Disingenuously false. The pro-IP position is the labor theory of property through original appropriation, as classical liberalism has always adhered to.
Can someone please find me an example of property being defined by rivalry in classical Austrian economics? I really would like to know what rivalry meant to Mises or Menger.
Stranger, I believe that patterns are ideas. Do you agree with this?
Stranger, I believe that patterns are ideas. Do you agree with this?
Definitely not. Ideas are concepts of the human mind, and there is only so large a pattern that the human mind can store.
What is being appropriated?
So a pattern to make Coke or KFC, to play a song, or collections of words would not be ideas?
What is being appropriated?
In the most abstract sense, a stream of information whose origin is an act of production by human hand.
That is what demarcates ideas from patterns. Ideas have no origin. They are not scarce. Anyone can claim to have been the first to come up with an idea, and anyone can rebut by claiming that someone else came up with it first (a source of many jokes and controversies in academic circles).
Do you also believe that objects are atoms?
Is land dirt?
This having been said, it would serve the anti-IP cause well to take up their burden of proof (since they wish to overturn the basis of classical property theory and replace it with their own) to explain the genealogy of the idea of rivalry as the basis of property in Austrian economics.
So a pattern to make Coke or KFC, to play a song, or collections of words would not be ideas?
Patterns are the outcome of a production process, they are not the process itself. A recording of a song is the outcome a production process, gathering musicians in a room and getting them to sing into recording equipment. Nothing in IP stops you from singing the same words into your own microphones.
No. The pro-IP position is the labor theory of ownership: Whomever mixes labor with the pattern/object owns/homesteads it. There’s as much labor contained in clicking a “BURN” button on your DVD copier, as there is in snatching an object away from the hands of the owner who completed it.
–Can someone please find me an example of property being defined by rivalry in classical Austrian economics?
---- in the following we have quotes from Human action, and a couple of comments (>>)
The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society, and civilization and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man’s reason is capable of recognizing this truth. But for these facts men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.
Each specimen is the rival of all other specimens. The means of subsistence are scarce and do not grant survival to all.
nir comment : if they were non-rival then they would grant survival to anyone as least as much as to anyone else… the above mentioned ‘portions’ would not be a focus for stife, seeing that their use by one person does not reduce the use of the other person.
The source of the conflicts is always the fact that each man’s portion curtails the portions of all other men.
They have not conceived that the problem is to allocate scarce factors of production to the various branches of production in such a way that no wants considered more urgent should remain unsatisfied because the factors of production required for their satisfaction were employed, i.e., wasted, for the satisfaction of wants considered less urgent.
nir comment : if a good is non-rival then the opportunity cost of using the good for productive task X is reduced, since other people (or even the same person?) could utilise the good for other productive tasks (Y for example).
No. The pro-IP position is the labor theory of ownership: Whomever mixes labor with the pattern/object owns/homesteads it. There’s as much labor contained in clicking a “BURN” button on your DVD copier, as there is in snatching an object away from the hands of the owner who completed it.
Is the amount of labour really what determines ownership? I mean, all I did was drop (possibly no labour whatsoever) a seed onto my soil and eventually a sunflower grew. Do I not own the sunflower?
Stranger, going back to your Mises quote concerning production of a good G, and a factor F.
could you provide a simple example, to illustrate how it applies in the most basic case of IP you can think of for illustrative purposes? I ask that F and G be clearly marked out for us . I t think it is worth discussing.
Is the amount of labour really what determines ownership? I mean, all I did was drop (possibly no labour whatsoever) a seed onto my soil and eventually a sunflower grew. Do I not own the sunflower?
It is not the amount of labor that determines ownership, it is the fact of labor.
could you provide a simple example, to illustrate how it applies in the most basic case of IP you can think of for illustrative purposes? I ask that F and G be clearly marked out for us . I t think it is worth discussing.
What do you mean? It’s quite obvious what Mises meant.
The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society, and civilization and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man’s reason is capable of recognizing this truth. But for these facts men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.
This is a passage about the social consequences of the higher productivity of the division of labor, not a foundation for property.
Mises describes irreconcilable rivals, why does he say they are rivals?
please give an example. if its obvious it should not be hard
Mises explains that in a world without a division of labor that increases the productivity of all men, all must become rivals for the finite supply of survivable resources there is in the world. This is true even if those resources are owned. He mentions nothing about rivalry being the foundation of property.
It is not the amount of labor that determines ownership, it is the fact of labor.
I’m glad you find this, “There’s as much labor contained in clicking a “BURN” button on your DVD copier, as there is in snatching an object away from the hands of the owner who completed it.” to be meaningless as well.
To the point, the fact of labour itself is still rings hollow. Since I only dropped the sunflower, there is no labour, I don’t own it. Or my planting the seed (mixing mx labour) on your soil, means I do. The fact of labour alone is useless.