| | Sam, it might be prejudice on my part because you live in Santa Fe, pardner, but I never thought that you were ever condescending toward me or anyone else. You are pretty much an upfront kind of guy. I cannot be alone in appreciating that and enjoying your company.
Jon, I agree 100% that wires are physical things that have to be created. My point was only that the chopping that allowed wavelengths to be shared was a known technique and it suggests a different way to consider property.
Rand was not alone in this, but we know her works well and can use them in common for reference.
She said that the function of government in allocating frequencies was similar to the way they issue property rights from previously unclaimed land. I point out that frequencies could be shared, that time slices are property.
Your assertion that land is real property is historically correct, but I think that it is not rationally derived. (I don't mean that you are irrational. I mean that it is not like geometry, proved logically.) Take government. Historically, from anthropology, you might say that it begins with the chief and the council of elders. And even today we have the Senate (senior; senile) and when the President shows up the band plays "Hail to the Chief." But if you wanted to design a government rationally, you would not start with a Chief and the Elders. You might ask some other questions first.
So, too, here. If we know that property has a time-dimension, then why does the government grant title 24/7/365 for perpetuity? Why not grant title so that one person owns the land during the day and other at night? (I agree upfront that there are potential problems, but no more for neighbors in time than for neighbors in space.)
In fact, intellectual property is time based. Patents expire. Copyrights expire -- or they used to before the Mickey Mouse Copyright Right. Why don't rights to land expire? Or, why are intellectual property rights not perpetual like land?
So, for this problem, yes by contract you can buy this virtual space. But that is not a right in the same sense as the government protects your right to your land. And, again, the government does not protect your right to a patent the same was as it protects your land: you only get the right to sue; the army and the police are not there for patents and copyrights.
So, if you want all rights to be derived from our ideas about land, then, the bottom line here is should the government map, plat, and entitle cyberspace?
|
|
