This kind of comes from a previous thread regarding whether enforcing property rights is aggressive force, and it just got me thinking. What’s to stop someone who doesn’t believe in physical property rights from stealing from an advocate of physical property rights, and what’s to stop the latter from “stealing music” (the sound, not the CD) from someone who advocates intellectual property be recognized as well.
I don’t think it’d be in the form of a social contract since an-caps don’t believe in social contracts. This may very well just be a part of the an-cap private justice/legal system that I don’t yet understand.
I would think that getting shot in the face as they enter the house would pretty much stop someone who doesn’t believe in physical property rights from stealing from an advocate of physical property rights.
Intellectual property is a bit more difficult, prehaps indicating that it’s not quite as clear cut a moral question as physical property. An-caps don’t believe in social contracts that are compulsory or coerced, but as far as I know they do believe in contracts. An intellectual property holder, if we’re taking for granted that such a thing is ethically correct, could demand protection of their rights from distributors of their product as a condition of licensing or sales. Anything else seems to involve some significant initiation of force. An example would be an internet service provider making respect of intellectual property a condition of utilizing their service. The market would find a balance of protection vs access. An ISP who clamps down hard on theft of intellectual property pisses off their subscriber base via draconian measures. An ISP who has no protections whatsoever pisses off the artists and contributors that care about intellectual content and they lose premium content. Everyone gets the balance of protections vs access that they’re willing to pay for. Its certainly not going to be 100% preventative (neither is the current system), but it does provide a basis for enforcement that is more ethically clear than a vague idea of intellectual property combined with asking the government to please point a gun at everyone to enforce it.
I do not break the “law” not because I fear retaliation, but because I feel compassion for my fellow human beings. I don’t hurt animals not because I fear that they can retaliate… I don’t hurt them because I see it as immoral and irrational and, to repeat myself, because I feel compassion and much more.
It is not much different from automobile insurance. I am going to provide a simple illustration.
JamesPirate copies FrankComposer’s music. Frank wants compensation. James does not believe he should pay anything.
Frank either storms James to take money by force or calls his private law broker to report the violation. He choses the latter because he does not want to risk his life. He knows he is a pirate and thus, he pays extra to protect himself.
Frank’s law broker calls up James and demands compensation. James tells him to call his law broker. The two broker’s discuss the matter on the telephone. Everybody agrees that the music was copied. Now they discuss how to mediate the dispute.
The pirate’s law broker says: “Well, you agreed to pay a $1000 deductible and higher premiums if you get caught. So, pay up or we will not protect you against Frank’s security guards. I hear they are coming across town as we speak. They are headed towards your house.” The pirate agrees to pay.
Now, the pirate’s law broker calls the composer’s broker and they make a deal. James’ insurance company will probably pay off Frank as a settlement.
That is just one way it can be swiftly settled. The prices, premiums and costs of these deals will be market driven.
Keep in mind of a few things:
each party is silently threatening to use force and simultaneously under threat of force too
violent altercations are risky, expensive and bad for business
your law broker needs your continued business
you law broker has an incentive to maintain a reputation of peacefully mediating disputes if he wants other clients to stay with him
Can we expand on this? Prices are obviously determined by supply and demand, but what exactly constitutes supply and demand in this context?
Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that the two law brokers are established firms and these kinds of disputes between their clients come up quite frequently. So we might expect them to “make a deal” in advance of any particular such disputes occurring, because that would be more efficient. How would this change things?
I am not sure thinking in terms of supply and demand will help because we are not dealing with a uniform service or product. There really is no supply or demand. There is just a few people (customers and service providers) who bargain amongst eachother to arrive at a price. They haggle over what the final product will be too.
You are absolutely correct that the insurance companies will likely make deals ahead of time. They will lay those out – like a menu – to their customers. Customers will pick and choose what coverage they want and how they want disputes dealt. At this point, you should do some background reading. Check out David Friedman’s writing Machinery Of Freedom where he goes into much better details. I just made up my example based on Friedman’s examples.
Based on my observations, I’ve concluded that the NAP and private property have an instinctual basis in nearly all people. That is to say, the NAP and private property are part of human nature.
Of course, that in no way implies a utopia is waiting to happen. But even in today’s statist society, the vast majority of human interactions are entirely peaceful. It seems people believe otherwise because they don’t know how to make a proper comparison in this case.
As far as I can see, the vast majority of people don’t commit crimes because they think doing so is wrong. Law, punishment, etc. have little or nothing to do with it.
I can’t help but notice that all of the above presumes that copying music is a form of aggression. However, Stephan Kinsella and others seem to have convincingly shown that this is, in fact, not the case.
<< I can’t help but notice that all of the above presumes that copying music is a form of aggression. However, Stephan Kinsella and others seem to have convincingly shown that this is, in fact, not the case. >>
Two things:
you are mistaken. Nothing that I wrote assumes copying is a form of aggression. What I wrote is actually indifferent to whether copying is an aggression or not. What I wrote only assumes that somebody – in this case, the Composer – is ready to retaliate against the copying.
whether an act is agression or not is irrelevent to analyzing how the market can handle the disputes.
Trying to argue whether copying is agression or not is a fool’s game.
The situation is something I would endorse. However, my endorsement really does not matter to the analysis.
You are correct. You could write an analogous situation where someone is ready to retaliate against others’ keeping their money from him. You could even write an analogous situation where copying never takes place but everybody escept the accused believes it did take place. In those hypothetical scenarios, the market would be very similar. How does that matter?
The market is the group of people who are acting to change the circumstances we are discussing.
Arguing whether copying is agression does not change an intellgent analysis of how the dispute is handled. It is enough to aknowledge that a dispute exists.
Ah, so I was right. I think your endorsement does matter, though, as things could go a different way in the hypothetical situation. Also, I consider your analysis to be ethically tainted, despite your protestations, as you call the music-copier a “pirate”.
My point is that, in your analysis, there’s nothing to prevent what I would call aggressive states from arising and ruling over people, if that’s how “the market” works things out.
This reduces down to “people”. Most other libertarians define “market” so as to exclude violent interactions. Of course, neither definition is correct. They’re both merely different. My point is that, unless you stipulate what you mean by “market”, most other libertarians will think you mean what they mean, and so will be confused by your subsequent statements.
Since the NAP and property rights are necessarily moral/ethical principles, I don’t see the point in applying a value-free analysis to them.
No. The presumption Charles and I are making is only that not everyone agrees as to what constitutes aggression. IP is a good example where even reasonable people disagree, so it makes a good example for analysing how disputes over the principles of law may be resolved.
If you think this kind of analysis is useless, then you are already presupposing agreement as to what constitutes aggression. It’s the same Rothbardian “basic legal code” error that we talked about here. You’re limiting you’re analysis to disagreements over jurisprudence and failing to consider disagreements over law itself.
I wouldn’t go that far. It is extremely important to a libertarian qua libertarian to know whether copying is aggression or not. But you are right that is irrelevant for an anarchist qua anarchist, i.e. an advocate of a free market in law.
This seems wrong. What, if not supply and demand, will determine the prices that are settled upon?
Yes, but this contradicts what you just said about supply and demand.
Friedman’s analysis of law is the most advanced economic analysis of law I have seen; he avoids the Rothbardian “basic legal code” error. I believe his work can be extended and made clearer, and that is what I am trying to do here with my questions to you.
You are jumping from A) most people are “good” to B) there is agreement among all reasonable people about what constitutes aggression. As a result, you are skipping over any analysis of how disagreements about law might be resolved.
I think there is, indeed, broad agreement among nearly everyone over what constitutes “aggression”. Furthermore, I think this is necessarily a consequence of nearly everyone being “good”. But like I said before, “broad agreement” in no way means “complete/total agreement”. So I fail to see how I’m making any huge leap of logic. My point was not to skip over analyzing how legal disagreements might be resolved, but rather to point out that there probably won’t be (nearly) as many disagreements as some might think.
By the way, you never responded to my last post in that other thread.