5 ms·

The entirety of the statement: > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes betwe

by srl 5y ago

The entirety of the statement: > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. This is madness. Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. Now, one can argue (without being completely incoherent) that intellectual property should not exist as a concept, but that amounts to abolishing a certain marketplace, not preventing "government intervention in the marketplace". Moreover, denying property rights outright for intangible goods is a strong position, and not one I usually associate with libertarians. Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics. I'd say that applies to all the local politics, regardless of party. Some of the wackiest crap I've ever seen in politics happens locally, even under the banner of one of the big parties. Stuff they'd never say at the national level.
wyager 5y ago
> Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. No. Read Machinery of Freedom by Friedman for a primer on why this is not necessary.
- notJim 5y ago
  Any chance you could summarize the argument?
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.
    - deathanatos 5y ago
      How would that even work? Like, why would I find a private court's ruling binding over me, and if there was some way to force that ruling to become binding … that's what we call "the government".
      - handrous 5y ago
        The plan seems to hinge on people and companies caring very much about reputational harm. I'll... leave judging the soundness of that plan as an exercise for the reader.
        dsr_ 5y ago
        It may have seemed more reasonable in 1973 than it would in, say, 2019.
        wyager 5y ago
        It has approximately nothing to do with reputational harm. The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot - essentially the same as today, except you have a lot more flexibility in picking arbitration rules.
        handrous 5y ago
        The Machinery of Freedom's system doesn't rely on firms' and individuals' strong wish to avoid reputational harm? Because that exact mechanism is mentioned repeatedly as the enforcement mechanism of arbitration, absent government. It may not be the only factor cited, but it's a lot of it.
- ehw3 5y ago
  Yes. Read X, by Y (943 pages, $84 on Amazon) for why it is necessary.
  - randallsquared 5y ago
    http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf is supplied by the author.
- mcguire 5y ago
  And yet, "We hold that rights to property, including real property, are individual rights and, as such, are entitled to the same protections as all other individual rights. The owners of property have the full right to acquire, trade, control, use, dispose of, rent, collateralize, or enjoy their property in any manner, without interference, unless the exercise of their control infringes upon the valid rights of others." Does the Libertarian Party of Colorado supply some sort of hierarchy to these platform elements since some of them conflict.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  More apologia than primer, yeah?
randallsquared 5y ago
> This is madness. Perhaps their notion of property is more spartan than yours. :) More seriously, property is a technology for resolving problems stemming from scarcity. If there is no applicable scarcity, then property rights are not necessary. Even more, if property rights in some arena effectively cause scarcity, as is the case for some forms of IP, then they ought to be abolished. On this model, a particular copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is scarce, where the right to copy "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" isn't, since two people exercising that right at the same time need have no effect on each other. If they both want to sell copies, then the wider availability may lower the price of a copy, but this is only the same effect as two widely separated gold miners have on each other, and giving one miner the right to restrict mining of gold by the other would seem a weird application of property rights to many libertarians.
- wwweston 5y ago
  Copyright addresses the scarcity of _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ that exists before it is written, roughly in proportion to the value of the work itself. Saying that it "causes" scarcity is narrowly/technically correct but misses the point.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Property rights cause scarcity anywhere and everywhere; there's plenty of gold to go around in in Goldstrike but only Barrick Gold is allowed to extract it. Ultimately it comes down to whether one believes that the smart and creative don't deserve to extract profit from their creations nearly as much as the wealthy deserve to extract rent out of physical stuff they didn't create...
- mcguire 5y ago
  Interestingly, Samuel Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer expecting to make money from it. "By the time the prospectus and agents were in the field [TATS was published in the US by the American Publishing Co., on a subscription (!) basis], a pirated edition of the novel had been on the market for four months. [I]t is [...] likely that [a Canadian publisher, the Belford Brothers] set [the pirated edition] from a hastily imported copy of the British one [published in Britain to secure a copyright there]. Their version of the novel was available in three prices: $.75, $1.00 or $2.25 -- considerably less than the authorized one would cost. And there was no way to keep pirated copies of the book from coming into America along steamboat and train lines. ... The copy in the Barrett Collection graphically indicates what [Clemens] was up against on its titlepage, where someone (the name has been effaced) recorded where and when the book was bought: on the steamer St. Lawrence, perhaps on its way into America, and in September, 1876 -- fully three months before [the American Publishing Co.] was ready to sell any copies on which [Clemens] could make money. "The delay cost [Clemens] over $10,000, according to his own reckoning, and contributed to the book's weak first-year sales. ... [T]he fate of Tom Sawyer not only soured him on the American Publishing Co; it also seems to have discouraged him as a writer. During the next five years he published only one book." (https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html)

by srl 5y ago

rootusrootus 5y ago

> Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics. I'd say that applies to all the local politics, regardless of party. Some of the wackiest crap I've ever seen in politics happens locally, even under the banner of one of the big parties. Stuff they'd never say at the national level.

wyager 5y ago

> Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. No. Read Machinery of Freedom by Friedman for a primer on why this is not necessary.

notJim 5y ago
Any chance you could summarize the argument?
- dsr_ 5y ago
  Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.
  - deathanatos 5y ago
    How would that even work? Like, why would I find a private court's ruling binding over me, and if there was some way to force that ruling to become binding … that's what we call "the government".
    - handrous 5y ago
      The plan seems to hinge on people and companies caring very much about reputational harm. I'll... leave judging the soundness of that plan as an exercise for the reader.
      - dsr_ 5y ago
        It may have seemed more reasonable in 1973 than it would in, say, 2019.
      - wyager 5y ago
        It has approximately nothing to do with reputational harm. The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot - essentially the same as today, except you have a lot more flexibility in picking arbitration rules.
        handrous 5y ago
        The Machinery of Freedom's system doesn't rely on firms' and individuals' strong wish to avoid reputational harm? Because that exact mechanism is mentioned repeatedly as the enforcement mechanism of arbitration, absent government. It may not be the only factor cited, but it's a lot of it.
ehw3 5y ago
Yes. Read X, by Y (943 pages, $84 on Amazon) for why it is necessary.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf is supplied by the author.
mcguire 5y ago
And yet, "We hold that rights to property, including real property, are individual rights and, as such, are entitled to the same protections as all other individual rights. The owners of property have the full right to acquire, trade, control, use, dispose of, rent, collateralize, or enjoy their property in any manner, without interference, unless the exercise of their control infringes upon the valid rights of others." Does the Libertarian Party of Colorado supply some sort of hierarchy to these platform elements since some of them conflict.
randallsquared 5y ago
More apologia than primer, yeah?

randallsquared 5y ago

> This is madness. Perhaps their notion of property is more spartan than yours. :) More seriously, property is a technology for resolving problems stemming from scarcity. If there is no applicable scarcity, then property rights are not necessary. Even more, if property rights in some arena effectively cause scarcity, as is the case for some forms of IP, then they ought to be abolished. On this model, a particular copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is scarce, where the right to copy "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" isn't, since two people exercising that right at the same time need have no effect on each other. If they both want to sell copies, then the wider availability may lower the price of a copy, but this is only the same effect as two widely separated gold miners have on each other, and giving one miner the right to restrict mining of gold by the other would seem a weird application of property rights to many libertarians.

wwweston 5y ago
Copyright addresses the scarcity of _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ that exists before it is written, roughly in proportion to the value of the work itself. Saying that it "causes" scarcity is narrowly/technically correct but misses the point.
notahacker 5y ago
Property rights cause scarcity anywhere and everywhere; there's plenty of gold to go around in in Goldstrike but only Barrick Gold is allowed to extract it. Ultimately it comes down to whether one believes that the smart and creative don't deserve to extract profit from their creations nearly as much as the wealthy deserve to extract rent out of physical stuff they didn't create...
mcguire 5y ago
Interestingly, Samuel Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer expecting to make money from it. "By the time the prospectus and agents were in the field [TATS was published in the US by the American Publishing Co., on a subscription (!) basis], a pirated edition of the novel had been on the market for four months. [I]t is [...] likely that [a Canadian publisher, the Belford Brothers] set [the pirated edition] from a hastily imported copy of the British one [published in Britain to secure a copyright there]. Their version of the novel was available in three prices: $.75, $1.00 or $2.25 -- considerably less than the authorized one would cost. And there was no way to keep pirated copies of the book from coming into America along steamboat and train lines. ... The copy in the Barrett Collection graphically indicates what [Clemens] was up against on its titlepage, where someone (the name has been effaced) recorded where and when the book was bought: on the steamer St. Lawrence, perhaps on its way into America, and in September, 1876 -- fully three months before [the American Publishing Co.] was ready to sell any copies on which [Clemens] could make money. "The delay cost [Clemens] over $10,000, according to his own reckoning, and contributed to the book's weak first-year sales. ... [T]he fate of Tom Sawyer not only soured him on the American Publishing Co; it also seems to have discouraged him as a writer. During the next five years he published only one book." (https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html)