A couple mistakes in there, including but not limited to: the assumption that "No one stops them."
Who was arguing for anarchism? Hell even anarchism has a theory for how society would deal with violent aggression.

That's a funny straw man used against libertarians: that a person's only desire in life should be the accumulation of resources. I've never heard anyone argue that.

Well said, but it isn't limited to Social Security, and worse yet it's part of an institutional, violent, force-based taxation system.

*Repost for fixed quote*

I rarely play TF2 anymore but I still have some pretty cool old hats for it. I'll accept offers in thread and conclude transactions in private messages/steam. I'm trustworthy but if you have more posts than me(not hard) I'll send you the hat(s) first. To keep it simple the minimum bid is 0.005 bitcoins. If you want to withdraw your bid just edit your post. I offer full refunds for 1 week and feel free to test that, I'd like to have a good reputation.

Item 1 - Vintage (Black) Engineer's Cap
Item 2 - Vintage Bonk Helm
Item 3 - Vintage Ye Olde Baker Boy
Item 4 - Vintage (Purple) Hustler's Hallmark
Item 5 - Vintage (White) Camera Beard
Item 6 - Vintage Stockbroker's Scarf + Vintage Foster's Facade

BONUS!

If I manage to sell all these I'll roll a 6-sided dice and give the purchaser of the rolled item number a Name Tag and Description tag.

I hope you guys like TF2.

That's rude

Hoarding is somewhat inefficient but more efficient than alternatives. People just get upset with hoarders because they drive the price up, often profit from the price going up, and don't contribute anything but storage or market adjustment for that profit. It's pretty much the same envy that drives some people to have an emotional issue with concept of early adopters/initial investors who get something for nothing (in said people's minds), and everyone else who follows their lead is left to diminishing returns.

There's nothing bad with hoarding but that's the problem people have with it. If it isn't flat envy of wealth it's envy of foresight. There is also the irrational fear that hoarders can somehow take everything and leave nothing, and the concept people learn at a young age that it's rude not to actively share what you own.

"Saving" money isn't quite hoarding, even when you aren't investing it because [see my earlier post]

People don't have a problem with saving because you aren't strictly profiting from it. You weren't actively pursuing profit, merely a wait, or a critical price [edited from "gain" because I don't proofread my messages for thought process artefacts]. The same irrational people often dislike the opposite side of the coin as well, which is to borrow the money for something instead of saving it, because they see everything from only one side. Borrowing money means you increase the overall cost (for the borrower) and therefore it's a worse deal than saving. These ideas are irrational but pervasive.

I like hoarding, and I think it's a good thing. Imagine if an Ebenezer Scrooge like actor stages a giant feast. More people would starve to death because the price of food had skyrocketed and the amount of food had dropped. Gold coins might buy food but being rich in gold doesn't mean you can magically make more food than there is. I'm often angered by this myth.

Still, I do consider there to be differences between "saving" and "hoarding", perhaps just because I read something about a bounty.
I'll assume (because I haven't read the entire thread) that by "saving" no one is talking about investing, "savings and loan" style deals.

Saving is holding with a target purchase in mind.
Hoarding is holding with a target value in mind.

If I save my money, I'm holding to buy say, a motorcycle. Once I have enough, I buy the motorcycle.
I might "save" a bag of potato chips for a party. I don't care what the later price of potato chips is.
When I "save" I most likely expect what I hold not to devalue, though. This is not a necessity in saving.

If I hoard my money I'm holding to make a profit.
I might "hoard" a bag of potato chips expecting a boom in the price of potato chips.
I use the bag of potato chips as a store of value, as opposed to a future use of potato chips.
When I "hoard" I expect what I hold to appreciate in value. I gamble that the price will increase.

Another key difference is that when I purchase my potato chips to "save" them for later, I am not going to be acting in reverse of the mechanism with which I got them. I am not purchasing them to allow someone else to purchase them later. If I hoard them that's exactly what I am doing. An exception to this is money which by it's nature is a liquid asset. The only way to get money is to provide goods or services, and the only purpose to save money is to pay for goods or services. The difference here is of again saving money for an goal (even if unknown now, like a possible future medical bill) vs hoarding money for an appreciation in value.

I think hoarding/gouging are good things. They are natural and efficient mechanisms for managing a shortage, and gauging accurate prices.

I have a number of points to make. They are disjointed but I believe they would help to narrow these arguments which seem to confuse a number of people with their semantics. I'll number my points so you can refute or elaborate upon them specifically.

  1. People have created and will continue to create "intellectual property" of value without financial incentive to do so, and they will find financial incentives to do so even without "intellectual property" laws.

  2. The current system is inherently unfair, for many reasons, not the least reason of which is the arbitrary nature of what ideas are considered "intellectual property" and what are not. As such, to support intellectual property you should make specific examples of what idealized laws might look like. Otherwise I and many others will likely assume you mean you support current U.S. or Europe intellectual property laws, or international agreements in their vein.

  3. "Big budget" films will rarely if ever be made without "intellectual property" laws. This seems to me like common sense, which sadly is not as common as one may wish.

  4. People do not need large budgets to create powerful ideas of value. My favorite movie, Primer, was created for $7,000.

  5. It is not the society's legal responsibility to ensure profits on your work, speculation, or investment. If you make a bad investment other people are not responsible to pay you what you expected to make, even if that expectation was reasonable at the time and your investment was beneficial to society. If you buy stock in a business whose goal is to start sustainable food-export communities for starving and poor peoples, and it seems like a sound investment but it's business model failed, no one owes you your investment. That was your risk to take. (This could be a point of contention)

  6. It does not require the initiation of force to copy a book that was sold to me. (This seems to be a point of contention)

  7. It does require the initiation of force to prevent me from copying a book that was sold to me. (This seems to be a point of contention)

  8. It requires the initiation of force to take your property from you, for instance, a book, and as such reasonable force required to address that grievance is not the initiation of force and should be legal. This is complicated however. Help me to elaborate this point.

  9. Something morally or ethically wrong does not necessarily need to be illegal.

 10. My final point for now is an abstract one, and my own opinion. I consider anything that can be put into someone's mind (perhaps as mnemonic devices, words, letters, numbers, names) and then spoken aloud elsewhere, and recorded, no matter how long it takes, cannot be considered property. If they can exist within our minds they can't be owned by someone else, even if we didn't spontaneously think of them on our own.

  Also I would like to hear further ideas about the enforcement and establishment of contract-law alternatives to "intellectual property".

  Thank you for your time. I know this was a long (FIRST!) post.

I chuckled.