IP: threat or menace?

[Libertarian666]

As asked by Moda, here are my thoughts on IP:

1. Patents suck, because they can be used to punish people who have independently invented something. This makes it very difficult for a lone inventor to avoid the maze of existing patents.
2. Copyrights don't suck, because I see no good reason that someone should be able to copy my writing and resell it. Note that copyrights don't allow the holder to punish someone who has independently written something similar (or even identical, although that seems pretty unlikely).

I say this as the first inventor on a US patent and the author of several copyrighted works.

On the other hand, I am also impressed by the point of view propounded by the author of A Spontaneous Order (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012DL ... k_ro_title), which so far in my reading (about halfway through) seems to be a logically airtight demonstration of the necessity of accepting anarcho-capitalism as the only moral economic system.

His point of view is that for something to be property, it must be scarce in the economic sense, meaning that if I have it, someone else cannot have it simultaneously. This of course is not true of IP, so he considers that not to be a valid type of property. He also deals with various objections to this point of view, such as the claim that IP promotes invention because the inventor has more likelihood of getting a payoff from his invention.

I don't currently have an argument against this position that I think will stand up, but I'm not convinced that his position is airtight.

[moda0306]

Well IP is at its most interesting when you put it in the context of real property. I don't have a hard and fast opinion on how government should recognize IP.

However I'd be interested to read that book, because I have yet to hear a very air-tight argument for anarcho-capitalism. I find that all descriptions of how homesteading/using land or other resources to be convenient. To me, the best argument for private property is a utilitarian one. Not some sort of morally or logically consistent "right" that we have. I disagree with "commie" property norms too. "Occupation and Use" is a pretty ridiculous standard and is nuts in terms of its implications.

I like a lot of the ideas espoused by Thomas Paine in Agrarian Justice (other works too). It seems to me he did a great job of reconciling a lot of the logical, utilitarian and moral failings of either pure capitalism or a state-run system.  He was a fan of what essentially amounts to a citizen's dividend based on the idea that land is everyone's and if someone is going to "borrow" that land from everyone else to use it for industry of crop production then they "owe" society rents. But this guy was no commie. He hated big/nasty government.

But I'll try to get through that book. Along with Human Action, of course.

[MachineGhost]

Boy, I gotta read this and see if the flaws have been addressed.

[Libertarian666]

But I'll try to get through that book. Along with Human Action, of course.

It's a lot easier to read than Human Action, and has the benefit of 75 years of additional thinking.