.
And again, same contradiction.
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Would you acknowledge that George Smith stopped being an Objectivist as the result of a process of reasoning?
If he came to the conclusion that Government should not have the power to use retaliatory force, then I disagree with his conclusion and question the basis of his reasoning.
If he deliberately ignored certain premises, then what he did was not reasoning but rationalizing.
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If you're building someone's website, you're helping to propagate his ideas.
Was Howard Roark helping to propagate public welfare when he designed Courtland Homes, then?
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* <Greebo> made a post that I don't know what to make of. S/he asked 4 questions and provided no answers to them.
He asked you 4 questions. They weren't rhetorical, and you have not answered.
I want to know whether you would say yes or no to those questions.
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In all due respect, you are rationalizing to hold to your point.
No, I'm sticking to the context presented in the OP. If you're going to redefine English then do so explicitly, don't implicitly assume that everyone else is taking the question as written to mean something that the question AS WRITTEN actually means.
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That is my point: to "stop being" is to "choose to stop being."
If something outside your control "stops" you, that is outside this discussion.
If circumstances make a person incapable of choosing, then he is "stopped from being."
This discussion was never dealing with such situations.
Remember the original question: "what % of Obj.s stay Obj.s...."
Do you really think that was to count those who became disfunctional?!!!!!
The original question was what % of o's stay o's, not what % of o's CHOOSE to stay o's.
If you want to narrow the scope, by all means, lets, but in the context of the OP, YES, those who stop involuntarily would count.
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No it is not! She is not the same person after the mental change.
Really? She isn't the living being who gave birth to my father anymore? Yes, she's become a "Broken Unit", but she's still Rachael Louise MyLastNameHere from birth to death.
You can't drop the context of who she was and who she became.The Obj.ist became incapable of thinking rationally; she did not consciously change to be a non-Obj.ist.
I don't think I'm the one dropping the context here. The premise appears to have suddenly changed from:
"it is IMPOSSIBLE for a genuine O'ist to ever stop being one"
to
"it is IMPOSSIBLE for a genuine O'ist to ever CHOOSE to stop being one"
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I did not want to believe that you could conclude such.
In your example, Person A became person B. Logic does not allow you to change the mental makeup of someone in order to refute an argument. Hypotheticals have to be rational to be meaningful.
I'm sorry, what hypothetical are you talking about? Mental damage is a real and all too common occurrence.
My paternal grandmother suffered from severe Alzheimer disease. Over the last years of her life she underwent significant personality and cognitive changes as a result. Despite those changes, she was STILL the woman who gave birth to my father.
If the premise is that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a genuine O'ist to ever stop being one, then this example is just about as valid as the premise itself.
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Is that presented as an actual refutation of the premise being discussed?
If the premise is that it is *impossible* for a real O'ist to stop being one, yes.
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Just to throw this out there, someone could be a true O'ist, suffer a brain injury, and lose some of their ability to reason, and then reject O'ism...
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Lets approach the question from another direction.
If I write a piece of software, or design a new widget, do I have the right to sell either of those to you with a clear requirement that you NOT reproduce my efforts without my permission? And if you refuse to my terms, do I have the right NOT to sell my invention to you?
Now assuming I do have that right, then can I further require that not only do you not reproduce that item, but that if you sell OR give that item to someone else, that you do so only on the condition that you make the SAME requirement of whoever receives it? And again, if you refuse to those terms, do I have the right not to sell the product of my creative effort to you?
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I think being able to explain or speak or "sell" is a different matter altogether.
Many people are masterful at something they may not be able to teach others.
To clarify, having no formal education myself past jr.high, I don't believe that education is a matter of formalities, organized activities, certifications or specific reading materials.
Education to me is doing and looking critically at what is done.
You are making the definition of education subjective.
Conceptually, I think we agree - this is a linguistic disagreement, and I'm sorry but I reject your re-definition of the meaning of the term.
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Edit: Greebo, your statement was similar so answering you here as well.
I think you are misundestanding my post.
One does not have to "sell" Objectivism to continue their education.
If one lives by the essentials of Oism then one is continuing their education. Education is not sitting in a classroom. In fact, formal education is often antithetical to learning.
If you live by Oist principles you are constantly applying the philosophy in different ways and in new situations. Learning on the job so to speak. That is continuing one's education.
I disagree. (And I didn't think you were on about selling it btw)
With a closed topic, one learns (in a classroom or not) - one then applies what they have learned, - they do not continue learning after all has been learned. You cannot continue to learn that 2+2=4 (classroom) or continue learning to walk (not classroom).
To continue to live by Oist principles is to continuously apply one's education.
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Therefore an Objectivist is someone who continues their education in philosophy and specifically in Objectivist philosopy throughout their lives.
Objectivism being a closed system, just how much continuation of education in O'Ism is actually possible? Having become well versed in O'ist metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, what more can one pursue?
I would say that an Objectivist is someone who first fully educates themselves on O'Ism, and has validated the system through study and analysis, and who then lives consistently by the principles of O'Ism.
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But that still doesn't change the fact that I'll be in the employ of an organization dedicated to taking money from people, even if that money is willingly given.
Please name for me one profitable organization that is not dedicated to taking money from people?
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You really think that your claim that "building a seawall would be beyond the long range planning horizon of most individuals" is sufficient justification for using force to collect those individuals' money and build it for their own protection?
I'm with Grames - you should actually bother to read the thread before spouting off.
Why should there be patents and copyrights?
in Political Philosophy
Posted
Prove this assertion please. (bolded text)