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I believe you need to reread on what Bitcoin actually is.
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I released the source code for Britcoin for this reason. Currently we're talking with lawyers to gain the relevant licenses and expand to other currencies hopefully. If anyone wants to setup their own exchange, then I can do this for a small fee of ~400 BTC. I was thinking of open-source exchange software the other day. I am glad it wasn't an original idea. Thank you. |
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Bitcoin is a sound concept. I wouldn't worry too much. It may reach rock bottom but it can easily gain momentum again. People will pick it up like crazy at less than 50 cents a pop. Personally, I'm ecstatic. This is a great time to buy.
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So the "mind worker" deserves to get paid for his labor, precisely because he did the mind work? Now who's the intellectual Marxist?
He ONLY deserves to get paid for his labor if someone actually USES the fruits of his labor. If the one who wants to use the fruits of his labor doesn't like the price, then he can simply refrain from consuming the labor of the mind worker. It's very simple. Basic capitalism, actually. ...but not everybody is going to follow this. So you send out the men with guns to do your bidding. |
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News flash: in a free market you can lose your investment and get nothing for it. Try making THAT illegal.
Let's make failure illegal. Let's see how that works out. |
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I am in favor of the Aspirin process. Aspirin is in the public domain, but yet companies still make money off of making Aspirin. Anyone who doesn't think its price is worth it, can go to the Willow Tree and eat the appropriate amount of Bark.
People will pay for the convenience of not going to the willow tree, but will do so, if costs get out of hand. <--- Piracy defined.
Sure, once Aspirin is out there in the public domain (i.e. its novelty has worn off) then there is no problem with this. But what if someone actually spent 1 billion dollars researching and inventing Aspirin and after 10 years of hard work and lots of investment they finally start selling Aspirin only to find out that the company across the street has used one week to analyze the contents of their Aspirin and are now making their own version of Aspirin. And since they didn't spend 1 billion dollars and 10 years they can now sell the product at a fraction of the cost! Wow, free market competition! So the inventor -- the company who spent one billion dollars and 10 years on cutting edge research taking a huge risk and building up huge debt -- end up going broke, whereas the business across the street makes a fortune because they were able to make a "competing" product at "more competitive price." Please tell me that you understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with this, that it is grossly unfair that the hero who used all those resources to make the world a better place goes bankrupt while the parasite across the street who has done NO research and invested NOTHING gets all the profit. When they released Aspirin, invested in research and etc. they should of been aware of such risks. |
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...but they didn't sign any contract. Why should they be obligated to pay? Interesting you are arguing that if you don't sign a contract then violation is ok. That of course has to apply to killing as well. If you don't sign a contract with another person explicitly stating not to, it's ok to kill him. ...and a car can't be duplicated and be used by multiple people. It isn't the same.
Sure a car can be duplicated. You just get the atoms and put them together into a car. So, you wouldn't download a car? |
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Billy invents a way to increase crop production ten-fold. Billy licenses use of said technique with John. John agrees not to tell anybody. John walks down the street with said technique in-hand. Technique blows away and John breaks the contract. Mary finds the lost technique and applies it to her crop. She shares it with everybody. Hundreds of thousands of people are using the technique. Should they be forced to stop and/or pay royalties to Billy? Yes, they should, for the very same reason as if my car is stolen and resold to a third party then that third party does not own that car. He has to deliver it back to ME, the owner. You should be allowed to enforce such third party infringements both in the physical realm AND in the non-material realm. ...but they didn't sign any contract. Why should they be obligated to pay? ...and a car can't be duplicated and be used by multiple people. It isn't the same. |
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It's my ink and my paper. I will sell it any form I damn well please.
It's my mouth and I will use it to say whatever I want, including "give me all your money or I'll kill you." It's just sound, right? Doesn't mean anything, right? And when I sign a contract with you, it's not really an agreement, right? It's just ink on a piece of paper, right? The first sentence is out of context. Irrelevant. It's free speech, right? I just used my body peacefully to make sounds, right? Sounds don't hurt anyone, right? If you break contracts, nobody is not going to want to do business with you in the future. It's only to your detriment.
Interesting argument. Are you saying that it should NOT be legal to enforce contracts? In many cases contracts can't be enforced like on the internet. I am just saying they don't have to be. A monopoly on force or a gun in hand isn't always necessary. |
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Guy walks into a public area and starts a conversation with someone. As it progresses, someone begins to reveal slowly the design of a valuable technology. Guy screams, 'No! Stop! I don't want the patent holder to own me.' Onarchy would claim that this situation is equivalent to doing something dangerous where you might end up in the hospital with astronomical debt. Better not to talk to people.
Well, let's take the more tangible case of books. Authors use a year of their life to write a novel which provides entertainment and afterthought to his readers. BUT instead of selling 1 million copies of the book with copyright protection, the book only sells 100 copies because there is no copyright protection. The market is flooded with cheap or free pirate copies of the book. Millions of people read his books and since various materialist libertarians have been very successful at spreading their morality that intellectual work has ZERO value. Hoards of people not only do not pay for his book, but actually scoffs at people who pay for it for being "irrational" and "wasting money on something that has no value." So these people who read his one year work not only do not pay, but have a really, really good conscience about not paying, thinking "he got paid exactly what he deserved: ZERO. That's free market capitalism for you" before he continues reading the exciting book which allegedly was of zero value. So what you anti-IP libertarians are doing is something much, much, much, much worse than actually just reading a book without paying for it. You're spreading ideas to people that they should do it with a clear conscience! Then when all of society is like that you start wondering why there are no more new really good books being written, and why all the Hollywood films that come out are crap and regurgitations. But at least it's free! Well, let's take the more tangible case of sex. A prostitute uses a year of her life to learn how to make pleasurable sex which provides entertainment and afterthought to her partners. BUT instead of selling 100 acts of sex with copyright protection, she only sells 10 acts because there is no copyright protection. The market is flooded with cheap or free prostitutes whom she is undersold. Millions of people experience her trademark sex positions and since various materialist libertarians have been very successful at spreading their morality that intellectual work has ZERO value. Hoards of people not only do not pay for her positions and services, but actually scoffs at people who pay for it for being "irrational" and "wasting money on something that has no value." So these people who experience her one year work not only do not pay, but have a really, really good conscience about not paying, thinking "she got paid exactly what he deserved: ZERO. That's free market capitalism for you" before he continues enjoying the sex which allegedly was of zero value. So what you anti-IP libertarians are doing is something much, much, much, much worse than actually just reading a book without paying for it. You're spreading ideas to people that they should do it with a clear conscience! Then when all of society is like that you start wondering why there are no more new really good girls selling sex, and why all the pornographic films that come out are crap and regurgitations. But at least it's free! |
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It's my ink and my paper. I will sell it any form I damn well please.
It's my mouth and I will use it to say whatever I want, including "give me all your money or I'll kill you." It's just sound, right? Doesn't mean anything, right? And when I sign a contract with you, it's not really an agreement, right? It's just ink on a piece of paper, right? The first sentence is out of context. Irrelevant. If you break contracts, nobody is not going to want to do business with you in the future. It's only to your detriment. |
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A "Mind Worker"? What does Nature say about this? I can think of better ways of growing corn, but can't grow corn. So you want to charge the corn growers for increased efficiency from using your method. If you never told them, they would still grow corn. Before the contribution of the mind worker: a 10 ton crop of corn. After the contribution of the mind worker: a 100 ton crop of corn. Those 90 extra tons of corn would not exist without the contribution of the mind worker. Are you seriously saying then that just because he can still grow 10 tons of corn, being able to grow 100 tons of corn is of NO value to the farmer? A "Mind Worker"? is working in a fictitious world. He gets what he gets, and should be happy he gets it. However, if he grows corn and increases his own corn yields, he wins. But is he getting the reward from the Mind Work or the Corn Yield and his Physical Work. You are simply proving my point that libertarian anti-IP people are materialists who think that information is "fictional," i.e. doesn't exist. All that exists is physical work. That's identical to the ideas of stalinist Marxists. Wonder what a world of "Mind Workers" would look like? How much would things cost?
ALL people are to some extent a mind worker, because even the simplest of human tasks require the usage of the mind. So the right question is to ask: what would a world WITHOUT mind workers look like? How much would things cost? Basically you would be an animal, less than a savage. The concept of "cost" would be meaningless to you since you don't have a mind to understand it with. Billy invents a way to increase crop production ten-fold. Billy licenses use of said technique with John. John agrees not to tell anybody. John walks down the street with said technique in-hand. Technique blows away and John breaks the contract. Mary finds the lost technique and applies it to her crop. She shares it with everybody. Hundreds of thousands of people are using the technique. Should they be forced to stop and/or pay royalties to Billy? |
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You own your creative labor, fine. Now who gets to decide how much it is worth. You and guns or a free market.
A store owner owns the candy in his store, fine. Now who gets to decide how much it is worth. You and guns or a free market. I'm sure you'll agree that you don't HAVE to buy candy from a store if you think it's too expensive, so you can help decide the price of that candy by NOT CONSUMING it. I am also sure that you would say that it is still a free market even if the store owner uses guns to prevent you from taking candy without paying the price he demands. In other words, this entire line of argument is completely empty, because it ASSUMES THAT YOU ARE RIGHT. In other words, the real discussion here is what property IS, and once we agree on that then such arguments as you presented become valid. But by insisting on presenting such arguments even if the definition of property is in question, then your argument amounts to "I will ignore all your arguments about why intellectual work should be property and just insist without argument that it isn't, ok?" Fine, the candy is too expensive so I make my own and sell it cheaper. This is what you seem to be against because I supposedly infringed on the store owner's "intellectual labor" he used to make the candy. As long as you start from your OWN material and make your OWN candy it's perfectly ok to do that. That's capitalism. But when you COPY a book, is that then YOUR work of ART? Did you WRITE it? Did you spend thousands of hours working with your mind to create it? It's my ink and my paper. I will sell it any form I damn well please. |
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Here's the real question:
Does enforcing the existence of intellectual property help individual happiness and prosperity?
It certainly makes the CREATOR of the intellectual work happy, and most people actually feel more happy when they are behaving like decent human beings too. Therefore their conscience is clear when they actually don't steal the hard labor of a mind worker. I know that this obviously don't apply to a lot of the people in here, but I'm talking about normal, decent human beings who have not been seduced by Marxism. A "Mind Worker"? What does Nature say about this? I can think of better ways of growing corn, but can't grow corn. So you want to charge the corn growers for increased efficiency from using your method. If you never told them, they would still grow corn. A "Mind Worker"? is working in a fictitious world. He gets what he gets, and should be happy he gets it. However, if he grows corn and increases his own corn yields, he wins. But is he getting the reward from the Mind Work or the Corn Yield and his Physical Work. Wonder what a world of "Mind Workers" would look like? How much would things cost?  |
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You own your creative labor, fine. Now who gets to decide how much it is worth. You and guns or a free market.
A store owner owns the candy in his store, fine. Now who gets to decide how much it is worth. You and guns or a free market. I'm sure you'll agree that you don't HAVE to buy candy from a store if you think it's too expensive, so you can help decide the price of that candy by NOT CONSUMING it. I am also sure that you would say that it is still a free market even if the store owner uses guns to prevent you from taking candy without paying the price he demands. In other words, this entire line of argument is completely empty, because it ASSUMES THAT YOU ARE RIGHT. In other words, the real discussion here is what property IS, and once we agree on that then such arguments as you presented become valid. But by insisting on presenting such arguments even if the definition of property is in question, then your argument amounts to "I will ignore all your arguments about why intellectual work should be property and just insist without argument that it isn't, ok?" Fine, the candy is too expensive so I make my own and sell it cheaper. This is what you seem to be against because I supposedly infringed on the store owner's "intellectual labor" he used to make the candy. |
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With all due respect, you are incorrect. There are distributors who are in business to sell directly to retail at prices lower than the MSRPs. You just have to have minimum purchases over $1000 or so.
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Let's say somebody patented the idea of a car. Only one company can make cars. People go along with it and purchase these cruddy cars because it's the best option available at the time. However, a black market opens up due to the government restriction on car manufacturing. Wars occur on the streets due to "illegal car" smuggling. Lives are lost and "car thieves" are jailed at the taxpayer's expense but the car creator's "property right" is maintained.
Is this what you really want, onarchy?
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This where it all falls apart. The definition of intellectual labor is only held up by subjective whims and desires.
This is an assertion. Can you provide an argument to back up your assertion? Are you saying that thinking or creativity is not work? I am saying the idea of effort is completely subjective. It cannot be universally defined. There is no evidence for a true definition. It's like asking me to disprove the existence of God. |
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By saying that copy catting methods or copying data is the same is just, again, you calling it property. That's fine. But you can say it all with fewer bytes by stating 'ideas are property.'
Nope. Ideas are not property. Intellectual labor is property. No-one can own an idea without creating a totalitarian society. This where it all falls apart. The definition of intellectual labor is only held up by subjective whims and desires. |
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Here's the real question:
Does enforcing the existence of intellectual property help individual happiness and prosperity?
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