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Do you have the freedom to profit from your ideas in the state of nature?
by foobarbazqux 13y ago
Do you have the freedom to profit from your ideas in the state of nature?
- a-priori 13y agoAssuming we're talking about the Hobbesian "state of nature" then yes, of course you do have that freedom. Along with every other freedom. But you only have a right to profit insofar as you can keep others from exercising their freedom to steal your ideas (or anything else).
- foobarbazqux 13y agoIf I have a natural right to profit from my ideas, isn't it reasonable that I might want a legal right?
- a-priori 13y agoIn a state of nature, there is no such thing as a "legal right", or law of any kind other than might-makes-right.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoBut legal rights are synonymous with might-makes-right. A natural or human right is something we would like to have but cannot guarantee until it is made into law. I am just asking whether laws about intellectual property correlate to natural rights in the same way that laws about physical property do, since the original claim was that they are 100% fabricated.
- a-priori 13y agoWhether they're synonymous is entirely a matter of your world view with respect to the origin of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is the defining feature of a state. Do individuals delegate their right to the use of force to the state, in the process giving them a monopoly on it? Or do states impose said monopoly on the individual, in effect overriding their natural rights? To avoid committing a fallacy here: or is there a third option?
- foobarbazqux 13y agoThe fallacy is that the choice is presented as either/or instead of both/and. Some of my natural rights are embodied in law, some of them aren't, that's how it goes.
- baddox 13y agoDo you have the freedom to use violence to prevent others from profiting from your ideas?
- foobarbazqux 13y agoYou have the freedom to use violence prevent anything you bloody well like.
- baddox 13y agoWas your first question rhetorical?
- foobarbazqux 13y agoYes, sorry :/ Well, maybe I didn't realize it though since I don't spend much time thinking about my freedoms in the state of nature, and people were making all these arguments about physical property being a natural right.