Awesome free state project open to bitcoin donations

[Anonymous]

Addendum:

I am not anti-IP. Sure, I believe in idea protection through contracts and concealment. However, you shouldn't get butthurt when your idea gets out and decide to hate man because he uses his property in his best interest.

[Anonymous]

How about a thought experiment.

Assume we now have telepathic abilities. I go and watch a movie but with my photographic memory and telepathy, I go to a coffee shop and share the movie with others. Am I wrong. Or is the argument that as long as we can prevent it we will, but once we can't well all will have to change.

Well, All will have to change.  I just wish they would hurry up and get there.

The only way to make sure the labor of those hard-working movie creators is respected is to put government telepathic tracking on everybody's thoughts. IP-infringement through thought will be punished to the highest extent of law. Continued thought crime will lead to brain suspension.

Thinking is a government-granted privilege. Abuse it and lose it.

[wb3]

I will make an admission, although I think I am OK.

I "acquired" the Hurt Locker, but liked it so much I bought the DVD.

What conundrum would this be, I would not have bought the DVD, if I didn't see the movie?

Since I now own the Hurt Locker, and didn't share it, I am fine.

I thought of taking the DVD back when I heard of the law suit.

[wb3]

Matter takes precedence over published information because you can control it. Information can really only be considered property if it is controlled. If someone breaks into my computer and lifts my wallet.dat file, a case can be made that it was stolen, but I still no longer own it. If I publish my wallet.dat file I no longer own it, but I can not really make a case that it was stolen because I abdicated my control of it.

Good Points, and long winded but I understand. Hitting the brick wall and all.

If a bank robber steals all the money out of the bank, and buys a whole bunch of junk food and eats it. The money is gone. Yea, it was yours, but you lost control or someone lost control for you.

You can't go to the convenient stores and demand your money. You "might" be able to get the robber to give it back, but odds are he is broke, hence he is robbing banks.

Ironically if he was able to steal $5 Billion Dollars and spend it. It is gone. He will do his 20 years, out in 5 for good behavior. But he will never repay you, unless he goes and steals someone else's money and gives it to you.

Loss of Control is a good standard. Movie theaters could do strip searches and only release to the theater, but once it hits the DVD rack, all bets off.


Just to add; I believe if I buy something it is mine. To do with as I wish. If I buy a DVD and want to show it to all my friends, I have the right to do it.  I routinely give my DVD's to the Library so as many people can watch them as wanted. I have given over 400 DVD's to the Library. I am sharing my property.

[error]

This is true, and as of today The Free State Initiative is the only project where Bitcoins will be accepted as a fully free and legal payment without any legal hindrances. The Free State Initiative currently accepts and a future Free State will accept donations in Bitcoins to show this. Yet, despite this not a single person in the Bitcoin-community has donated a single Bitcoin to the initiative. I find that very, very strange.

Thanks for using Bitcoin. I think people are waiting to see more discussion and generally get to know the project better before they donate.

I think all of us were willing to take a look, and the eight pages of tough questions gave answers that most of us disliked. This initiative may succeed, but it seems that here, it's been largely rejected. Few of us are willing to donate to a project where people will be thrown into prison for pirating Windows or reinventing the wheel.

[NghtRppr]

Matter takes precedence over published information because you can control it. Information can really only be considered property if it is controlled. If someone breaks into my computer and lifts my wallet.dat file, a case can be made that it was stolen, but I still no longer own it. If I publish my wallet.dat file I no longer own it, but I can not really make a case that it was stolen because I abdicated my control of it.

Loss of Control is a good standard.

I think a better one is excludability because it gets at the heart of the matter and is covered quite a bit in Libertarian literature.

[sirius]

I think all of us were willing to take a look, and the eight pages of tough questions gave answers that most of us disliked. This initiative may succeed, but it seems that here, it's been largely rejected. Few of us are willing to donate to a project where people will be thrown into prison for pirating Windows or reinventing the wheel.

The laissez-faire policies described on the site are classical minarchism and many people here are surely fine with that. This IP thing divides opinions, but I think many libertarians would still prefer the relatively free state over less free states.

Onarchy, 100K is a lot of money to ask as donations. You'll need to convince people that the funds can actually be raised and things are really going to happen. A donation counter would be cool. Have you looked into Kickstarter or some other fundraising site that would allow donations on the condition that the required total amount will be reached?

Getting donations will surely be easier if the initial negotiations are successful. Having a bigger team of representatives for the project would help build confidence. This is a huge project for one person, and random internet guys don't know you well enough to trust that you can do it.

[onarchy]

Whoever makes a claim has the burden of proof. You're claiming that intellectual property should be considered as legitimate property.

No, YOU are claiming that physical property should be considered as legitimate property. (If you don't believe me, ask a socialist what HE thinks about your property theory) I have no more burden of proof than you do.

Are you not? If so, where's your argument for that? All I see you doing is loudly declaring that you should be able to make money by owning information. Why?

The rational basis for ALL property rights is this: living beings are not regular objects, we are in fact processes, i.e. a temporary pattern of matter which needs to ACT and spend energy (i.e. do WORK) to exist. Thus work is the means by which living things exist. In us humans work comes in three different forms, 1) the purely physiological work of self-production that we share with all other life, 2) physical things we build using our mind and body, and 3) pure mental work, which results in information -- mind stuff. Self-ownership comes from 1. The human self expands beyond the metabolic self with our mind which requires property rights of non-metabolic things, 2 and 3. In this view there is no difference between these various forms of property rights.

You're conflating the life of a person with their body. Even if I live forever I still only have one body so it's a scarce resource. Therefore, your argument fails.

Why is that relevant?

Why is it relevant that you are conflating two things? Because it's fallacious reasoning, that's why. What about that is confusing to you?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. You're using a very reasonable argument here: even though his TIME is a non-scarce resource, there are other factors in his life that ARE scarce that override the non-scarce factor. The same is true with atoms. ATOMS are not scarce, but the "practicality" of getting them (i.e. YOUR life, time and energy) is scarce. Thus, whenever we move away from information (which is a non-scarce resource) you argue very reasonably, in fact almost identical to how I would argue against the non-scarcity of information. It's irrelevant that information itself is not scarce, because that's not what you are protecting by law, it is the life and intellectual work of another person that IP protects.

[onarchy]

I think all of us were willing to take a look, and the eight pages of tough questions gave answers that most of us disliked. This initiative may succeed, but it seems that here, it's been largely rejected. Few of us are willing to donate to a project where people will be thrown into prison for pirating Windows or reinventing the wheel.

The laissez-faire policies described on the site are classical minarchism and many people here are surely fine with that. This IP thing divides opinions, but I think many libertarians would still prefer the relatively free state over less free states.

Onarchy, 100K is a lot of money to ask as donations. You'll need to convince people that the funds can actually be raised and things are really going to happen. A donation counter would be cool. Have you looked into Kickstarter or some other fundraising site that would allow donations on the condition that the required total amount will be reached?

I'm looking into Kickstarter, sure, but as of now the funding requirements are so small that it is not really necessary. I am also donating my time and energy into this. In other words, if there are no funds available to pay me for my time while I am travelling to meetings, conventions and presentations then I will work without pay. The most important thing is to pay for air tickets, hotel stays etc. and that is not particularly expensive. One roundtrip costs $2-4,000 for one person. Thus, the funding requirement for ONE trip is fairly small, and I am already starting to approach the funding needed for such a trip. Paying for one such trip requires about 10 people subscribing to the project for $25/month for a year. That's not much. So in the beginning there is very little pledging needed. It is only late in phase 1 or in phase 2 that I think that it will become necessary with a pledge system like Kickstarter. Phase 2 is the assembly phase, where a host country has signed a letter of intent stating that it has the intention of setting up a free state charter. Then starts the work of assembling an international team of legal experts and resources to design the free state in detail. This will take 1-2 years, and will cost something like 1 million dollars per year. At this time a pledge system makes a whole lot of sense. Then there is the final phase, which is the implementation of free state in which the funding requirements will be $10 million per year, and at this time a pledge and donation system will be a permanent part of the free state.

Getting donations will surely be easier if the initial negotiations are successful. Having a bigger team of representatives for the project would help build confidence. This is a huge project for one person, and random internet guys don't know you well enough to trust that you can do it.

Sure, I understand this concern completely. The reason I started FSI to begin with was because I had a concrete lead, an invitation to talk to a real government in Africa, and a government who has read the presentation of the project that I made for one of the ambassador of the country in Europe. Precisely because I have gotten such great feedback, not just from one person, but from many that this could be very important to their country I started the FSI to fund the first rounds of talks. (Flying to Africa is expensive) Without this as a basis I would never have started this now. I have a great team that is helping me with graphics, the website, critique etc. so that it becomes a professional and presentable project.

[onarchy]

I think a better one is excludability because it gets at the heart of the matter and is covered quite a bit in Libertarian literature.

First you must explain WHY excludability is a requirement for property rights. Second, as I have shown numerous times in this debate, it is the easiest thing in the world to take some arbitrary variable which is non-excludable, rip it out of context and ignore all the other factors which ARE excludable. The atom example is perhaps the easiest to understand. I can argue that atoms are non-scarce. There are for all practical purposes endlessly many atoms in the universe. Therefore if I take an atom from you, this does not in any way exclude you from utilizing an identical atom. It's just to go out there in the universe to go get one.

Of course, as someone rightfully already pointed out the non-excludability or non-scarcity of atoms is irrelevant, because it requires TIME and ENERGY from your precious, finite life to structure reality. In practice these limitations on YOUR LIFE makes the atoms exclusive. YOUR LIFE is the exclusive property here, not the atoms.

We who argue for IP say that the non-excludability of information is just as irrelevant to IP as the non-excludability of atoms is to physical property, because there are other factors that ARE excludable. Once a discovery has been made and is available in the public, no-one can do that discovery again. Once a novel or a song has been written no-one can write it freshly again. In other words novelty is exclusive. In fact, novels are even named after their novelty! A Novel must be novel to have value!

To a materialist who deny the existence of mind in one or more ways this is completely irrelevant: "novelty? What the hell are you talking about? If you can't touch it, it ain't real." In other words, materialist deny the existence of mind objects. Classical Marxists do this all the time: they deny that leadership or planning exists. All that gives rise to value is physical labor. Therefore managers and capitalists are exploiters of the poor.

Libertarian anti-IPers also deny the existence of mind objects, in some areas. They deny that novelty exists. (If they recognized that novelty is exclusive then obviously they would see the point of IP) They may say that they recognize the existence of novelty, but they always, always, always trump novelty with physical property, and arbitrarily so.

[no to the gold cult]

onarky, your idea sounds to me like just another Free Trade Zone or Special Economic Zone with free immigration thrown in.

You'll produce some sort of dystopian nightmare super-sprawl in the desert populated by the poor and the desperate, fleeing war, oppression and poverty only to be tricked into indenturing themselves to the employ of sweat-shops and brothels and slumlords by the elusive dream of gold-dripped success while the pale edifices of casino's and pleasure-palaces glint through the heat-haze over-head and swaggering mercenaries and their sneering war-criminal captains patrol the barb-wired perimeter.

Why are you and your libertardian like-mindlings so intent on making the world more amenable to the tastes of men like this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtPaGflu4JM

"man/woman/child for sale, only 3BTC the set, do what you want with, it's all permitted here."

[­­­Atlas_]

onarky, your idea sounds to me like just another Free Trade Zone or Special Economic Zone with free immigration thrown in.

You'll produce some sort of dystopian nightmare super-sprawl in the desert populated by the poor and the desperate, fleeing war, oppression and poverty only to be tricked into indenturing themselves to the employ of sweat-shops and brothels and slumlords by the elusive dream of gold-dripped success while the pale edifices of casino's and pleasure-palaces glint through the heat-haze over-head and swaggering mercenaries and their sneering war-criminal captains patrol the barb-wired perimeter.

Why are you and your libertardian like-mindlings so intent on making the world more amenable to the tastes of men like this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtPaGflu4JM

"man/woman/child for sale, only 3BTC the set, do what you want with, it's all permitted here."

A free trade zone is not without government restrictions.

Everything else you said is with no basis.

[PLATO]

You'll produce some sort of dystopian nightmare super-sprawl in the desert populated by the poor and the desperate, fleeing war, oppression and poverty only to be tricked into indenturing themselves to the employ of sweat-shops and brothels and slumlords by the elusive dream of gold-dripped success while the pale edifices of casino's and pleasure-palaces glint through the heat-haze over-head and swaggering mercenaries and their sneering war-criminal captains patrol the barb-wired perimeter.

+1 for style

[kiba]

To a materialist who deny the existence of mind in one or more ways this is completely irrelevant: "novelty? What the hell are you talking about? If you can't touch it, it ain't real." In other words, materialist deny the existence of mind objects. Classical Marxists do this all the time: they deny that leadership or planning exists. All that gives rise to value is physical labor. Therefore managers and capitalists are exploiters of the poor.

Pfft.

The free market doesn't care about your crackpot theory about intellectual property.

[onarchy]

To a materialist who deny the existence of mind in one or more ways this is completely irrelevant: "novelty? What the hell are you talking about? If you can't touch it, it ain't real." In other words, materialist deny the existence of mind objects. Classical Marxists do this all the time: they deny that leadership or planning exists. All that gives rise to value is physical labor. Therefore managers and capitalists are exploiters of the poor.

Pfft.

The free market doesn't care about your crackpot theory about intellectual property.

You are proving my point exactly. You are saying that because novelty is non-material it is "a crackpot theory." So you're a materialist to the bone, and as a consequence an information Marxist.

[­­­Atlas_]

Information property rights can't be enforced without tyranny. It's really that simple, onarchy.

[onarchy]

onarky, your idea sounds to me like just another Free Trade Zone or Special Economic Zone with free immigration thrown in.

You'll produce some sort of dystopian nightmare super-sprawl in the desert populated by the poor and the desperate, fleeing war, oppression and poverty only to be tricked into indenturing themselves to the employ of sweat-shops and brothels and slumlords by the elusive dream of gold-dripped success while the pale edifices of casino's and pleasure-palaces glint through the heat-haze over-head and swaggering mercenaries and their sneering war-criminal captains patrol the barb-wired perimeter.

Why are you and your libertardian like-mindlings so intent on making the world more amenable to the tastes of men like this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtPaGflu4JM

"man/woman/child for sale, only 3BTC the set, do what you want with, it's all permitted here."

What you are describing here is a very understandable concern, because if you go to any third world country and look at their cities this is what you will find. But are these cities really "Free Trade Zones"? If that's true, why do something like 80% of all South-Americans not have formal property rights to their houses, businesses and contracts? In large part of Africa the number is way above 90% and in Asia it is somewhat lower but still 50-70% e.g. in the Philippines. How can they be "Free Trade Zones" if it is so hard to start a business that only rich people can do it?

And what about crime? Is it really "Free Trade" when you are living in constant fear of gangs and bandits? And what about corruption? Is it really Free Trade if you can be prosecuted by the government at any moment and that the only way for you to get out of trouble is to pay bribes to speed up the process and remove barriers?

I would say no to all these questions. Peace requires good governance, i.e. authorities that are good at protecting the peace, i.e. protecting contracts, person and property.

So let's have a look at the premise of sweat shops and brothels. The only way this will happen is if there are far more people who want jobs than there are jobs available. In a system where making a job (business creation) is very difficult due to nasty regulations, high taxes, corruption and badly protected contracts and property rights then there will be fewer jobs than is needed. Then you get a high unemployment and bad working conditions.

But what if it was really, really easy to make a job that pays? Suppose that the Free State was equally attractive to investors and entrepreneurs as it is to workers? What then? Obviously the two would tend to balance each other out. Each new prospecting worker finds that entrepreneurs create jobs for him. With balance between job creation and job seekers there would be none of the problems you cited. And if in fact the Free State was MORE attractive to capitalists than to workers then this would push the wages UP.

So what could create a situation where the Free State actually is MORE attractive to capitalists than it is to workers? How is that even possible? Well, to a capitalist it is the profit margin and the risk associated with it that counts, i.e. what prospects of risk adjusted return on investment he can expect. Low taxes, low regulations, low corruption and a highly efficient government bureaucracy brings down the COST of doing business and makes it more profitable. Low crime, low corruption and well-protected contracts and property rights bring down the RISK of doing business. Thus a Free State optimizes the risk adjusted return on investment and therefore is highly attractive to investors. In fact, if the Free State has the lowest taxes, least regulation, best governance, lowest crime, lowest corruption and best property protection then this place will from an investor's point of view look like the best place on earth to put his money. For an immigrant worker, however, this may in the short run not be the best place on earth. The wages may be low and the working conditions may be poor to begin with, not unlike their home countries. Thus, there is a mismatch between investor interest and worker interest. This pushes up the wages and worker conditions until there is balance.


Because of this I predict that the kinds of slums you see in third world countries with bad governance will be much less pronounced in the Free State, and maybe even non-existent.

[onarchy]

Information property rights can't be enforced without tyranny. It's really that simple, onarchy.

That's just an arbitrary assertion. If information property rights are LEGITIMATE, then of course it is not tyranny to enforce them. You should pause to consider very carefully that you are making an IDENTICAL argument that socialists all over the world are making about ALL private property, and in the area of information property rights you agree with them 100%. You are information Marxists. So the question we keep getting back to (and which I now have pointed out several times) is WHY physical property rights trumps information property rights? The burden of evidence is exactly the same for both. (Just ask a socialist and he will say that YOU carry the burden of evidence for physical property rights)

[­­­Atlas_]

If man has the right to himself, he must also have the right to sustain through physical resources. Easy.

However, when it comes to the intangible that creates no real wealth and doesn't allow people to truly sustain, it's hard to prove it can be considered property.

Also, I pirate books and all sorts of "intellectual property" undetected. How are you going to be able to do any different against me in your supposedly free state?

[­­­Atlas_]

Is a man not entitled to a monopoly on his ideas?

"No!" says the counterfeit purse maker in China. "These ideas, they belong to the poor!"

"No!" says the pirate on the internet, "They belong to everyone!"

I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose The Free State, a city where every computer will be monitored, where every patent-infringing object will be destroyed and where the patent holders will not be prettied by the small wanna-be innovators! And with enough idea claims of your own, The Free State can be yours as well! Even the idea of it itself!