7 ms·

PG is articulating the philosophy of natural law applied to present circumstances. Natural law is one of those tenured ideas that we always rediscover or reinv

by tc 15y ago

PG is articulating the philosophy of natural law applied to present circumstances. Natural law is one of those tenured ideas that we always rediscover or reinvent when our statute laws start going too far astray. Many bright thinkers have explored the idea, and you'd do well to explore it yourself if you haven't yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law The basic idea is that good laws are things we discover rather than create. Their form is dictated by the form of our being and intellect and the shape of our world. Any enforced law that contradicts this natural law will create the sort of friction and injustice that we would have seen with SOPA. -- Edit #1.1: As others have pointed out on this thread, the idea of owning non-scarce and easily-spread things is unnatural. So if technology makes a previously containable and scarce thing non-containable and non-scarce, then our ideas about what exactly can be property will change without having to believe that natural law itself had to change. This is the essence of Paul's argument, and why it fits with natural law theory. Technology changes the shape of our world. Edit #2: All modern natural law thinkers I know of would assert that slavery always violated natural law in perhaps the worst way possible, so I don't see how Paul's concurrence that ending slavery was a good change in property law distances his position from natural law theory. It was always unnatural, and eventually we discovered and corrected that in our statute laws, prompted largely by the growing friction our divergence from natural law was creating. Edit #3: There are various schools of natural law. My definition of it goes along the lines of, "the rules that humans living in a particular environment, starting with no preconceived notions, would voluntarily and near-universally adopt for their mutual benefit." If you're from a school that believes natural law exists without any reference to our environment, then you may disagree with my premise and everything that extends from it.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Alexandervn 15y ago
It also made me think about post-scarcity economics. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity
- gaius 15y ago
  We are a looooonng way from post-scarcity. In the same way that home printing didn't kill books.
  - lukifer 15y ago
    I'd say it varies widely based on the resource in question. Open-source software and wiki data have a nearly perfect lack of scarcity; bandwidth and server disk space are just slightly scarce; other resources like oil (or the ultimate scarcity, human time) follow conventional rules of economics.
  - literalusername 15y ago
    Post-scarcity has already arrived for every resource that has a marginal cost of production equal to zero. That includes every digital product. That's not to say we're living in the age of post-scarcity. Most of our resources are still limited, and you're right that non-digital resources are likely to retain scarcity for a very long time. Furthermore, post-scarcity will never arrive for inherently limited resources, such as time. But PG's essay addresses industries selling digital products, and within that realm, post-scarcity has indeed arrived.
    - davidw 15y ago
      > marginal cost of production equal to zero I think it would be more correct to write "reproduction" or "distribution", because it costs a lot to produce a movie or a book or a big, complex piece of software.
      - literalusername 15y ago
        Marginal cost does not include initial investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost
        rictic 15y ago
ender7 15y ago
I think PG is actually arguing something closer to the opposite of this - instead of property being a natural concept with a single, universal, and unchanging definition, it is something a bit more ephemeral. A smell is valuable property on the moon, but not on the Earth. A song was valuable property twenty years ago, but twenty years in the future...who knows? How this definition changes has a lot to do with technology, society, and human nature. That last one gets pretty close to 'natural law', but there's a lot more going on there as well.
- Duff 15y ago
  That's the idea of natural law. The concept of "owning" something in nature that is not scarce is not a natural concept. The notion that property has value is pretty much a universal concept.
- astine 15y ago
  Agreed. It's pretty clear that PG is actually advocating a pragmatic approach to moral reasoning. Natural Law, as I understand it, advocates a moral order which is evident from the natural order and which exists before any human understanding of right and wrong. If our understanding of property changes with the circumstances of our society, then the right of property doesn't emanate from the natural order but from the human order. Interestingly, there have been a number of attempts to reduce property rights to first principles. Modern Libertarians often consider property rights to be the first principle, but older classical liberal philosophers such a Locke believed that property was an offshoot of labor. That is, man has a right to product of his own labor and only by labor and continuous use can he claim to properly own something. I think this approach has some merit as it neatly gives voice to one of the reasons we feel that some forms of theft is justified and others are not.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Most libertarian exegeses on property rights take a vaguely Lockean tack. Of course, a Lockean tack may justify intellectual property as the fruits of intellectual labor.
mbateman 15y ago
I'm not sure about that. PG leans a lot on whether or not the new law "warps society", which could comport with a natural law view, but is more naturally interpreted as something more empiricist or pragmatic. --- EDIT (in response to parent's edit #1): Everyone -- utilitarians, legal positivists, conventionalists, etc. -- thinks that the law should adjust to certain realities. Likewise, the parent's definition of "rules that humans...would voluntarily adopt" is orthogonal to questions about the source and authority of the law. I am very sympathetic to natural law but PG's piece doesn't really strike me as falling one way or the other on this issue. See also this comment and PG's response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694703 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694703 -- nothing to do with scarcity or technology, there.
htf 15y ago
One thing that strikes me as unnatural about copyright is how difficult it would be to enforce effectively. With a traditional crime like robbery, the victim suffers a direct loss. The victim or a relative can report the event to the authorities. With copyright, the victim suffers no damage. Most of the time, the victim of infringement doesn't even know that the event occurred. To enforce copyright effectively, all private communications would have to be monitored at all times. After all, any data transfer between two people is a potential violation of the copyright of a third party. Even private chatter inside your home would have to be recorded and analysed. Otherwise, you'd be allowing kids to sing "Happy Birthday" without a license.
- evincarofautumn 15y ago
  Would you then say that identity constitutes intellectual property? After all, identity “theft” (really infringement) can also occur without the victim’s knowledge, and without perceptible loss. Does that make such crimes less serious? Do they not still undermine something of value?
  - Retric 15y ago
    Unfortunately, traditional identity 'theft' is automatically noticeable when someone apply for a loan / get's a credit report / receives a bill for services rendered to someone else. What your describing is closer to someone using your hair style / an Elvis impersonator walking around and generally those on not considered a crime. Your credit score is a finite resource your haircut is not.
  - htf 15y ago
    Identity theft is only as bad as the fraud that was performed through it. If the act causes a measurable loss to the victim (e.g. credit card fraud), the victim is going to find out about it one way or another. No need for surveillance. However, if you wanted to effectively forbid anyone from impersonating anyone else even when no harm is done, you would definitely need a surveillance society.
Gormo 15y ago
Re edit #2, that exact reasoning was applied by Lord Mansfield in the famous 1772 ruling in Somersett's case[2] that slavery was never legal under English common law: "The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law." [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case
wisty 15y ago
PG seems to be advocating a pragmatic approach, based on the difficulty of enforcement. Goods can be excludable or non-excludable. Excludable goods are anything that can be effectively locked down (like most physical goods, or movie tickets). Non-excludable goods can't (like air, fish in the sea, and IP). You can make a non-excludable good excludable by creating laws (like Carbon Taxes or IP laws), but it's not always practical. But he kind of misses the other half - rivalry. Goods can also be rivalrous or non-rivalrous. Ideas are non-rivalrous as you don't lose anything (except a competitive advantage) if other people also have it. In fact, IP may be the opposite to rivalrous (which is a rare enough thing to not have a name, though I like the name "network goods"), because it's worth more if everyone has it. If more people can speak a language, it's more useful to everyone. The Lord of the Rings is more interesting if you can talk to your friends about it. While there's a good reason to try to make common goods (rivalrous but non-excludable) goods more excludable (by introducing laws which prevent over-exploitation), it's perverse to make non-rivalrous excludable. You don't tax breathing if there's plenty of air. The main reason you want to make a public (non-rivalrous non-excludable) good more excludable is to incentize its creation (another reason might be because it's judged to be a "de-merit" (bad) good - such as a porn or a method of manufacturing weapons). But since IP is an input to creating IP, there's very good reasons why you want to make copyright and patents expire in a short time - bringing down the cost of creating new IP may outweigh the lost incentive. Also, the anti-rivalrous nature of IP may even encourage people to make more, simply because it's so useful have more people using it - Linus got his own private kernel debugged and extended at a lower cost by sharing it.

by tc 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Alexandervn 15y ago

It also made me think about post-scarcity economics. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity

gaius 15y ago
We are a looooonng way from post-scarcity. In the same way that home printing didn't kill books.
- lukifer 15y ago
  I'd say it varies widely based on the resource in question. Open-source software and wiki data have a nearly perfect lack of scarcity; bandwidth and server disk space are just slightly scarce; other resources like oil (or the ultimate scarcity, human time) follow conventional rules of economics.
- literalusername 15y ago
  Post-scarcity has already arrived for every resource that has a marginal cost of production equal to zero. That includes every digital product. That's not to say we're living in the age of post-scarcity. Most of our resources are still limited, and you're right that non-digital resources are likely to retain scarcity for a very long time. Furthermore, post-scarcity will never arrive for inherently limited resources, such as time. But PG's essay addresses industries selling digital products, and within that realm, post-scarcity has indeed arrived.
  - davidw 15y ago
    > marginal cost of production equal to zero I think it would be more correct to write "reproduction" or "distribution", because it costs a lot to produce a movie or a book or a big, complex piece of software.
    - literalusername 15y ago
      Marginal cost does not include initial investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost
      - rictic 15y ago

ender7 15y ago

I think PG is actually arguing something closer to the opposite of this - instead of property being a natural concept with a single, universal, and unchanging definition, it is something a bit more ephemeral. A smell is valuable property on the moon, but not on the Earth. A song was valuable property twenty years ago, but twenty years in the future...who knows? How this definition changes has a lot to do with technology, society, and human nature. That last one gets pretty close to 'natural law', but there's a lot more going on there as well.

Duff 15y ago
That's the idea of natural law. The concept of "owning" something in nature that is not scarce is not a natural concept. The notion that property has value is pretty much a universal concept.
astine 15y ago
Agreed. It's pretty clear that PG is actually advocating a pragmatic approach to moral reasoning. Natural Law, as I understand it, advocates a moral order which is evident from the natural order and which exists before any human understanding of right and wrong. If our understanding of property changes with the circumstances of our society, then the right of property doesn't emanate from the natural order but from the human order. Interestingly, there have been a number of attempts to reduce property rights to first principles. Modern Libertarians often consider property rights to be the first principle, but older classical liberal philosophers such a Locke believed that property was an offshoot of labor. That is, man has a right to product of his own labor and only by labor and continuous use can he claim to properly own something. I think this approach has some merit as it neatly gives voice to one of the reasons we feel that some forms of theft is justified and others are not.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Most libertarian exegeses on property rights take a vaguely Lockean tack. Of course, a Lockean tack may justify intellectual property as the fruits of intellectual labor.

mbateman 15y ago

I'm not sure about that. PG leans a lot on whether or not the new law "warps society", which could comport with a natural law view, but is more naturally interpreted as something more empiricist or pragmatic. --- EDIT (in response to parent's edit #1): Everyone -- utilitarians, legal positivists, conventionalists, etc. -- thinks that the law should adjust to certain realities. Likewise, the parent's definition of "rules that humans...would voluntarily adopt" is orthogonal to questions about the source and authority of the law. I am very sympathetic to natural law but PG's piece doesn't really strike me as falling one way or the other on this issue. See also this comment and PG's response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694703 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694703 -- nothing to do with scarcity or technology, there.

htf 15y ago

One thing that strikes me as unnatural about copyright is how difficult it would be to enforce effectively. With a traditional crime like robbery, the victim suffers a direct loss. The victim or a relative can report the event to the authorities. With copyright, the victim suffers no damage. Most of the time, the victim of infringement doesn't even know that the event occurred. To enforce copyright effectively, all private communications would have to be monitored at all times. After all, any data transfer between two people is a potential violation of the copyright of a third party. Even private chatter inside your home would have to be recorded and analysed. Otherwise, you'd be allowing kids to sing "Happy Birthday" without a license.

evincarofautumn 15y ago
Would you then say that identity constitutes intellectual property? After all, identity “theft” (really infringement) can also occur without the victim’s knowledge, and without perceptible loss. Does that make such crimes less serious? Do they not still undermine something of value?
- Retric 15y ago
  Unfortunately, traditional identity 'theft' is automatically noticeable when someone apply for a loan / get's a credit report / receives a bill for services rendered to someone else. What your describing is closer to someone using your hair style / an Elvis impersonator walking around and generally those on not considered a crime. Your credit score is a finite resource your haircut is not.
- htf 15y ago
  Identity theft is only as bad as the fraud that was performed through it. If the act causes a measurable loss to the victim (e.g. credit card fraud), the victim is going to find out about it one way or another. No need for surveillance. However, if you wanted to effectively forbid anyone from impersonating anyone else even when no harm is done, you would definitely need a surveillance society.

Gormo 15y ago

Re edit #2, that exact reasoning was applied by Lord Mansfield in the famous 1772 ruling in Somersett's case[2] that slavery was never legal under English common law: "The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law." [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case

wisty 15y ago

PG seems to be advocating a pragmatic approach, based on the difficulty of enforcement. Goods can be excludable or non-excludable. Excludable goods are anything that can be effectively locked down (like most physical goods, or movie tickets). Non-excludable goods can't (like air, fish in the sea, and IP). You can make a non-excludable good excludable by creating laws (like Carbon Taxes or IP laws), but it's not always practical. But he kind of misses the other half - rivalry. Goods can also be rivalrous or non-rivalrous. Ideas are non-rivalrous as you don't lose anything (except a competitive advantage) if other people also have it. In fact, IP may be the opposite to rivalrous (which is a rare enough thing to not have a name, though I like the name "network goods"), because it's worth more if everyone has it. If more people can speak a language, it's more useful to everyone. The Lord of the Rings is more interesting if you can talk to your friends about it. While there's a good reason to try to make common goods (rivalrous but non-excludable) goods more excludable (by introducing laws which prevent over-exploitation), it's perverse to make non-rivalrous excludable. You don't tax breathing if there's plenty of air. The main reason you want to make a public (non-rivalrous non-excludable) good more excludable is to incentize its creation (another reason might be because it's judged to be a "de-merit" (bad) good - such as a porn or a method of manufacturing weapons). But since IP is an input to creating IP, there's very good reasons why you want to make copyright and patents expire in a short time - bringing down the cost of creating new IP may outweigh the lost incentive. Also, the anti-rivalrous nature of IP may even encourage people to make more, simply because it's so useful have more people using it - Linus got his own private kernel debugged and extended at a lower cost by sharing it.