not only LTV but worse. by claiming IP , IP monopolists claim rights over how other peoples physical property can be used, e.g. if you own the image/likeness/idea of Mickey Mouse, i cant make a statue of him with My Tools, My Marble, My Labour, etc. etc. I was impressed when Kinsella made this point.
And without something protecting Walt Disney’s creations, you would have no icon of which you’d want a statue, because he would never have created it. I’m open to hear actual ideas as to how an inventor/artist/programmer could profit without any form of IP. Because as I said, in theory you may very well be correct. But logic dictates that no one (**very few) will create these things in the absence of financial incentive. The market will find a way is not good enough, to me at least.
Kinsella is a very smart cat.
But that is not true. Someone made a Beowulf movie. There was no IP attached to the legend of Beowulf.
Disney started off reworking all sorts of public domain. Sure today they have a massive media empire, but I remember how they built that on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or Cinderella.
Happens all of the time. Do some research. Bear in mind, there is no, “no IP” in the statist world. IP is a state legal creation. Nonetheless, many people don’t enforce state legal privilege on their ideas, and still manage to profit from them.
What logic? You’re just continuing to assert this. What is it based upon?
Logic that no profit motive = no creation. That people dont spend their time creating something to just give away. That people are inherently selfish and wont work for the good of others, there’s always a selfish reason behind action.
Perhaps the day will come when i’ll get to see this all in action. Like I said, i’m open to it working, so long as inventors profit from their inventions. If there is a way for this to happen, i’ll be happy. Perhaps I’m so brainwashed by the IP world of today I cant see how it could happen. All I know is that If I write software, and everyone on earth takes it without paying, I will never write software again. At least as my profession. Perhaps I’m selfish, but as a Randian, I believe that selfishness is a virtue 
It’s great that the example of Coke was used. See the reason the Coke formula is locked in a vault is because Coke never patented the formula. So Coke does not have traditional government IP protection it has marketplace IP protection. So we have an example of information which you say cannot be protected and is easily duplicated in fact being protected by a market mechanism and in fact this protection has allowed Coke to extract enormous amounts of value out of their idea (the formula).
Your arguement is that the Coke formula is not property and has no value because anyone could think of the idea. It appears in fact that the market place can and will find ways of protecting ideas. So in a society without government we should expect that anything that the market perceives as having value will develop mechanisms to protect that value.
Your definition of property is irrelevant. The market will meet the demand for the protection of ideas and inventions.
I can see no reason why the voluntary protection of ideas should be opposed by people claiming to want a free society.
Nowhere in my arguement have advocated the government enforcement of protecting ideas, just the simple fact that the market can provide similar types of protections for ideas.
I never said that demand is infinte.
It doesn’t really matter how much demand is there for the goods because nobody will pay for it. The infinite goods will not diminish in quality or quantity no matter how much demand you have for a product. Economic calculation doesn’t apply to situtation where goods are not scarce.
I am suggesting that you charge people who want you to write new software.
But that has been disproven throughout history, thousands if not millions of times.
How do you feel about praxeology?
Right. You will go work at McDonalds rather than write niche software to spec, or to write software and charge for support and updates.
Selfishness is fine, coercion is not.
I am very selfish and greedy too and yet I somehow managed to find a profitable programming job.
It’s not being protected from duplication. It’s just being hidden from duplication.
I have no problem with the market finding ways to protect property. I don’t think it can protect non-property without coercion. Again, just because someone locks their recipe in a vault, doesn’t mean I can’t discover their recipe in my kitchen. Personally, I wouldn’t pay for protection that is futile.
This is where you are consistently wrong. The market will strive to meet demands, but if 100,000 people want a trip to Mars tomorrow, it ain’t happening. We’re still constrained by the facts and conditions of a physical world with scarcity and limitations. So the definition of property is important, because trying to protect something that is not unique, is doomed to failure.
I can see no explanation of how this is possible without coercion.
And yet you don’t have a single example. The reality is, even the IP that everyone has grown up with, is only an American system. Or a Canadian system. The Chinese system, and teh Zimbabwe system are likely different. It’s all arbitrary, and it’s all based on government fiat.
Would some form of IP protection emerge in the marketplace? Probably. But I doubt it can happen with the idea, the actual physical production of the secret recipe is something that could be controlled, because it is unique.
Which again is why we have this debate, because the low cost of bandwidth and fall in processing power costs, makes it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to copy, to the point of almost being free.
Only a mountebank would really have us believe that something which can be had freely, (rain water, air) should be paid for because it is “special”.
Are you seriously suggesting that the developer of an (on the market side of the disconnect) infinite good does not allocate scarce resources towards the attainment of that good? If you say, “No” - which economic law would dictate to be true (since it is not infinitely availabe without it’s development)… Then economic calculation directly applies to the situation where goods are not scarce (This is due to the disconnect prior to it’s infinite supply and after).
You have not in any way refuted my point, and if you want to toss economic calculation out you need to provide proof of it’s merit for dismissal.
Secondly, Liberty Student… You say that Rothbard would not have supported copyright, well I provided one quote from “Man, Economy, and State” saying otherwise… also you can look into his works on a Anarcho-capitalist “Legal Code” (which he also advocated).
Nope. I didn’t suggest that. I suggested that the developer will allocate resource toward goods that is yet not created.
You should note Rothbard is dead. He can’t change his mind on copyright or use new reasoning.
Also, George Reisman guides his readers to look refer to Ayn Rand’s “Patents and Copyrights” for inquiry on their legitamacy…and Rand supports IP in the form of copyright… Just another Austrian who supports IP (not, of course, in its modern understanding, but in its basic sense).
Exactly, the disconnect shows the necessary cost of development from a scarce good to an infinite good, which is like you saying “No” to my question. Meaning that economic calculation is an intergral part of innovation and development of goods which share this scarce/non-scarce disconnect.
I said no to what?
Rand’s theory is debunked by Kinsella.
Well you are reaching with that. Are they not protecting the idea? Isn’t that what you said is impossible? Yet, there they are protecting the idea. See the idea(formula) isn’t abundantly available, not everyone has it despite your assertion that anyone can come up with the idea.
And yet the Coke example is a non-coercive free-market method to protect an idea. You say you won’t pay for protection that is futile but the Coke example in fact shows its not futile at least in some cases. You say you can just figure out the formula for Coke in your kitchen, obviously it’s not that easy otherwise the formula for Coke could be found on the internet. So the formula has value and rational people have decided that it is worth protecting and the market evidence bears them out and they have done so without coercion thus proving all of the things you say are impossible…the market triumphs again.
You keep wanting to impose your view of the world on the market. The market values ideas, it pays people for them, it negotiaties their use. Things of value historically and rationally will be protected. Your irrational attempt to defeat that is where your wrong.
We just used the Coke example but your willful ignorance prevents you from conceding to the obvious. Do you think what Coke is protecting in the vault is a piece of paper? If someone comes up with the formula for Coke on their own…great more power to them and that would diminish the value of the formula for Coke for sure but until someone does it makes sense to keep the secret. So there is one example of non-coercive IP protection that is not only rational but effective at maintaining control over the idea and providing the value of the idea to its original creator.
Rothbard would never promote social contract theory.
Even if someone discovered the coke forumla independently, they still have an uphill battle removing the cola-cola company from the market. I mean, why buy this guy’s coke if you can just buy from the familiar and trusted brand of coke?
You tell me. How are they stopping me from buying a Coke and reverse engineering it by hiding the recipe? How are they preventing me from creating coke on my own? They aren’t.
What next, you gunna tell me that if an inventor doesn’t share his invention, the free market provided silence as a protection mechanism?
Maybe because there are lots of Colas and other drinks, and there is no particular profit in knocking off the Coke brand. Regardless, you can’t use a negative to prove a point.
Wake me when it is over… zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
/me sighs
Your entire post was futile, because you want to insist that secrecy is a market mechanism for protection of IP, when I’ve demonstrated that just reverse engineering alone, is enough to get the recipe. Not to mention, genuinely discovering it from scratch. There is no way to guarantee it’s protection, there is no way to prevent others from reverse engineering it, or creating it.
Please start over, with a premise that makes sense, and conforms to the facts.
Why do IP propenents always distort the debate?
Only an owner of physical property can say, " I made this, make your own". Advocates of IP say, " I thought this, think something else."