Re: Historical comparisons

On 12 Mar 2006 13:54:29 -0800, "William Mook"
<william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

royls@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
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.

This is relevant to a modern industrial economy how?

Some modern industrial economies are entirely dependent on natural
resources from feudal societies.

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,

Your definition!

Oh, learn to read English.

How is giving an artist the right to own his art unfair?

It's not. But you are being dishonest here. What you actually mean
by "own his art" is "own the contents of other people's minds."

How is giving an inventor the right to own his intellectual property
unfair?

It deprives others of the right to develop and use that and
"too-similar" inventions -- see the recent, outrageous Blackberry
case. And "his intellectual property" is nothing but an arbitrary
legal privilege.

How is giving a developer the right to own what he develops unfair?

It steals the natural resources he started with from all who are thus
deprived of them.

These all involve giving these folks the privilege of controlling a
resource.

Equivocation. Art and inventions are not natural resources.

But it denies no one of a resource they currently use,

?? ROTFL!! So if I deny you access to air, except the air you are
currently using, that is not unfair??

Give your head a shake.

and
by giving these creators of wealth this privilege, society is made
wealthier.

No, it most certainly is not. That is simply a _claim_, which you
repeat and repeat, but for which you have yet to provide even one
scintilla of evidence. Economic logic shows that granting monopoly
privileges makes society poorer, not wealthier. The intellectual
property system was just designed by people who, like you, were
ignorant of that fact. But they had the excuse that it had not yet
been discovered.

You've defined things pretty consistently. I give you that. I just
don't buy your deifinitions 100% - since they're not consistent with
experience.

Yes, actually, they are. They are just not consistent with certain
convenient lies in which you happen to have invested.

Your definitions are inconsistent with is our experience!

False.

Our
experience is that private property and private enterprise are very
good at creating wealthy societies.

Now you are shifting the ground again, from "private property in
natural resources and ideas" to "private property and private
enterprise." That is a dishonest strawman argument.

Public ownership of property and
public enterprises are not.

<sigh> That is just flat false in the case of natural resources.
Singapore. Hong Kong. Other historical examples that you have never
heard of, but are just as clear. How many times will you refuse to
know the facts I identify for you?

so it's hard to see how it can ever
benefit society.

When a resource that society never knew existed is brought into
society. When a new work of art is made, when a new invention is
created, or when a new natural resource is developed.

None of those benefits are facilitated by government issuing monopoly
privileges. You just falsely assume they are.

And in fact, it doesn't.

Not if by doing so you rob someone else the use of it no.

Robbing others of opportunities they would otherwise have been able to
use is inherent in the issuance of monopoly privileges.

Your example
of slavery is germaine here. Your other examples don't make any sense.
They rely on things that are obvious and when I say they're not
obvious to me you say I'm an ignoramous! lol. BUT OFFER NO CLEAR
CONCISE RATIONALE FOR HOLDING TO THE BELIEFS THAT YOU DO.

Of course I have provided a clear and concise rationale for my views.
You just ignored it, and stated your own false beliefs again.

In some theoretical sense if a developer develops a resource that is
unknown to society before his arrival, I guess you could say the public
is denied this free resource.

Yes. I could say it, because it is true. And apparently for the same
reason, you deny it.

But the fact is, without the developer,
the public was ALREADY denied this resource because they were ignorant
of it and lacked the ability to develop it themselves.

What a load of absolute rubbish. Without that developer, the resource
would still be available, and someone else would just discover and
develop it. Who on earth do you imagine is fooled by your silly
claims, hmmmm?

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.

Without the invention those others you mention would not be able to
create anything. With the invention, they may.

But without the monopoly _privilege_, they would be able to create
even more. Google "Blackberry settlement," and make at least a
minimal effort to educate yourself. Better yet, Google "Richard
Stallman" and start reading.

Your whole argument rests on the self-evidently and indisputably
_false_ assumption that without government-issued and -enforced
monopoly privileges, people would not invent things, or create art, or
develop resources. But does the lack of IP monopolies on scientific
discoveries stop people from doing science? What nonsense! You claim
patents are what have stimulated the explosion of invention in the
last 200 years, but the explosion of scientific research that does
_not_ get any IP monopoly privilege has been even greater over the
same time period! _Hello_?

Does the fact that the Bible is in the public domain stop publishers
from printing Bibles? Don't be ridiculous. Does the fact that oil
resources in almost every country in the world are publicly owned stop
people from developing them? Give your head a shake.

And here's the clincher: does the fact that vitamins, plant extracts
and other natural nutrients cannot be patented stop people from
manufacturing and selling nutrient and herbal supplements? Of course
not. But the fact that _patents_ are available for expensive,
ineffective and toxic _drugs_ _stops_ people from doing POTENTIALLY
MUCH MORE BENEFICIAL research on _nutrients_ -- research that could
well have yielded safer and more effective (as well as far cheaper)
treatments than the drugs!!

Do you understand? You are defending a flat-out _evil_ system that
very expensively _kills_ millions of people every year!

Lets look at this in more detail. An inventor creates something. Say
a new kind of Cash Register. Okay? So, He gets a patent and organizes
labor, and equipment, and so forth - and builds and sells cash
registers. Hey pays for his labor, he pays for his equipment, the same
way an artist pays for his stuff. Who is denied anything?

Others are denied their right to produce the monopolized item. And it
seems entirely to have escaped your notice that the patent is
superfluous to production of the cash register. Do you think there
are no entrepreneurs making shovels or abacuses, just because they
cannot be patented (yet)? Give your head a shake.

Those
people wouldn't be employed making anything if the inventor sat on his
ass and did nothing.

?? What are you talking about? Are you now claiming that no one ever
produces anything that is not patented? Or are you claiming no one
has ever invented or would ever invent anything without a patent?

Such claims are self-evidently and indisputably false. Why advance
them? Why must you be so dishonest?

Never mind. I know very well why: it is the only way privilege can
ever be defended.

So, he makes a cash register and sells it at market rates, which
hopefully exceeds the cost of produciton lol. He pockets the profit.

And a patent is necessary to this process how, exactly? Are you
claiming that no unpatented cash registers have ever been produced?
Such claims are self-evidently false and absurd. Yet you continue to
make them, over and over again, despite _never_ being able to offer
_one_scintilla_ of evidence for them.

You don't think the inventor would be hurt if someone else reverse
engineered his invention and began making copies?

Depends what you mean by "hurt." Competition always makes things more
difficult for those who must compete, but it certainly doesn't violate
their rights. Competition is what stimulates efficiency and
excellence. Is a publisher of Bibles "hurt" by the presence of other
Bible publishers in "his" market? Of course he is! If he had a
monopoly on the Bible, he could make orders of magnitude more profit!

Funny how the defenders of privilege think competition is so great
when working people are the ones whose rewards are driven down by
competition, but as soon as anyone suggests that the privileged should
compete too, it's Oh No! Don't even think it! It will reduce wealth
creation if we don't pay the privileged extortion money for not
stopping others from creating wealth!

What a load of crap.

Here this inventor
did all the hard work and now someone else steals his invention.

?? What? Stop lying, William. Copying is not stealing. That is
just a flat-out _lie_ that defenders of privilege like to tell. And
independently inventing something sure as _hell_ isn't stealing it!
Why lie about it?

Never mind. I know very well why. And so do you.

Don't
you think he has some rights for creating something wonderful?

Absolutely. He has the right to own what he created. But not a right
to stop anyone else from creating it, too.

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

That is often claimed, but has never been demonstrated.

??? Talk about me being ignorant of obvious facts! lol!!

Unfortunately, what you claim is not only not obvious, it is not a
fact. And you will not be able to offer any evidence for it, because
no such evidence exists.

Look, millions of patents are issued each year, billions of dollars are
created each year, without a system of intellectual property rights,
what do you think would happen to this rate of innovation? It would
plummet.

No, it most certainly would not. You have offered -- and can offer --
no credible evidence for any such effect. None. If anything, the
patent system has become a _barrier_ to innovation, as corporate
control of whole areas of technology stops other people from finding
new ways to use them.

Your position is based on zero, repeat, _zero_ factual or logical
evidence. _Zero_. I'm not sure there is any clearer way to say that.

And part of obtaining a patent is the requirement to teach. You must
tell posterity how the heck you are doing what you're doing to get a
monopoly on it. What do you think would happen without patent rights?

A lot of rent seekers would be seeking productive employment instead.

People would rightfully be very secretive, and the way in which things
were done would be hidden, so the rate of innovation would again
plummet.

More of the same ridiculous garbage. The results of scientific
research are not patentable. They get _no_ intellectual property
privilege at all. Yet people still do an enormous amount of such
research, and publish it as fast as they can, in
_direct_contradiction_ of your false and idiotic claims.

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.

So him owning a copyright of the artwork to keep others from copying it
without paying him for the right to do so is okay by you?

?? No, of course not. What are you talking about? You said "own his
artwork," not "own a government-issued and -enforced monopoly
privilege that gives him control of the contents of other people's
minds."

But then, you knew that, didn't you? You knew that a copyright is not
an artwork, yet you dishonestly tried to subsitute "copyright" for
"artwork" in the argument. Why do you think you always need to pull
such dishonest tricks, William, hmmmm? Could it be because you know
very well that there is no other way to defend unjust privileges?

And its okay for a novelist to obtain a copyright on his work too?

?? You appear to have become confused. A novel is not a copyright.
An artwork is not a copyright. A copyright is a legal privilege. A
novel or artwork is a product of labor. Try to keep your dishonest
substitutions to a minimum.

Oh, right, I forgot: without them, you have no argument.

We are not deprived of an artwork because of who owns it.
If the artist dosen't produce his artwork in the first place, then we
are deprived of it.

Right. But if others are deprived of their right to make additional
copies of an artwork, we are denied those copies. I've never been
able to figure out how people prevent themselves from knowing such
self-evident and indisputable facts of objective reality, but I know
you are doing it somehow.

An inventor produces an invention.
A developer brings resources to market.

Wrong. An owner is not a developer, and products are not resources.
Stop trying to substitute one thing for something quite different.
_Products_ are brought to market just fine by people who do not own
the natural resources they were made from. Got it?

If an inventor does not produce an invention,then we are deprived of
it.

No, because something must exist in the first place for us to be
deprived of it. You can't claim to be deprived of everything that
does not exist. What you refuse to know is the fact that we _are_
deprived of an invention when others are denied the right to invent
and produce it. We were _deprived_ of Elisha Gray's superior
telephone by Bell's telephone _patent_. That is a _fact_,
conspicuously unlike all your false and unsupported claims.

If a developer does not develop a resource then we are deprived of it.

Garbage. It is still there, ready to be used. Whoever develops a
resource is by definition "a developer," so of course only "a
developer" can develop a resource. But that does not mean they have
to own the resource they are developing, and it does not mean that
undeveloped resources cannot be developed, made into products and
brought to market by someone else.

Don't you ever get tired of making so many patently false claims?

We are not deprived of an invention because the inventor claims
intellectual property rights.

Yes, of course we are. We are deprived of all the too-similar
inventions, like Elisha Gray's superior telephone system. You are
just making more false claims again.

We are not deprived of an undeveloped resource because the developer
claims ownership rights once developed.

?? Of course we are. Who do you think is fooled by such nonsense? A
developer goes to an undeveloped tropical island and builds a hotel on
it, claiming not just the hotel but the whole island. We are thus
deprived of the island, because we now cannot go there, use it, enjoy
it, etc. without paying him tribute. Duh.

How on earth do you prevent yourself from knowing such self-evident
and indisputable facts of objective reality?

I understand you believe the public is deprived by virtue of your
overly broad definition of public rights to unknown and undeveloped
natural resources.

I have said numerous times that natural resources should be free to
use as long as at most one person is willing to pay to use them. The
public is just all the people who have the right to use natural
resources. How can someone claim he has a right to use them, but
others don't? That is privilege by definition.

A patent deprives
others of the right to produce a certain item _themselves_,
_even_if_they_invent_it_themselves_.

??? If someone invents something, someone else can't invent it later.

That is of course a flat-out falsehood, as proved by Gray and Bell,
Newton and Leibniz, etc., etc.

So, that's confusing for me that you said that.

It is not confusing for me that you would deny such self-evident and
indisputable facts. It is completely expected. In fact, when you
undertake to defend privilege, it is mandatory.

The problem I'm addressing isn't multiple claims of ownership of
intellectual property. The problem I'm addressing is lack of
innovation, lack of development.

That is not a problem you are addressing. It is a problem you are
fabricating out of whole cloth. There is no evidence that it exists,
or would exist in the absence of patents. You have offered no
evidence whatever for such a problem -- _zero_ -- and you will not be
offering any such evidence, because none exists.

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.

No it isn't.

Yes, it just flat-out _is_.

Just not as visibly or egregiously

Not at all...

You just refuse to know the relevant facts.

as in the case of slavery.

Slavery denies a human being the right to live as he desires to benefit
another human being. This is clearly wrong.

Right. And that is the exact same thing IP monopoly privileges and
private ownership of natural resources do. _Hello_?

Ownership of a thing denies another who may wish to claim ownership.

But if the thing is a product owned by the producer, his ownership of
it does not deprive anyone else, because it did not exist before he
produced it.

This is a sort of privelige.

No, but owning what would otherwise be accessible to others certainly
is.

But if the thing owned was created by the person owning it,and would
not have been created otherwise, then people are actually better off
because the thing was created.

Right. But you simply _assume_, with _zero_evidence_, that nothing
would ever be created or invented, no resource would ever be
developed, if people didn't get monopoly privileges. But all of
history shows that assumption is just flat false.

When an artist creates an artwork, when an inventor creates an
innovation, when a developer develops an undeveloped resource - we all
benefit by these creations - and those who created these new and
valuable things enrich society and justly deserve to reap the benefits
of their creation.

Right. The benefits _of_their_creation_. Not the benefits of
violating others' rights to create similar things.

Patent rights, copyrights, and property rights are
one way this is achieved.

False. Property rights in the products of labor are the way this is
achieved. Patents, copyrights, and property in natural resources are
artificial and unjust _privileges_ that steal from others for the
unearned benefit of the privilege holders.

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.

Why not now?

Because you haven't show any willingness to know the basics, let alone
anything more complex than that.

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.

Thank you.

Then you will agree that those who develop off world resources have a
right to the resources they add to the total wealth in existence.

But that is just another of your dishonest substitutions of
"resources" for "products." They _do_not_ add natural resources to
the total wealth in existence, only the products they produce from
such resources. The resources were already there, with no help from
the developer. I'm not sure how you prevent yourself from knowing
these facts... but I definitely know _why_ you do.

By contrast, _discovering_ resources adds nothing to the total
wealth in existence, it merely changes the discoverer's own state of
knowledge.

If those who discover resources don't have rights to the knowledge they
create then there is no incentive to go out and develop that knowledge.

Oh, they have rights to the knowledge, all right. But not to the
resources the knowledge is _about_. And your claim that there is no
incentive to go out and develop knowledge unless one can prevent
others from using it is refuted a thousand times a day by releases of
scientific research into the public domain.

Give your head a shake.

I'm not so worried about who owns something no one knows about. I'm
worried about never knowing something that is very useful.

Then you have never heard of publishing scientific or scholarly
research without any intellectual property protection? Amazing!

Also, what about innovation? I mean, I can imagine NASA developing all
sorts of knowledge about resources in the solar system. I can imagine
developers wanting to lease sites across the solar system to develop
resources from that knowledge.

What about the guy who looks at this data and interprets it in an
innovative way to discover something no one else knows about? What
does he deserve for creating this innovation?

That's not an innovation. It's a discovery. And it gets _no_ IP
monopoly privilege. You are again trying to substitute other,
tendentious terms because the facts do not support your claims.

What would motivate
someone for *developing* this knowledge?

Lots of things: status, curiosity, pleasure, professional advancement,
etc. Of course, you could also just rob people and offer the loot to
those who develop the knowledge...

It seems to me that knowledge is damned important.

Then why do you refuse to accept any of the knowledge I offer _you_?

Just as a patent effectively deprives others of the right
to invent and use the thing themselves,

If its already invented, society doesn't need it invented again.

?? What? Give your head a shake. In the first place, society likely
never "needed" it invented at all. In the second place, society may
well be better off with the second or even a later version of it
(Elisha Gray's telephone was better than Bell's). And in the third
place, it has nothing to do with what society "needs" in the first
place: depriving others of the liberty to invent, use and produce
something violates their _rights_. It is a moral _crime_. It is
_injustice_, _tyranny_, _oppression_. It is _evil_.

granting ownership of
resources effectively deprives others of the right to discover and use
them themselves.

For a period of time yes, provided the first inventor teachs the
invention and puts it in the public domain.

Stop trying to change the subject, which was natural resources.

How would you reward inventors, novelists, artists, discoverers,
developers?

Unlike you, I would leave it up to the free market to reward them, and
not presume to violate others' rights on the basis of false beliefs by
issuing monopoly privileges.

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.

That's right - but I'm not wrong.

Yes, you just flat-out _are_ wrong, as I have proved over and over
again. There is no justification in economics for your assumption.
None. And there is plenty of economic logic proving that monopoly
privileges are inherently a very inefficient way to implement an
incentive, which is _all_ IP privileges were ever intended to do.

In
actual fact, resource ownership privileges provoke both unproductive
hoarding and wasteful speculation.

References?

"The most comfortable, but also the the most unproductive, way for a
capitalist to increase his fortune is to put all his monies in sites
and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has
to pay his price." -- Andrew Carnegie

Economic efficiency is optimized
and incentives most accurate when resource users must pay the market
rent to those they deprive of the resource.

I don't know what this means. Please explain it in simpler terms.

The market rent of a resource is what the owner can get for doing
nothing. To the extent that he is allowed to just pocket it, his
incentive to engage in any productive activity or make any beneficial
capital investment is attenuated. Likewise, when others are deprived
of access to a resource, they have no choice but to accept less
effective opportunities to apply their capital and labor. Production
is thus greatest when all opportunities are allocated according to who
is willing to pay the most for access to them, and no one gets
something for nothing.

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.

That's why we see interplanetary development such a hot investment
today? lol.

There are many reasons why interplanetary development is not currently
feasible, but lack of private ownership of celestial bodies is not one
of them. Some ancient rulers claimed to own the sun. Did that
stimulate development of the solar energy flux?

After all, what stops any private venture from just
_going_out_and_developing_off-earth_resources_? No one is going to
confiscate any products they bring back. No one is going to go out
and confiscate their production equipment. They _can't_.

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.

If the UN were to lease exploration and production rights to companies
and they took the rent out as a royalty interest against production, as
well as charging a small annual fee to maintain its exploration and
discovery rights, and where the corporation obtained the balance in he
form of working interest - I don't see why this wouldn't work.

It wouldn't work as well as just charging exclusive users the market
rent. But the UN currently lacks the authority to do either, AFAIK.

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.

References?

Singapore. Hong Kong.

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.

Ownership even by nations is not permitted under current law. I would
be happy if the UN set up a system of planetary and space leasing
allowing companies to pay rents for the right to explore and develop
resources off-world.

?? Well then, why are you arguing against it?

Think about it: if you own a resource, you can just
sit on it and hope for a speculative gain,

Yes,that's how it worked in Ohio when it was an unexplored territory.
Folks in England bought rights to large tracts of land, and that money
was used to build ships and attract settlers and the property was
settled.

You are greatly oversimplifying the process, and ignoring the many
cases where such investments were _not_ made. See Carnegie, above.

the exact same way the
owners of the 11,000 vacant lots in NYC do.

NYC is not a frontier like the surface of Mars. (Or the Ohio territory
in the 17th cent)

All the more reason why it should not have 11,000 vacant lots. But it
does.

But if you are paying the
market rent for it, you are going to do something to earn that money
back.

If a market rent exists - okay.

Right. But if it doesn't, you get to use the resource for free until
it does.

But what market rent would you apply to Mars?

?? I'm not the market. Whatever people are willing to pay is the
market rent.

I notice
when I push you up against your definitions you are totally incapable
of stretching your mind enough to even speak of your definitions in
other terms. This is a mark of a truly ignorant person.

No, it's a mark of someone who understands how important consistent
definitions are to understanding and the progress of knowledge.

I don't know how to tell you to become more mentally flexible.

I know you want to be able to change definitions in order to be able
to evade the facts, just as you have repeatedly tried to substitute
one term for another in the discussion above. Sorry, but I decline to
cooperate in your self-deception.

-- Roy L
.