What is the definition of property?
I understand that land and material items are property, but there or other things that im not sure what to do with in anarchy / free society.
can someone own a sound, like music?
can someone own words, speeches, and books?
if someone designs a new technology, how would patents work?
can someone own a trademark?
looking for ideas, thx
I’m sure you can find a more complex definition, but the basic rule that I go by is that property would be anything that only one person can own.
So to answer your specific questions no, no, they wouldn’t and no.
No one can own a sound or words. That includes any combination of sounds as in music or combinations of words as in speeches and books. You can own a CD or a copy of a book, but no one can have specific ownership of that arrangement of sounds or words.
Patents wouldn’t exist in a free society. They are a government created and enforced monopoly on an idea.
To assume that intellectual property can’t exist in a free society is absurd. Part of being free is realizing that people have differnet qualities to say that once someone combines words or notes of music into a pleasing pattern that is no longer their invention is not compatible with a free society. Why would anyone share their ideas
Why would anyone listen to you, for that matter?
(Hint: “Intellectual Property” is not required in order to profit in a free society…)
Any resource which is scarce (the usage of it by one person excludes usage by another person) can be subjected to appropriation. Configurations of words, songs &c. are not scarce (and thus private property in them will create artificial scarcity; see Menger on this in Principles of Economics.) Things that can be discovered by research (e.g. scientific truths, technologies) and reasoning (e.g. mathematical proofs) are not scarce. Things like the air could one day be scarce, but are currently so abundant that they’re for the most part not scarce. I recommend you look up Kinsella’s articles How we come to own ourselves and Against Intellectual Property. The only way for patents and copyright to exist in a free society is by non-disclosure agreements and measures to counter reverse-engineering in the case of the former and retaining the right to copy in the case of the latter (thus never selling it with the good in question) as well as technologies such as DRM.
Competition.