You tell me. How much labor is enough to qualify as “mixing your labor”? For one, you seem to have mixed more labor than anyone else, so I’d say your claim to the sunflower is cardinally the strongest – provided, of course, that you did it on your land.
As for the pirated “Avatar” DVD, how much labor/capital has Cameron “mixed” into it, vs. the criminal who “laborously” pushed the “BURN” button on his computer screen? Who has a stronger “mixing labor” ownership of thusly “produced” DVD?
You tell me. How much labor is enough to qualify as “mixing your labor”?
Exactly! That Lockean “mixing your labour” justification is largely garbage, read Hume.
Well I’m far from being married to it, myself. (I don’t know if you remember my proposed Klingon-Sharia method of property demarcation.) I just (mistakenly) thought you’re one of the guys who dug it so I tried to present things from that perspective. I think that the original creator of information property is its owner. Simple really.
I think that the original creator of information property is its owner. Simple really.
Fair enough. I don’t think that information should be considered a form of property at all. Also simple.
This ignores the very powerful human trait - a computation mechanism called recursion.
Recursion allows for an infinite pattern of ideas to be expressed. There is no limit to the size or length of patterns, i.e., ideas.
Recursion is a production process - it is not free. You must invest time and computation cycles to produce a valuable output from recursion.
No one likes to look at the equation for the Mandelbrot set, but the pictures generated by it are valuable.
There’s no limit to land/space/matter either.
You said that there is a limit of size for patterns that the human mind can store, for which I pointed out to be incorrect due to the computational process of recursion. So I can’t understand from your response if you concur or not. Well?
Also, judging by your example, I don’t think you understand what is meant by recursion in this context
Perhaps, but what does this have to do with anything
You said that there is a limit of size for patterns that the human mind can store, for which I pointed out to be incorrect due to the computational process of recursion. So I can’t understand from your response if you concur or not. Well?
Also, judging by your example, I don’t think you understand what is meant by recursion in this context
That you can store a process or algorithm in mind does not mean that you can store the full output of this process to infinity. Finding out this output is computationally irreducible, and so you cannot shortcut the production of the output in your mind.
Simply put, knowing a recursive formula gives you no value whatsoever unless you compute the formula to produce a specific output. The outcome of this computation is going to quickly exceed the mental faculties available to human beings. A recursive formula and its output are therefore not equivalent. The latter consumes capital.
DD5, I thought you were arguing that patterns could not be property because of their abundance, so I countered by contending the same for land/space/matter. I may have misunderstood you, though.
I also don’t see how your raising of recursion is relevant. Information can be represented (manipulated, expanded, compressed, etc.) in many forms which – although seemingly different – could easily be proven to be similar/same via information-theoretic transformations. Length of patterns or the size of the information is by no means the only determinant of its content/complexity (e.g. an infinite series of binary 1’s).
Like I said, you’re misunderstanding what recursion in this context means. You don’t have to store an infinite amount of ideas in your brain. Recursion allows for an infinite amount of ideas to be expressed by individuals. It’s not that you need to have the capacity to store all of them. You can just store one of these ideas, but the range of possibilities among patterns or ideas is infinite.
This is due to the process of recursion, which means that despite a finite set of symbols (or thought patterns), for example, you can always add one more symbol/pattern in cascade to create a longer sequence of patterns, and there is no theoretical limit to the length of that chain of symbols or pattern.
And there is no computational limit either. This is best demonstrated by the recursive trait of human language. Google Pinker or Chomsky on the recursion of language.
Stranger: “You have violated the privacy of my house and thus caused me to be in violation of my agreement with the media provider. You are a criminal.”
I don’t konw what this is but it’s not libertarianism. If you do things visible to others then they are not “violating your privacy” by observing it. What are you talking about? Where does libertarianism specify a “right of privacy” in your house? Are you just making this up as you go along?
I’m not sure why it’s relevant either. I just picked up Stranger’s remark on the limit of ideas due to brain capacity limitation.
Adam: "If I understand Stephan Kinsella correctly, he is saying that the anti-IP argument only holds for people who already share the normative assumptions of this theory. "
No, not at all. It “holds” in general. It’s just that when I’m talking to libertarians I start from shared libertarian assumptions. If I was talking to a statist, socialist, or other form of criminal (i.e., non-libertarian), then, assuming they were not busy bashing me over the head (after all, why not, if they don’t respect libertarian property rights), I would have to start at a more basic level. In other words, I would try to expalin to people why I am a libertarian and why they should be too.
Or, to make a less systematic case, you can start with their own normative presumptions and show that IP is not compatible therewith–e.g., the utilitarian arguments for IP. Basically, there are any number of ways you can poke holes in the arguments of IP statists.
This just sounds like nonsens to me. My DVD copies do not invade any of your property. It has nothing to do with value. If I sell the DVD it is transferring my physical DVD, which is my property, not yours. That does not violate your property rights. And I receive some good from the buyer. That was his good, not yours. So again, that does not violate your property rights. True, you don’t make a sale to the buyer that you might have made, but you have no right ot make that sale, nor any right to the buyer or his custom. Nor any right to the “value” of anything you own–how it’s valued is up to others, and they own themselves, not you; they have the right to value things, or not (by demonstrated preference), not you.
Other than information patterns, I have no idea what you are talking about. If you are talking about some “entity” that somehow “exists” even though it has no physical attributes, then presumably it’s just an information pattern, and nonrivalrous–non-scarce. What would a property right in such a “thing” even mean? It means nothing; it is impossible. This is exactly why when the IP types argue for Ip they always want to enforce these rights with real, physical force, in the real, physical world, against real, physical things–the “infringer’s” money or body, say. If these ethereal objects are just as “real” as, well, real things, why not just use ethereal force and seek damages from the ethereal realm?
Stranger; “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.”
no, we just want to undo recent artificial redistributionist privilege-granting state legislation.To say we libertarians have the burden of proving why a given artificail state law is unjust is ridiculous. Of course all state action has to be justified–and none can be.
nskinsella:
I don’t konw what this is but it’s not libertarianism. If you do things visible to others then they are not “violating your privacy” by observing it. What are you talking about? Where does libertarianism specify a “right of privacy” in your house? Are you just making this up as you go along?
There you have the slippery slope of rivalry-based libertarianism: your property rights are eroded until you can’t even enjoy the privacy of your own home.
Like I said, you’re misunderstanding what recursion in this context means. You don’t have to store an infinite amount of ideas in your brain. Recursion allows for an infinite amount of ideas to be expressed by individuals. It’s not that you need to have the capacity to store all of them. You can just store one of these ideas, but the range of possibilities among patterns or ideas is infinite.
This is due to the process of recursion, which means that despite a finite set of symbols (or thought patterns), for example, you can always add one more symbol/pattern in cascade to create a longer sequence of patterns, and there is no theoretical limit to the length of that chain of symbols or pattern.
And there is no computational limit either. This is best demonstrated by the recursive trait of human language. Google Pinker or Chomsky on the recursion of language.
I know what recursion is. You are missing or avoiding the point. The recursive formula itself is worthless. It is not a scarce good. It does not produce value before its computation, and this process consumes capital.
You can know all the recursive formulas in your mind as you want, unless you have a pen and paper to compute them out, they will do nothing for you. And how will you cover the expense of the pen and paper?
Yes they do! The information you have on your DVD copies is mine. A real claim from a real human actor. What are you going to do about this situation?
There are people that don’t consider land to be ownable property. They set up a tent in (what you perceive to be) your yard and say: “My tent does not invade any of your property.” No problem there, right?
What about my exact copies of $100 bills? Are they my property to do whatever I want with them, too? Seems to me they should be as, according to you, patterns painted onto them (just like patterns burnt into your DVD copies) don’t make a smidgen of difference.
Seriously? So since your verbal agreement to give me an orange in return for the apple that I just handed you is ETHEREAL (some idea I have in my head) then I should only be allowed to use ethereal force and seek damages from the ethereal realm when you decide not to hand me the orange? Or since the electronic bank transfer I made to my swiss account after breaking into yours is ethereal, you can only seek damages from the ethereal realm?
Z.