So you or JParker can prove that I ignore the sanctity of a contract? Because otherwise you’re both lying. I already went through the strawmanning stuff with all of you in this thread. I don’t like people dictating a unfounded and inaccurate position for me.
You’d both better supply some proof, or retract your statement.
So you have no proof. You just post lies (and now Ad Homs) and run.
Nice. If your ideas have not discredited you, your dishonest and childish behaviour has.
I don’t pay a tuition for a school, or a professor, so that I can witness idea communication. That’s absurd. I,in fact, would be paying for the idea. Thus, in these examples it is not required to show physical communication.
i hope you tell your professors to cut it out. they are obviously wasting your time if you have to sit and wathc them talk, and point at whiteboards and so on.
they are obviously just monopolists looking to raise your education cost, lumping in all that extraenous stuff that you are not paying for.
I’ll go back and find quotes if it comes to that. But, first you say ideas are not property (either in the specific individual sense or in the general, multi-party sense). This is pure conjecture, and to say you do not own your mind (as in the ideas, and specific intellect), goes against any theory of natural rights property I have ever heard of (including, I believe, your own). Secondly, you believe that you can arbitrarily throw out a contract based on it’s, so called, “absurdity”.
I don’t like attacking the person, i find it cude and distasteful. Earlier in this thread, it was not me who you were trading personal attacks with. Because of this, I would rather turn the topic back towards the subject of intangible property and IP. If you haven’t noticed, we are all now arguing on your terms (natural rights), and aren’t using anymore economic based arguments (which I still find very convincing), but in this vein, let us continue.
Reductio ad absurdum
ha ha ! you dont get it. it is absurd to say that ‘you are paying for the ideas they are teaching you and NOT their physical acts of teaching’
i qoute Mises, from Human Action.
on the subject of what is an economic good:
The formula, the recipe that teaches us how to prepare coffee, provided it is known, renders unlimited services. It does not lose anything from its capacity to produce however often it is used; its productive power is inexhaustible; it is therefore not an economic good. Acting man is never faced with a situation in which he must choose between the use-value of a known formula and any other useful thing.
now, economic goods can command prices. they are what humans trade. ideas are not economic goods. ideras are not property.
They’re merely misusing the concept of scarcity.
please help explain it, i am obviously not doing well at it.
Property is an institution that is used to deal with scarcity, it helps reduce conflict between individuals with different ends to acheive who both require a certain means to acheive their respective ends. This problem arises because of scarcity, because they both cannot use the good at the same time. This isn’t the case with ideas, since the “same idea” (whatever that actually means) can be used by multiple individuals at the same time. In fact, there is no conflict arising between individuals for the use of an idea, unless, IP is introduced.
If you believe that contracts can cover the issue discussed then it doesn’t really matter what anyone’s defintion of scarcity is. Previously, you said that contracts could be used, your belief of what the contract is protecting is irrelevant because the mechanism is the same as JP Jack and I are suggesting.
Where the real conflict is with LS and the like who do not believe these contracts can be made and enforced. So LS and the others say you can make the contract but it can’t be enforced because you can’t make contracts about the exchange of ideas/information. In their world all information is known by everybody which is why when you at look at what actually happens it doesn’t fit the theory. Every idea/all information is not known by everybody.
if I have some idea/information which no one else has then by any practical definition I own the information. This is how the market treats ideas and information they are traded like any other good.
Strawman. I believe it is economically non-viable to contract something you have no control over. It more often than not, will result in a net loss.
Your ability to frame the debate differently than it is clearly written is remarkable. It makes me wonder if you actually read and comprehend anything written in this discussion. Perhaps the problem isn’t that you are stupid, but have a learning disability. If that is the case, I apologize for mocking you.
Any contract which contracts the impossible, or cannot be resolved from the perspective of a burden of proof, it meaningless. You can contract until you are blue in the face, there is no way to prove where an idea originated from, and how the mind acquired it. You certainly cannot contract how 3rd party (uncontracted) minds will operate. In light of IP not being property, and thus one having no control of it, how could you contract? Could I contract with Giles about how YOUR CAR is used? Can he guarantee your car will not be driven today? Can he make your car appear outside my house in the evening?
Of course not.
But it can be. Property titles do not change when people acquire more knowledge. IP is not property.
And what, if someone else has the same idea, no one owns it?
You keep parroting “market” and it is totally irrelevant. Again, if you have a functional deficit when it comes to comprehension, I apologize for being so rude. But repeating “market” over and over is meaningless within the context of the discussion. There are things in the market that succeed and things that fail. Charles Ponzi operated in the market. He ran a fraudulent business. Does that mean the market has proven fraud is a viable and desirable business model? Of course not.
I don’t know how many more ways these basic, simple truths can be explained.
IP is not property by any complete theory of what property is. The reason? It is not unique. And even assuming it is property, and IP is unique, then by the fact people can come to ideas without “stealing” from one another, but rather by discovery, then each instance of IP is unique in each mind and this destroys any concept of singular ownership, because no one can own my thoughts but me.
Contracts cannot accomplish the impossible. You could contract that I never think about dancing with monkeys. But there is no way for you to satisfy the burden of proof. Other examples include contracting with me to make it rain, to turn off the sun at night time, or to make someone else’s property do something, when I clearly have no control over it.
All sorts of things are tried in the market, the test of their worth is their profitability, not if those ideas are ubiquitous. Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy.
The current market, is not a free market. For illustrative purposes, it is completely useless due to the massive amounts of distortion, not just in public perception, but in the system of exchange, the legal system, the regulatory system etc.
If I see you dancing with a stuffed monkey, it’s over for you.
Anyways, you are right that the “burden of proof” will invariably limit enforcement of contracts, but that makes no claim on ideas. If I enter into a contract with you that for the exchange of my book you may not distribute the ideas within it, and then I find you giving lectures on those ideas (or writing your own book with the same idea) then you have obviously broken the contract, and the burden of proof is easily overcome.
And why would anyone ever do this?
of course its easy to sound perfectly reasonable when you are avoiding saying what you want to say. that ideas can be property
I think we are using different definitions in the scope of owning ideas. When I say I own an idea, it is the same as saying I own my mind (not the physical, but the intangible). People may then demand a certain idea that I have created, and own in accordance to self. Other people may come up with the same idea, and they are complete owners of their mind, thus would have full property of their ideas (limited to self). Now when the idea is transfered to another person, they would then have full ownership over the idea, limited to self, unless they are bound by contract, in which case they would posess conditional ownership of the idea.
I understand what you are saying about uniqueness, but I don’t think it negates the contract theory and conditional ownership (because, by the contract, they are contracted to do/or not to do certain things relating to whatever unique idea they get as a direct result of the information transfer).
What kind of question is this? People do this all the time, either in NDA’s or in end-user license agreements, they are contracts decided upon equally by both parties - and created, since the seller thinks it important.
That’s not what the contract was. You’ve taken “idea” and made it synonymous with “action”. This is dishonest.
It’s very difficult to argue with people who lie and do not read precisely.
I’m not going to argue utilitarianism, it is very easy to pick your example apart, and then we will get into the Maxian cycle of examples of examples of examples trying to find the most absurd hypothetical to prove a position, and declare it “market”.
Simply put, if you only plan on contracting your idea once, you might have a shot at enforcement. But if more than one person reads your idea, then it will be very hard to prove who leaked to who, and created a derivative work, 2 or 3 degrees from the original contract.
And of course, all of this presumes that customers are just dying to get into contracts and potentially compromising legal obligations just to use your product, when there are public domain products available to choose from.
Again, utilitarian arguments, waste of time imo.
Until you address whether or not IP is property by challenging my definition, then you’re just spinning your wheels. You can make 10,000 hypothetical examples, and not advance the discussion one iota.
Yes, I understand for you what people are voluntarily doing in the marketplace is irrelevant, for me the market matters.
By the common definition of the word unique, ideas can be unique. People have responded to your theory of property on numerous occassions you just refuse to acknowledge. We don’t agree. It is that simple. Your arguement is not convincing.
Contracting with people to limit their own actions is not impossible. people are in control over their own voluntary actions and can make contraacts that limit them.
Yes, and the protection of ideas and inventions for some companies is definitely profitable.
Well, there will never be a free-market by your definition because you require universal agreement on your viewpoint.
Don’t worry about being rude gutless, because we are enemies as per your request.