Awesome free state project open to bitcoin donations

[­­­Atlas_]

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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[wb3]

Shouldn't Einstein's Estate be getting lots of checks for his "Mind Work"?  

Or did he just find a Natural Process, that holds no value. But yet he worked to figure it out, I am getting confused. Should he have a claim for his IP. Or is IP once revealed part of the public domain?

Formulating information in ways the turns out to be productive, should be rewarded with protective IP laws. It will keep others from conducting their "mind work".

I can copy a car, dirt cheap, in a junk yard by taking piece of this car and a piece of that car. Actually, I have done this. The average cost of a 5 year old car is about $2500 plus your time in putting the pieces together, about 3 months on the weekends.  How come it is so inexpensive? Because someone else already paid for the original work. I even still get to still call it by the trademark name of the vehicle.

[onarchy]

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?
[/quote]

If the design/invention of the car was in the public domain I would certainly download it without paying. But if it was NOT and the designer demanded, say, 1000 dollars for his design, I would most definitely be willing to pay this for downloading a car. Remember how much a car costs TODAY in comparison. In fact this scenario is not all that unlikely. 3D printers are getting better all the time, and atom precision rearrangement of matter is not necessarily completely utopian. Some time in the future ANYONE can with the right atoms print a car, and at that point I am sure that the printing costs of such a car will start to approach the cost of the atoms, so lets say 1000 dollars in material costs. So you can print an open source car at the cost of 1000 dollars, or you can buy the sleak and really powerful design of some car designer for an additional 1000 dollars and end up with a really, really cool car for only 2000 dollars.

BUT I am absolutely positive that a whole host of libertarians are going to whine that it's coercion to not be able to use that design for free, even though the total cost of a car has fallen dramatically since the time when you couldn't easily duplicate it. In other words, when the car costs 30,000 dollars libertarians think its ok, but once it becomes so efficient to make cars that you can make them at home for 1000 dollars, paying 1000 dollars for someone else's design work becomes too much to ask. Go figure.

[wb3]

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.

Ahh... but they didn't. They made the mistake of marketing a natural product and tried to make a fortune. This is why drug companies go and find natural medicines, take it back to the lab and synthesize the natural medicine into a patented medicine. Which is fine if they want to do that, but they should also show what the Natural Medicine is.

The new Holistic Medicine process is coming on strong (fish oil, etc...) because it is Natural Medicine without the synthesis of it. It is cheaper to boot. The FDA are removing Fish Oil from Nutrient stores for claiming it is the same chemicals of an Official Medicine. The FDA is protecting who? The public or the company?  They should be removing the snake oils, not protecting profits.

[wb3]

As far as the company that invests billions to bring a drug to market and someone analyzes the product for a million and copies it.  Don't they know that will happen? You will never be able to protect from it. China will copy it in a heart beat no matter what laws you put in place. If not China, someone else.

Most of the money by the way is in the Synthesizing and Medical Studies. What it comes down to is not the chemicals in the medicine but the trust the public has in the company. The TradeMark. People are willing to pay for the Trademark, and if the company acts in a decent and responsible fashion it will maintain market share in the product. But if its actions loose the public trust, it will lose.

So we are not talking about it making back its billion dollars, we are talking about the time frame in making back its billion dollars.

You know, I think Bayer has figured this out. (At least in its division of the company).

[chickenado]

Onarchy, your distinction between social and economic freedom is subjective.

You say that your "free state" will have zero regulation but various decrees on gay relationships, drugs, or whatever enforced by the host country.

But those decrees are regulations.  

Objectively, regulations against an individual's sex life, or social life, or spiritual life, or whatever life are not different than regulations against an individual's money making life.

All restrictions on how an individual can achieve maximum subjective utility without violating the non-aggression principle, are equally immoral. Some people may derive utility from making lots of money, others from becoming a monk and meditating all day (and yes even poor people pursue that goal sometimes - look at India for example).  

Your "free state" will only give people maximum freedom in the money making aspect of their life while still infringing on other freedoms, as dictated by the host country's arbitrary morality.  You say that it doesn’t matter so much because (according to your subjective opinion) freedom in the money making area is somehow superior to freedom in other areas, and poor people mainly care about economic freedom anyhow.

I say, fundamentally there is only one kind of freedom, and let the individual decide which "flavours" of that freedom are important to her/him.  Who is being the arrogant rich Westerner here, making that decision for them?

Perhaps gay porn is a bad example, but it's simply not true that people from poor parts of the world are not concerned about the so called social freedoms.  A better example is religion, and lack of freedom of thereof is bound to lead to the brutal oppression of some immigrant minorities in a theocratic host country.  Either that or people from other cultures simply won't immigrate and the free state will never become your multicultural utopia.

Also, I'm curious about this: Imagine the host county mandates some really silly, religiously motivated decree, I dunno, like "driving a car on a Saturday is punishable by prison".  When I move to the free state and challenge the decree in the supreme court, and the supreme court can find no evidence whatsoever, empirical or first principle, that the decree is beneficial, who’s side will the court take? And if it does take my side, how will it deal with the host country's hostility?

[onarchy]

When they released Aspirin, invested in research and etc. they should of been aware of such risks.

This is exactly the kind of argument that muslim gang rapists use when they see a woman on the street alone. She should have been aware of such risks, so it's her own fault she got gang raped and beaten half to death. She got what she deserved.

What I find disturbing is that the ONLY reason you have ANY sympathy with this woman is that you by extraordinary coincidence have chosen to adhere to an arbitrary principle which just happens to make the above an act of aggression. But if for some reason that principle didn't include rape when you walk alone in an alley, then I absolutely positive that you wouldn't have felt an inch of sympathy for the poor woman, just like the gang rapists don't feel bad for raping her and beating her half to death, and I find that pretty scary.

Now, you can say that I am way over the top. The aspirin example is not a violation and has nothing to do with rape, but that's the point. It does. They are fundamentally similar acts of violation. One is more severe than the other, but they are still acts of violation, and any normal, human being with even a fragment of decency understands that it's a gross injustice that the inventor of a product earns NOTHING while all the parasites who have done no work to create the product get to become rich. Frankly it is shocking that anyone can say something like that with a straight face. One thing is certain: a person like that deserves no freedom.

[error]

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!

So the "mind worker" deserves to get paid for his labor, precisely because he did the mind work? Now who's the intellectual Marxist?

[wb3]

This is exactly the kind of argument that muslim gang rapists use when they see a woman on the street alone. She should have been aware of such risks, so it's her own fault she got gang raped and beaten half to death. She got what she deserved.

Dude,

You got issues. Comparing IP, infringement to "muslim gang rapists".  Something obviously happened to you, I am sorry for whatever it was. I had nothing to do with it.

[onarchy]

Ahh... but they didn't. They made the mistake of marketing a natural product and tried to make a fortune. This is why drug companies go and find natural medicines, take it back to the lab and synthesize the natural medicine into a patented medicine. Which is fine if they want to do that, but they should also show what the Natural Medicine is.

The new Holistic Medicine process is coming on strong (fish oil, etc...) because it is Natural Medicine without the synthesis of it. It is cheaper to boot. The FDA are removing Fish Oil from Nutrient stores for claiming it is the same chemicals of an Official Medicine. The FDA is protecting who? The public or the company?  They should be removing the snake oils, not protecting profits.

It's important that we keep our examples general and not dependent on actions by the FDA, because in the Free State the FDA wouldn't exist, and the entire example you gave would be non-existent with proper laws. Remember, most of the cost of medicine today is NOT research or production cost, but FDA approval. Life Extension Foundation has calculated that if the FDA was dissolved the cost of drugs would on average fall by 90-95%. That's how much of the cost is only due to government regulation.

However, that is beside the point in this discussion. The question is whether it should be possible for someone to protect their research WORK without allowing people to parasite on that work. You have to pretty void of any fragment of humanity if you with a straight face claim that someone who has done research for 10 years and sees his profit taken away by others because they DIDN'T do the research is not being done gross injustice. To me that's just so unspeakably evil on such a massive scale that I lack words. Such a person does not deserve to be called human.

[onarchy]

This is exactly the kind of argument that muslim gang rapists use when they see a woman on the street alone. She should have been aware of such risks, so it's her own fault she got gang raped and beaten half to death. She got what she deserved.

Dude,

You got issues. Comparing IP, infringement to "muslim gang rapists".  Something obviously happened to you, I am sorry for whatever it was. I had nothing to do with it.

You're right that something happened to me: I became an adult. I learned to think. I developed basic human competencies such as reason, empathy, decency and integrity.

[error]

You're right that something happened to me: I became an adult. I learned to think. I developed basic human competencies such as reason, empathy, decency and integrity.

Which reminds me: All of the ad hominem attacks aren't helping your case at all.

[onarchy]

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.

[LMGTFY]

This is exactly the kind of argument that muslim gang rapists use when they see a woman on the street alone. She should have been aware of such risks, so it's her own fault she got gang raped and beaten half to death. She got what she deserved.

Dude,

You got issues. Comparing IP, infringement to "muslim gang rapists".  Something obviously happened to you, I am sorry for whatever it was. I had nothing to do with it.

I suspect it's just a typo. There's a serious issue facing us all today: Muslamic ray guns.

Seriously, this is a logical fallacy, like the "Marxists are materialist. Libertarians are materialists. Therefore libertarians are Marxists" fallacy above.

[wb3]

However, that is beside the point in this discussion. The question is whether it should be possible for someone to protect their research WORK without allowing people to parasite on that work. You have to pretty void of any fragment of humanity if you with a straight face claim that someone who has done research for 10 years and sees his profit taken away by others because they DIDN'T do the research is not being done gross injustice. To me that's just so unspeakably evil on such a massive scale that I lack words. Such a person does not deserve to be called human.

I apologize for the long answer in response to your post, but here is an article that is apropos to your post.

What about Sand Castles?
 
What is the purpose of a Sand Castle? Lots of time, energy, and skill that others don’t posses go into their creations.  Some people build ugly monstrosities trying to improve their skill to match the beautifully designed and intricate structures that others build. They are not built for any physical gain and serve no profitable purpose. Sand Castle’s will be washed away with the incoming tide to be forever vanquished but yet others will be built the following day with the same result. Competitions are undertaken to judge who is the most skillful at building Sand Castles. A few people become respected for their skill and crowds of people will show up to see the finished product. As certain people are granted a level of respect for their ability. A local nearby shop owner will pay the respected artist to build his Sand Castle’s in front of his shop.  This is a natural and perfect solution for everyone involved to have a win/win solution.  The shop owner gains business from the crowds that show up to see the Sand Castle, the artist receives money from for doing what he would do even if he wasn’t paid, the crowds get to be wondered about the creation of art. Young inspired youths will try to emulate the respected artist’s work. The original artist isn’t offended. He realizes that he can’t be the only artist in the world, and imitation is flattery.  

More Sand Castles need to be made. People have forgotten the pleasure of making them and viewing others creations.

No matter what is done, All Sand Castles return to the Sea .... Eventually


There is something wrong with our system of entertainment. It had a perfectly sound system that was corrupted. Sponsors and Advertisers will pay to associate themselves with quality entertainment.  Programs and almost all entertainment was base around this premise. It inspired quality and creativity. It destroyed the lazy and non-creative. It promoted new and different ideas that became popular. Bad stations with bad programing went out of business. Executives had to work for their money. Artist that wanted to be recognized had to constantly work for their money. Cost control was built into the system. Giving raises and rate reductions was built into the system. It just worked and it worked well. All most all of our entertainment system was free. Television, Radio, Family games were all free.  People paid to go to a movie when it was first released and that was an exception because no sponsors or ads were paying for the movie. The current form of Cinema will be taking its last breadths unless it changes. It will go the way of the buggy whip. Take note of artist like Kevin Smith produced “Clerks” for just under $28,000 dollars. He made millions from that venture. Modern studios will spend $30-$100 million and hope to make a little money. The world is going back to a free or near free system. The big guys aren’t going willingly, but there are some innovators like NetFlix, Revision3, Twit, Hulu, etc.... That are making great strides at delivering content.  People are willing to pay for content, up to a point. But if it is offered for free or near free, it is a clear choice.  When a Black Market springs up around products, it means that the original products are being priced to high. Stop building walls around the Sand Castles.

All Sand Castles return to the Sea... Eventually

Common Sense suggests the following:

Patents:
Patents aren’t to protect cash flow or rights, they are for the public to know that the product they are buying does what it says it does and to give credit to the creator. This keeps items like Snake Oil from being sold.

Copyright:
Copyright is not to protect cash flow, it is to give credit were credit is due so others don’t take credit for another’s work.

Trademarks:
Trademarks will fall under Copyright. That’s it.

Knowledge isn’t to be stored and hoarded for the few. It should be free and exchanged and improved. In the Common Sense future Open Source, GPL Licensing, Open Patent, is the way to a better society. There is hope, because Open Source does exist, Lawyers came up with GPL Licensing and it is flourishing. But how can that be? Nothing is done for free.  It can be, because it is natural and it closely emulates Natural Laws that every other creature on earth follows.  Apes work together as a group to provide a better environment for their group. Each Ape performs different and similar functions. There are rewards, punishment, injured that are helped out.  And all this takes place without one penny exchanging hands. It is Capitalism but without the money.

But where ever the future takes us, remember...

All Sand Castles return to the Sea... Eventualy

[onarchy]

Onarchy, your distinction between social and economic freedom is subjective.

You say that your "free state" will have zero regulation but various decrees on gay relationships, drugs, or whatever enforced by the host country.

We're not advocating those decrees, but it's definitely a possibility that we won't be able to prevent it.

But those decrees are regulations.

 

Sure, and in the constitution it will explicitly state that certain decrees by the host state are not in accordance with the principles of peace and the Free State, but are put their because there is no alternative, and the very second the host country should choose to lift any of these decrees, then they will be removed as fast as you can say "swoosh" from the Free State.

Objectively, regulations against an individual's sex life, or social life, or spiritual life, or whatever life are not different than regulations against an individual's money making life.

How true.

All restrictions on how an individual can achieve maximum subjective utility without violating the non-aggression principle, are equally immoral.

Again, true.

Your "free state" will only give people maximum freedom in the money making aspect of their life while still infringing on other freedoms, as dictated by the host country's arbitrary morality.

That's completely true.

You say that it doesn’t matter so much because (according to your subjective opinion) freedom in the money making area is somehow superior to freedom in other areas, and poor people mainly care about economic freedom anyhow.

That's also true. Of all the liberties, economic freedom is by far the most basic because without it no other liberty can exist. Also to a non-gay, non-druggie Bangladeshi farmer the Free State DOES provide a humongous increase in liberty and no violations FOR HIM. If that Bangladeshi had the choice between 1) no social liberties + no economic liberties OR 2) no social liberties + full economic freedom, then to HIM that would be a giant step up, don't you think, even if was a gay drug addict. Later the host country may become more liberal and may lift its social decrees, OR later, when people have earned a lot of money in the Free State, they can afford to go to a country in the West that has all these social liberties. The Free State has been a stepping stone and without it they would have NO liberty.

I say, fundamentally there is only one kind of freedom, and let the individual decide which "flavours" of that freedom are important to her/him.  Who is being the arrogant rich Westerner here, making that decision for them?

Today no Free State exists. No emigration opportunity exists for billions of people. With the Free State the opportunity and choices has INCREASED, and anyone who goes there goes there voluntarily. And you are saying that I somehow are "making that decision for them"?!?!? The choice people have is: 1) no Free State, 2) Free state with great economic freedom, but with some hampered social freedoms. I don't understand why this isn't a no-brainer.

Perhaps gay porn is a bad example, but it's simply not true that people from poor parts of the world are not concerned about the so called social freedoms.  A better example is religion, and lack of freedom of thereof is bound to lead to the brutal oppression of some immigrant minorities in a theocratic host country.  Either that or people from other cultures simply won't immigrate and the free state will never become your multicultural utopia.

This is true, and therefore freedom of religion will be an obvious premise.

Also, I'm curious about this: Imagine the host county mandates some really silly, religiously motivated decree, I dunno, like "driving a car on a Saturday is punishable by prison".  When I move to the free state and challenge the decree in the supreme court, and the supreme court can find no evidence whatsoever, empirical or first principle, that the decree is beneficial, who’s side will the court take? And if it does take my side, how will it deal with the host country's hostility?

As I said, the constitution will explicitly state that the decrees are in violation of the principles upon which the Free State is built and that they are nevertheless respected because the very existence of the Free State rests upon that respect.

[­­­Atlas_]

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.

[chickenado]

and any normal, human being

Appeal to majority... oh and you've just scored own goal with this one, because by definition you youself are abnormal as someone who even vaguely falls into the libertarian camp.

with even a fragment of decency

I love it when people use the word "decency" to try win an argument.  WTH is "decency" supposed to mean anyhow other than an hand wavy expression for "this is right/wrong because it feels right/wrong to me".




Anyhow, your position seems to be that if person A puts a lot of work into something and person B benefits from the fruits of that work in some way,  B has somehow become indebted to A because B has entered an implicit contract, from the mere act of benefiting.

The problem with this principle is that it is impossible for a central authority to objectively quantify this kind of positive externality for individuals, much less enforce compensation.  

Example: Mike spends 10 years working on a brilliant poem and when it's finally finished he shows it to his best friend John. Without Mike's permission, John graffities the poem onto a bridge where Mary reads it from the train on her daily commute.  She is so inspired by the poem that she decides to give up her job and start her own business, making her, and by extension, her husband Fred a millionaire.  According to your principle, Fred is now indebted to Mike. But how much does he owe? $100 ? $100,000 $10M?.  There is simply no    
objective way of determining this, even if this whole chain of events was public, and even a Big Brother state would not be capable of illuminating all the complexities of social webs.


Life isn't fair according to your definition of fairness. If it was, a heart surgeon who works 24 hour shifts and saves countless lives would make more money than a rich heiress who lives off rent and never lifts a finger.   That kind of "fairness" can only function in totalitarian state.  The heiress is lucky to be sitting on capital she didn't need to work for the same way the inventor of aspirin is unlucky he had to work for capital he cannot sit on.  

As someone else put it well, the purpose of property rights is not utilitarian, the purpose of property rights is to settle disputes over who controls a finite resource.

[thisone]

Self-ownership means ownership of your labor. Since I don't own the ideas, but my labor, I have very limited rights of ideas. I cannot prevent you from thinking with my ideas, because you own your own mind, and I cannot have full sovereignty over HOW an idea is used. Since labor is all I own I can basically only own the rights to economic exploitation of the ideas.

Own the legal rights to economic exploitation of the ideas? If I sell an idea that you've created, that would be illegitimate in your book. Getting gold coins in return for "selling" your idea would be wrong. How about using your idea to physically create gold coins? How about using your idea to physically create chocolate coins, which I would could eat? How about using your idea to prevent falling in a ditch? How about using your idea to create stone figures which I later trade for a big log so I can safely cross the ditch? Please define "economic exploitation".

In fact, over the centuries various things have been proclaimed as property that we today consider alien. Take slavery. People were indeed property. A slave proponent could argue that you should leave his property alone and that the term property is already taken. In a rational world that's not how things work.

In a rational world that's not how things work because you would own your body.

Nope. Ideas are not property. Intellectual labor is property. No-one can own an idea without creating a totalitarian society.

If ideas are not property you cannot own your idea. Labor != property, but you can use labor to create property. You own your labor, you own the object you created, but you don't own the idea.

If you used 10 years of your life to figure out how to walk backwards, I won't pay you for it.

If you don't sign a contract with another person explicitly stating not to, it's ok to kill him.

Why would you even suggest something like this? I know you agree that you own your own body and therefore do not need a sign.

But what if someone actually spent 1 billion dollars researching and inventing Aspirin and after 10 years of hard work and lots of investment ...

Why is "10 years" and "hard work" relevant? Do you believe in the labor theory of value?

But if for some reason that principle didn't include rape when you walk alone in an alley, then I absolutely positive that you wouldn't have felt an inch of sympathy for the poor woman, just like the gang rapists don't feel bad for raping her and beating her half to death, and I find that pretty scary.

Again, all the posters here agree that you own your own body.

It seems like most of your analogies don't work.

Other than that, I applaud Onarchy's initiative, although I suspect there will be a lot of debate on certain issues like IP and FRB.

[wb3]

If I "own" dogs, and breed them in a fashion to create a new breed of dog. Do I own the new breed, if other people do the same thing to come up with the same breed?  I have mixed chemicals (genes, DNA) to come up with a unique breed that no one else did. But if someone else mixes the chemicals in the same way, should I get paid for it?

What if by chance the dogs do themselves, but under my care and resources? Do I own the breed?

Should I even be able to own the dog?  Or should the dog be considered nobody's property?  The state needs to give back the fines imposed by dog bites then.

Did I even create anything? Or did I just rearrange what was there?

Summed up:

If I build a pile of dirt on my property into a uniquely shaped hill that prevents erosion of the hill, it is my hill. If others do the same, it is not my hill, it is theirs.

If they don't want to do it themselves, they can pay me to do it for them. It is still their hill.


BTW: Don't you find it ironic that IP, Copyright laws are imposed on citizens and not governments. Because Governments will reverse engineer anything they want, copy what they want, etc... without hesitation.  They will call it research, archiving, or even national security.

It won't matter how many laws or rules there are, because once it becomes accept as a practice, common law overrides any previous laws.  It might be illegal to jaywalk, but enforcement drops as soon as the masses do it, because it is not practical to punish everybody.