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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

by 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.
- Gormo 15y ago
  But there are two opposite concepts of morality that people apply to property relations: in one view, the moral 'negative' is attached to depriving a person of what he has justly earned or created; in the other view, the moral 'negative' is attached to obtaining the benefit of what you have not yourself earned or created. I'd argue that most libertarians would adhere to the first view, which roots the moral principle in a manifest social context - i.e. the the harm one does to others - as opposed to the latter view, which roots the moral principle in a more solipsistic context - which I assume the be the psychic or spiritual harm one does to oneself. (This is expressed in consequentialist terms, of course, but I'd expect there to be an equivalent deontological dichotomy). It's probably valid to describe the former as a Lockean view, but I don't see how it could justify the extension of property rights to non-rival and intangible goods, such as ideas, since it's literally impossible to deprive anyone of them in the first place.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    You have to examine what it means to deprive one of property though; certainly, depriving one of their property's commercial value is a deprivation. Certainly if I seize your house and rent it back to you, such that you're paying the same for rent as you would for your mortgage, but you lose any equity in your house or the ability to sell it to someone else or pass it on to your children, I've meaningfully deprived you of property. Likewise, if you write a book, the value of that book to you is at least partially commercial, not merely in your ability to possess a copy of it.
    - hxa7241 15y ago
      But in the case of copyright, that extra commercial value depends on us already accepting some copyright-like notion. One can only expect to command a copyright-level price for a copy if other people obey a copyright-like law to not make other copies. But that is just going in circles. One cannot justify something based on itself.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        Of course there's limited commercial value in holding intellectual property without legal protection, because there's limited commercial value in holding any type of property without legal protection. But that's completely beside the point of the natural law argument. For what it's worth, I don't actually agree with this argument; I was just pointing out that it's possible to use natural law to argue in favor of intellectual property rights.
    - Gormo 15y ago
      If you wrote the book in order to obtain an exogenous financial return, then your creation of the book was a capital investment. Capital investments are speculative by nature, and inherently entail risk, which is the investor's to bear. Using statute law to impose restrictions and obligations on others in order to protect some imagined entitlement to a positive return amounts to externalizing your risk and forcing others to bear it for you. You're completely entitled to enjoy the fruits of your labor after applying your energies to create the book, those fruits being the book itself and the utility that owning it provides to you, which you literally cannot be deprived of due to the non-rival intangible nature of the product (considering that 'book' refers to the conceptual content rather than its physical encoding). The financial return that you obtain by selling your book to others, however, is entirely dependent on their willingness to pay you, which they have no obligation to do in any case, and for which it can't be said that you have any inherent right.

by astine 15y ago

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.

Gormo 15y ago
But there are two opposite concepts of morality that people apply to property relations: in one view, the moral 'negative' is attached to depriving a person of what he has justly earned or created; in the other view, the moral 'negative' is attached to obtaining the benefit of what you have not yourself earned or created. I'd argue that most libertarians would adhere to the first view, which roots the moral principle in a manifest social context - i.e. the the harm one does to others - as opposed to the latter view, which roots the moral principle in a more solipsistic context - which I assume the be the psychic or spiritual harm one does to oneself. (This is expressed in consequentialist terms, of course, but I'd expect there to be an equivalent deontological dichotomy). It's probably valid to describe the former as a Lockean view, but I don't see how it could justify the extension of property rights to non-rival and intangible goods, such as ideas, since it's literally impossible to deprive anyone of them in the first place.
- philwelch 15y ago
  You have to examine what it means to deprive one of property though; certainly, depriving one of their property's commercial value is a deprivation. Certainly if I seize your house and rent it back to you, such that you're paying the same for rent as you would for your mortgage, but you lose any equity in your house or the ability to sell it to someone else or pass it on to your children, I've meaningfully deprived you of property. Likewise, if you write a book, the value of that book to you is at least partially commercial, not merely in your ability to possess a copy of it.
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    But in the case of copyright, that extra commercial value depends on us already accepting some copyright-like notion. One can only expect to command a copyright-level price for a copy if other people obey a copyright-like law to not make other copies. But that is just going in circles. One cannot justify something based on itself.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Of course there's limited commercial value in holding intellectual property without legal protection, because there's limited commercial value in holding any type of property without legal protection. But that's completely beside the point of the natural law argument. For what it's worth, I don't actually agree with this argument; I was just pointing out that it's possible to use natural law to argue in favor of intellectual property rights.
  - Gormo 15y ago
    If you wrote the book in order to obtain an exogenous financial return, then your creation of the book was a capital investment. Capital investments are speculative by nature, and inherently entail risk, which is the investor's to bear. Using statute law to impose restrictions and obligations on others in order to protect some imagined entitlement to a positive return amounts to externalizing your risk and forcing others to bear it for you. You're completely entitled to enjoy the fruits of your labor after applying your energies to create the book, those fruits being the book itself and the utility that owning it provides to you, which you literally cannot be deprived of due to the non-rival intangible nature of the product (considering that 'book' refers to the conceptual content rather than its physical encoding). The financial return that you obtain by selling your book to others, however, is entirely dependent on their willingness to pay you, which they have no obligation to do in any case, and for which it can't be said that you have any inherent right.