Re: Historical comparisons

On 12 Mar 2006 11:03:54 -0800, "William Mook"
<william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Any system of privilege requires government sanction to work.

Or those able to can do it themselves: the feudal system.

The
question we have to ask is,the system of privlege beneficial to society
or not? Is the system of privilege fair or unfair?

Privilege is unfair by definition, so it's hard to see how it can ever
benefit society. And in fact, it doesn't.

The US patent office grants letters of patent to provide a monopoly for
an inventor of a new product or process for a limited period of time.
This is a privilege. But I don't judge it to be an unfair one, since
it allows the creator of wealth to capture a portion of that wealth for
himself.

No, that is false. It allows the privilege holder to extort wealth
created by others.

This benefits society because this encourages people to
create new things that enrich our lives.

That is often claimed, but has never been demonstrated.

Its sort of like granting an
artist the right to own his artwork, which can be worth far more than
the time and material put into it.

No, it is not. An artist owns his work because he produced it, so he
does not thereby deprive others of it by owning it. A patent deprives
others of the right to produce a certain item _themselves_,
_even_if_they_invent_it_themselves_.

Slavery is an example of an unfair system of privelige, where those who
benefit from the privilege of slave ownership do so at a tremendous
cost to those who are enslaved. This is an unfair privilege and
actually impoverishes society since the creativity and productivity of
those enslaved are so diminished.

The same is true of all privileges. Just not as visibly or
egregiously as in the case of slavery.

Granting rights of ownership of resources to those who discover and
develop new resources unknown prior to their discovery and development
- works the way patent law works.

It's actually worse, but we'll let that go for the moment.

I can see an argument being made
that these should be limited in time to 20 years or so - but granting
ownership rights to those who take the trouble to discover and develop
resources seems to me to be a fair granting of rights.

_Developing_ resources is productive: it adds to the total wealth in
existence, and therefore does not deprive others of the wealth thus
added. By contrast, _discovering_ resources adds nothing to the total
wealth in existence, it merely changes the discoverer's own state of
knowledge. Just as a patent effectively deprives others of the right
to invent and use the thing themselves, granting ownership of
resources effectively deprives others of the right to discover and use
them themselves.

It also seems
to me since it encourages people to go out and develop resources that
otherwise wouldn't be developed efficiently, it seems to me to be a
good thing for society. So, I support it.

But you are just wrong, because you wrongly assume that without such
privileges the resources would not be developed efficiently. In
actual fact, resource ownership privileges provoke both unproductive
hoarding and wasteful speculation. Economic efficiency is optimized
and incentives most accurate when resource users must pay the market
rent to those they deprive of the resource.

So, I think if there were an international body set up to grant
ownership rights to off-world resources, you would see lots of money
flowing into off-world development and ultimately, you would see goods
and materials flowing down from the skies to enrich all life on Earth.

Flat false. You would see _more_ development and a _greater_ flow of
wealth if those who wanted to exclude others from using those
resources had to pay the market rent to those they wished to exclude.


The current restriction on ownership of celestial bodies has blocked
this sort of development and I think it should change sooner rather
than later.

Again, you are just _assuming_ that lack of ownership rights is what
is blocking development of off-earth resources. That is just false.
In fact, development would be most efficient if those who wanted to
use the resources paid the market rent to those they wish to exclude
from using them. Think about it: if you own a resource, you can just
sit on it and hope for a speculative gain, the exact same way the
owners of the 11,000 vacant lots in NYC do. But if you are paying the
market rent for it, you are going to do something to earn that money
back.

Sorry, William, but you are just ignorant of the relevant economics.

-- Roy L
.

Relevant Pages

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