| | Dennis Hardin:
"The problem here is it just assumes any "thing" you can identify conceptually may be owned. One problem with this is that it seems to make reality depend on the way we name or conceptually identify things. If I call or understand your output as a "novel," then the "novel" is the unit. But just because this suffices for conceptual understanding of the world does not mean there is some "ontological" class of entities called "novels" that may be owned. In fact our concepts are use to refer to many phenomenon in or aspects of reality--truth, love, the-fact-that-I-woke up this morning, the age of the earth, my favorite drink. Are these things ownable just because they are "things" that can be conceptually identified? I don't think so."
Rand is very clear about the fact that an idea or concept as such cannot be legally protected until it has been given a specific physical form. It is this specific form which endows it with value because that had to be created, and property rights apply only to that material form—e.g. books, magazine articles, audiotapes, etc. This material form cannot be reproduced without permission and/or compensation.
I find this reasoning flawed for several reasons. First, as I've noted to others here, it assumes that patent is like copyright--that it goes to "copying" (reproducing) others' inventions. It does not. That is not the patent systme. It has nothing to do with knowledge, access, learning, copying: the patent right is basically absolute. Independent invention, hell, even PRIOR invention, is NOT a defense! If you reject this part of the patent system, you basically reject the patent system, just as I do, since, as any mainstream patent advocate will tell you, the system would be utterly useless and collapse, if these were defenses. So you seem basically to be thinking of some copyright-based system (a system designed to protect original works of authorship, NOT practical inventions) would extend to inventions too. I have no idea what such a system would look like, and I don't think any of its implicit advocates do either; i.e., they don't know what they are talking about, quite literally; they are not clear on what they are advocating. They object to critics of IP; yet they agree with most or many of our concrete criticisms of IP. They do not seem clear on what they are in favor of, yet seem determined to be in favor of it anyway. IF any libertarian wants to set forth an actual vision of the IP system he is in favor of, it can be discussed.
"When you ask what things are ownable, before asking who the owner is, you realize the criteria is bound up with the purpose of property rights, which is to assign owners to avoid conflict; that is, they pertain to the types of things over which there can be conflict--that is, to rivalrous (scarce) resources. Clearly not to facts or memories or recipes or patterns or information. So you never get to the question of who owns a poem. It is simply not part of the class of ownable things. Call it a thing if you like; say it "exists"; fine by me. But it's not an ownable thing."
This is a typically libertarian approach to rights, implying that the only issues involved are purely practical and dropping the context of the moral basis of rights. In Objectivism, rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. Man survives through the use of his mind, and property rights amount to a legal codification of the connection between mental effort and material values. They assure that the material products of a man’s mental efforts will be his to dispose of as he see fits—to serve his life and needs. It is a kind of contract which the creator of a novel or article or poem or invention—all of which are very much “ownable”--makes with anyone who might use it to agree to compensate him for his efforts.
A kind of contract? If I think of a way to use my property, when did I enter into any contract with others, that lets me sue them if they use their property in a similar way--esp. if they independently think of this way too??
As for dropping the moral context: I want to remind you of Rand's comment from Galt's speech: "Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate--do you hear me? No man may start--the use of physical force against others."
Note how this presupposes the simplicity of, the self-evidence of, what aggression is, and why it's wrong. This is what any civilized person does. This is what it means to be civilized. We are all civilized, who discuss these matters; we all take for granted the basic civilized norms.
Man must create the values his life requires, but it would be absurd to say that he can only own those things which are entirely of his own creation. The monetary compensation he receives for his material creations can then be used in exchange for goods created or produced by other men (e.g., food products which must be grown, farmed or manufactured).
I find the idea that we "create values" to be confused. We don't create values. Valuing is a relationship--you value something, and you demonstrate this in action, as Mises noted (and as Rand recognized in her idea that value is something you ACT to gain and/or keep). We don't create values; we create things, we create wealth; we transform things into more "valuable" (i.e,. more valued) things. Sure.
Your approach is purely utilitarian: rights are to be assigned in a way that best reduces conflict. The objective requirements of human life have nothing to do with it.
I don't thinks is correct. Note Rand's inquiry is based on the implicit ethical assumptions or presuppositions of those who have chosen to live. Likewise, my argument is based on the implicit ethical presuppositions of those who have chosen to be civilized--including in particular those who debate or inquire into these issues; those who engage in argumentative justification of norms in the first place. We are all libertarians in the political sense here--we share certain views in common. What are these views? I think we all share the idea that peace and cooperation, civilization, are *good*. We choose to be civilized, just as we choose to live. Why do we make this choice? Who can say. But the choice has some implications. Those of us with a decent grasp of economics realize 98% of libertarian political views, simply by applying basic econoomics, and some logical consistency, to our presupposed basic norms of peace and cooperation. We see that most of our fellow men go astray not b/c they want to be wicked, but b/c they are confused--their advocacy of government intervention and aggression is *inconsistent with* their stated pro-civilized norms, right? don't we all here agree that our fellow men are mostly confused and inconsistent? So we try to point this out to them. We say, look, if you are really in favor of prosperity and peace, you can't favor taxes or anti-discrimination laws, since these undermine peace and prosperity. Thati s all I"m doing; it's what we all do.
NOte you do not make the same arguments to an aggressor--someone trying to club me over the head, say, or rape me: you shoot them, if you can.
"Unless we define rights from the objective moral perspective of the requirements of individual surivival, the all-powerful state will continue to grow and thrive, and libertarianism will have helped pave the way to tyranny."
I'll say thi: most Objectivists favor the state, at least a minimal state. Yet there is no minimal state in the world; and there never has been one. The ones that have been even close (and I would disagree taht the US ever was really close) all devolve into worse states, and tyranny of one type or another. So why Objectivists think a limited government is even *possible* is beyond me. In my view, it is advocacy of the state at all that helps pave the way for tyranny. Tyrants can't get away with it but for consent of the populace. I don't grant them my consent. Some Objectivists do, even if unwittingly.
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