Intellectual Property - In All Fairness!

[Rassah]

By the way, need to point out that current insurance companies work the way my proposed security companies do. What's stopping them from simply running away with the money is that practically all insurance companies are themselves reinsured through other bigger specialized companies. It's easier to just take out a claim from the reinsurer, fix your customers, and continue to make money off them, than run away with whatever you have collected so far.

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[Hawker]

Do you feel you have a right to stop us?  If yes, what is the basis of that right?

If I want to buy something from a second party that they rightfully own, third parties have no right to interfere.

That's avoiding the question.  We have the capacity to interfere and if we don't, people will die.  You feel that you have a right to ahead anyway.  What is the basis of this right? 

[AyeYo]

What is the basis of this right? 

You're never going to get an answer to that question, because the answer is nothing more than, "because I said so."

Obviously, the rest of us will dispute that, but he'll stand firm.  That means we'll have to fight it out and whoever is left standing will uphold their opinion.  Violence will always determine who gets their way, no matter what semantics/defintion/word games the libertards want to play.

[FredericBastiat]

The NAP says its fine to regulate nuclear weapons and smallpox as you saw from the chat with Atlas. 

The NAP doesn't speak to anything specific regarding nuclear weapons or smallpox. Additionally, if Atlas says it does, I would disagree with him. You can directly react to violence or threats thereto (overt gestures indicating such). If you wish to call that regulating, that's fine, but it should only affect the person specifically in conjunction with the use of the weapon, not independent of it.

Just possessing a "dangerous" object independent of the person who may act upon it doesn't qualify any object for regulation. To wit you don't regulate the materials themselves just because they have the potential to do harm.

[AyeYo]

The NAP says its fine to regulate nuclear weapons and smallpox as you saw from the chat with Atlas. 

The NAP doesn't speak to anything specific regarding nuclear weapons or smallpox. Additionally, if Atlas says it does, I would disagree with him. You can directly react to violence or threats thereto (overt gestures indicating such). If you wish to call that regulating, that's fine, but it should only affect the person specifically in conjunction with the use of the weapon, not independent of it.

Just possessing a "dangerous" object independent of the person who may act upon it doesn't qualify any object for regulation. To wit you don't regulate the materials themselves just because they have the potential to do harm.

Round and round in circles we go.

[FirstAscent]

NAP is absurd, because its membership is voluntary.

[fergalish]

...My questions are: how can we resolve this conflict?  Fred insists he has the right to carry a gun around unless otherwise prohibited.  I insist he does not, and would be willing to engage in mortal violence if necessary to defend myself.  I come from a country where guns are outlawed, but I've been in Texas - all I could do was take a big gulp, keep my head down, and try not to piss anyone off.

Funny how that quote (in bold) sounds awful Libertarian-like. As in, the right to defend oneself. I would carry a gun if necessary, so that at a moments notice, should someone threaten my life, I could defend myself. Taking the right to defend myself from me equates to unprovoked violence or threat thereto. Do you agree that you have a right to self-defense and ownership of a gun (among other things), or am I missing something? Seemingly you have no problem "engaging in mortal violence", so what's the problem?

Oh my goodness - are you being deliberately obtuse?  Is it not clear yet that I'm hypothesising a libertarian world?  There is already a solution in the current system.  The law states what is or is not permitted.  This is not stated under libertarianism and, as such, any individual could potentially interpret almost any action as hostile.  You yourself have said that a positive or negative interpretation of hostile intent could depend on whether the supposed assiland is SMILING or not.  Do you not realise how ridiculous that is?

So if there was nobody around me, or I was the last living human, I would become incapacitated, supposedly because I'm only enabled by those who permit me to have "personal liberty"?

Well if that happens, here's what you could try.  Carry your nuke around with you and see if any ghosts object.  It's *really* hard not to ridicule statements like this.  Political philosophy is a *social* issue.  If it's just you, there's no society, no political philosophy, no problem.

It's not like we're giving you complicated problems to solve.  If you make any problem complicated enough, then no political philosophy will solve it.  But THESE ARE PROBLEMS THAT CONCERN THE VERY FOUNDATION STONES OF LIBERTARIANISM ITSELF.  To wit: your liberty and my liberty ARE NOT COMPATIBLE, and I'm using the word 'liberty' in your sense of the word; that is, something I define for me, you for you, Hawker for Hawker, and so on.  How can you "build on top" of something that is fundamentally flawed?

I am at liberty to do everything insomuch as it only concerns me and my things (excepting mutual contract), but I am not at liberty to prohibit you from the equal supremacy to act upon you and yours. Liberty is justifiably constrained by the NAP. Nothing particuarly difficult to understand about that.

I agree that, if your actions concern only you and your property, you may do as you please.  But when your actions involve me, directly or indirectly, actively or passively, I declare that you may not do as you please.  And you STILL haven't resolved the problems - they are not 'edge cases' - they are simple situations which probably occur thousands of times a day around the world without resort to violence.   Go on, you asked me who owns the room and I answered.  Are you free to carry a gun in or not?  Answer it, and the other questions, in your next post here, or I declare the discussion over - libertarianism, as proposed by you and b2c, is fundamentally flawed and unworkable in the modern world.

No one. As mentioned below, just personal financial consequences. In extreme cases, perhaps even litigation from neighbors who believe you are negligently endagering them by having flamable property close to theirs without means of securing it if it starts to burn?

EXACTLY. You are negligently endangering them.  Why don't you ask b2c or Fred if they will condemn an unqualified person who carries a nuke around with them.  Or - just read back a few pages.  They have already expressed themselves abundantly clearly.  Now - this litigation - where does it take place?  Which court?  Who enforces the verdict?

Admittedly, that may require the customers/land owners to be a bit more mobile....

So... I'd have to move house every time somebody from Texas happens to move in on my street?

They could. There could also be a secondary overseeing body, like a BBB for security companies, that oversees multiple territories, helps enforce secority company contracts, and which the security company would have to be a member of if it wants to have any hope of doing business. The security BBB is not tied to any specific company or territory, and is not directly responsible for security, and thus will have incentive to keep all of the other companies in check (unless all of them colude, if which case the company exposing that collusion will likely end up with all the contracts)

Who pays for it?  Is it obligatory to participate and to obey the rules of this BBB company?

So what if you don't pay for security and to hell with the consequences - not having to pay for security or insurance will also enable you to provide a cheaper product than your competitors.  [sarcasm] Ohhhhhh, of course, people will buy the more expensive product because they'll ALL know that you don't have insurance and they'll really disapprove of that even though your factory is thousands of miles from your market. [/sarcasm]

That's true. Though you're still exposing yourself to massive litigation risk, and as mentioned, people paying security companies to keep them safe will very likely expect that company to protect them from outside threats, not just from threats on their own property. If you own a nuke, and are not paying anyone for security, you should probably expect to have random companies to come by to try to extort you mafia-style, or have private contracts placed on obtaining either your nukes or your head, since, technically, neither one is well protected.

Where does the litigation take place, given that your polluting factory is thousands of miles from your house, from your market, and, most importantly, from the security company defending you?  And now you are suggesting that, under libertarianism, you can expect to be extorted by the mafia at any moment?  That doesn't sound very satisfactory...  And, let's be clear, if the Mafia is more powerful than the security company you already employ, well, you can expect them to come knocking anyway.  Right?

So MightMakesWinnerMakesRight?  I can freely invade and take control of defenceless property and no-one other than the miserable owners will try to stop me?

Yes. Unless the owner is paying someone else to stop you. As far as i understand it, the main source of all might in libertarian society would come from customers handing out money. Voting is essentially done by whoever can get paid the most.

In an unregulated world, money=guns.  Damn, even *with* regulation, it's already like that.  b2c and Fred propose libertarianism because they abhor the MightMakesRight status currently enjoyed by governments.  You have just acknowledged that libertarianism=MightMakesWinnerMakesRight.

By the way, need to point out that current insurance companies work the way my proposed security companies to. What's stopping them from simply running away with the money is that practically all insurance companies are themselves reinsured through other bigger specialized companies. It's easier to just take out a claim from the reinsurer, fix your customers, and continue to make money off them, than run away with whatever you have collected so far.

There's also the law and a small matter of being put in prison, though I concede that in the current system wealthy people seem not to end up in prison.

[AyeYo]

NAP is absurd, because its membership is voluntary.

What's the matter?  You don't like the idea of rules that you only follow if you feel like it? 

[Hawker]

The NAP says its fine to regulate nuclear weapons and smallpox as you saw from the chat with Atlas. 

The NAP doesn't speak to anything specific regarding nuclear weapons or smallpox. Additionally, if Atlas says it does, I would disagree with him. You can directly react to violence or threats thereto (overt gestures indicating such). If you wish to call that regulating, that's fine, but it should only affect the person specifically in conjunction with the use of the weapon, not independent of it.

Just possessing a "dangerous" object independent of the person who may act upon it doesn't qualify any object for regulation. To wit you don't regulate the materials themselves just because they have the potential to do harm.

I thought you agreed a person with smallpox could be quarantined.  My bad.

As humans we are able to organise they type of society we want to live in.  We have the capacity to intervene to regulate dangerous materials and quarantined dangerous people.  In the case of fertiliser, as we discussed earlier, the case of a person with smallpox, we know that lives will be saved if we do intervene.  Since we have the capacity to save these lives, failing to intervene is facilitating extra unnecessary killings.

Do you have a moral basis for stopping us?  

[FirstAscent]

NAP is absurd, because its membership is voluntary.

What's the matter?  You don't like the idea of rules that you only follow if you feel like it? 

It's so funny. They both keep trotting out the NAP, as if they've been indoctrinated by some cultist book they both read. And they keep making this horrific assumption that everyone just follows the NAP - but how exactly does that work unless some central authority enforces the NAP?

[FredericBastiat]

I thought you agreed a person with smallpox could be quarantined.  My bad.

As humans we are able to organise they type of society we want to live in.  We have the capacity to intervene to regulate dangerous materials and quarantined dangerous people.  In the case of fertiliser, as we discussed earlier, the case of a person with smallpox, we know that lives will be saved if we do intervene.  Since we have the capacity to save these lives, failing to intervene is facilitating extra unnecessary killings.

Do you have a moral basis for stopping us?  

I did agree with a person being quarantined, but that's because they were the weapon.

[FredericBastiat]

It's so funny. They both keep trotting out the NAP, as if they've been indoctrinated by some cultist book they both read. And they keep making this horrific assumption that everyone just follows the NAP - but how exactly does that work unless some central authority enforces the NAP?

What's so particularly special about having a central authority for enforcement? Could I not just hire a private security firm to protect me? If you can't understand the NAP, then we have worse things to worry about (I'm not referring to the detonate-by-water-droplet-nuke problem either)

Indoctrinated? Cultist? Yeah those words change everything now... What was I thinking? Poor crazy brainwashed illogical me... Horrific indeed! Sheesh.

[FirstAscent]

What's so particularly special about having a central authority for enforcement? Could I not just hire a private security firm to protect me? If you can't understand the NAP, then we have worse things to worry about (I'm not referring to the detonate-by-water-droplet-nuke problem either)

Couldn't I just hire a bigger and meaner private security firm to nullify the protective capabilities of your security firm?

[Hawker]

I thought you agreed a person with smallpox could be quarantined.  My bad.

As humans we are able to organise they type of society we want to live in.  We have the capacity to intervene to regulate dangerous materials and quarantined dangerous people.  In the case of fertiliser, as we discussed earlier, the case of a person with smallpox, we know that lives will be saved if we do intervene.  Since we have the capacity to save these lives, failing to intervene is facilitating extra unnecessary killings.

Do you have a moral basis for stopping us?  

I did agree with a person being quarantined, but that's because they were the weapon.

That seems to be a little odd but I'll let it pass.

The question remains; we have the ability to act in a way that will save lives.  You have the ability to try to stop us.  But do you have some moral basis for stopping us?  In the Irish case, what are you offering to balance the thousands of lives that regulating fertiliser sales saves?

[Rassah]

Why don't you ask b2c or Fred if they will condemn an unqualified person who carries a nuke around with them.  Or - just read back a few pages.  They have already expressed themselves abundantly clearly.  Now - this litigation - where does it take place?  Which court?  Who enforces the verdict?

I assume they would condemn it, but they are not government. i would also assume that the surrounding people in this hypothetical libertarian society will also condemn it. Is the job of condemning something solely government's responsibility? I may not have understood your point here.
Litigation can be in private court, private arbitration, or private contracts (enough people paying someone to make the problem go away). And yes, that does sound scary, but is already quickly becoming reality with globalization, where a company may no longer be subject to any one specific legal jurisdiction they conduct business in.

Admittedly, that may require the customers/land owners to be a bit more mobile....

So... I'd have to move house every time somebody from Texas happens to move in on my street?

Only every time you believe your security or market options have become too limited and you wish to change that (for example, no competition any more with only one corrupt security company available to you).

There could also be a secondary overseeing body, like a BBB for security companies, that oversees multiple territories, helps enforce secority company contracts, and which the security company would have to be a member of if it wants to have any hope of doing business.

Who pays for it?  Is it obligatory to participate and to obey the rules of this BBB company?

Your security company pays for it out of the fees they charge you (just as your life/car/home insurance company pays for the reinsurance coverage out of the fees they charge you). They are free not to participate, and you are free not to buy their services if they don't. Eventually only the most trustworthy, or the ones with this BBB membership, companies will be able to survive in the market. And it will be the BBB's responsibility to force these companies to obey the rules, buy whatever means they decide work best.

Where does the litigation take place, given that your polluting factory is thousands of miles from your house, from your market, and, most importantly, from the security company defending you?  And now you are suggesting that, under libertarianism, you can expect to be extorted by the mafia at any moment?  That doesn't sound very satisfactory...  And, let's be clear, if the Mafia is more powerful than the security company you already employ, well, you can expect them to come knocking anyway.  Right?

Private, independent legal body not limited by borders, as mentioned above. If enough people get hurt by that polluting factory, they may be able to get enough money to pay to get their problem to go away. And as I mentioned, these security companies would likely be protecting your property from outside threats as well, be they nuke holders or poluting companies. Pollution harms the quality and value of my property, and a security company with a contract isn't walled in to operate only within it's contracted space.
Yes, you could, just as under a democracy you can be extorted by mafia at any moment. The only thing that keeps Mafia extortion at bay is police force, public or private. If you don't want Mafia problems, and there's no public police force, pay for the private one. That was my whole point in response to "why would someone be compelled to by a security contract." If the mafia is more powerfull, then very likely that mafial WILL be your security company. They have an interest in keeping their "clients" healthy, running good businesses, and continuing to pay Mafia dues, so will also protect their clients from inner and outside threats (though Mafia is one of the reasons I mentioned you may decide to move if you don't like their services). Southern Italy is practically one of the safest places in the world because of this, as long as you keep out of trouble and don't do anything that would harm the bambini (children).

So MightMakesWinnerMakesRight?  I can freely invade and take control of defenceless property and no-one other than the miserable owners will try to stop me?

Yes. Unless the owner is paying someone else to stop you. As far as i understand it, the main source of all might in libertarian society would come from customers handing out money. Voting is essentially done by whoever can get paid the most.

In an unregulated world, money=guns.  Damn, even *with* regulation, it's already like that.  b2c and Fred propose libertarianism because they abhor the MightMakesRight status currently enjoyed by governments.  You have just acknowledged that libertarianism=MightMakesWinnerMakesRight.
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Guns, like slavery, don't make a very good might. You can only use guns to take so much before you run out of money to pay for bullets, or run out of people to take stuff from. See crumbling Middle East and broke North Korea as examples. The one with the most might will be the one who can make the most money, and that will be the one who can put his people to work, and get other people to pay him for that work. That person will also have, ore money to pay for guns and bullets to defend himself from threats than the other guy with just guns and oppresion.

By the way, need to point out that current insurance companies work the way my proposed security companies to. What's stopping them from simply running away with the money is that practically all insurance companies are themselves reinsured through other bigger specialized companies. It's easier to just take out a claim from the reinsurer, fix your customers, and continue to make money off them, than run away with whatever you have collected so far.

There's also the law and a small matter of being put in prison, though I concede that in the current system wealthy people seem not to end up in prison.
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And international companies don't necessarily need to observe a specific country's law. For example, Citigroup's Traveler's Insurance wouldn't care much if it broke the law in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. At most they would oose access to some customers. But they would care if they broke relations with Lloyds of London reinsurance company, since they would then expose themselves to massive claims risk, and can lose the trust of all their companies. The underlying rules of Lloyds aren't governmened by government law, but by what customers believe they need.

[FredericBastiat]

As humans we are able to organise they type of society we want to live in.  We have the capacity to intervene to regulate dangerous materials and quarantined dangerous people.  In the case of fertiliser, as we discussed earlier, the case of a person with smallpox, we know that lives will be saved if we do intervene.  Since we have the capacity to save these lives, failing to intervene is facilitating extra unnecessary killings.

Do you have a moral basis for stopping us?  

If I don't threaten you or aggress you, I'm within my rights to stop you from invading me. On that moral basis, yes. Just because you have the capacity to intervene doesn't always mean you should (numerical superiority doesn't count either). I'll use your words, "on what moral basis..." do you have a right to regulate property that's not yours?

In fact, why don't you do everybody the favor of always prefixing, "on what moral basis", in front of all of your questions from now on. That way we can always refer to the principles upon which we act before we enact. Tedious I know, but extremely useful.

[Rassah]

Why do you guys believe that NAP means no aggression? From what I understand, NAP means that any agressor will be instantly eliminated, and everyone else knows this, so whoever doesn't want to be eliminated will not be the agressor himself. Am I wrong? And wouldn't people supporting NAP also eliminate anyone attempting to make bombs out of fertilizer?

P. P. S. I am still just playing devil's advocate here, as I still do not fully understand or support libertarianism (can't support if I can't fully understand), and I do realize that people of different colors, sexualities, and religions can and likely will be viewed as "agressors" as well.

[Anonymous]

Somebody is going to come on here and argue that looking at a person the wrong way is considered aggression.

Next argument: Define aggression.

[Hawker]

As humans we are able to organise they type of society we want to live in.  We have the capacity to intervene to regulate dangerous materials and quarantined dangerous people.  In the case of fertiliser, as we discussed earlier, the case of a person with smallpox, we know that lives will be saved if we do intervene.  Since we have the capacity to save these lives, failing to intervene is facilitating extra unnecessary killings.

Do you have a moral basis for stopping us?  

If I don't threaten you or aggress you, I'm within my rights to stop you from invading me. On that moral basis, yes. Just because you have the capacity to intervene doesn't always mean you should (numerical superiority doesn't count either). I'll use your words, "on what moral basis..." do you have a right to regulate property that's not yours?

In fact, why don't you do everybody the favor of always prefixing, "on what moral basis", in front of all of your questions from now on. That way we can always refer to the principles upon which we act before we enact. Tedious I know, but extremely useful.

Let me put it a different way.

We have the capacity to organise.  We have to choose between regulation of fertiliser sales which will save lives and not regulating fertiliser sales which will result in a many deaths.  So we debate whether or not to do it.  

On one side of the debate, for regulation, we have an advocate who says "Its nice to avoid being killed.  If you don't regulate fertiliser sales, thousands will die and you and your own family may be among them."

On the other side we have an advocate who says "If you regulate fertiliser sales, I lose my.... "

Lose what?  I don't get what you want to offer that is worth dying for?

[Hawker]

Somebody is going to come on here and argue that looking at a person the wrong way is considered aggression.

Next argument: Define aggression.

Does it matter?  A man with a nuke may have his wife run off and kill himself in despair.  He has no thought of the other residents of his apartment block, let people who lives miles away.  So no aggression there.

Sadly he does kill them all so the lack of aggression hasn't really mattered to them.