“This illustration yet again highlights the philosophical absurdities wrought by IP itself”

Sure, what a great mature argument against copyrighting!

So now I’m telling you my conception of homesteading is when someone stays 5 hours on a property that’s unattended, this property belongs to him.

My God, don’t you agree this IS a brilliant illustration of the philosophical absurdity wrought by homesteading itself!?

Note: those who find some irony in this post may well keep it.

You’re a funny person, Jean Paul.

The copyright argument is strained, but as for kicking the student out, surely the bookstore has the right to kick anyone it likes out at any time for any reason at all, however inane.

Biographical note: I’ve shopped at the Harvard Coop for years, and have done a lot of notetaking, and have never been caught. I think you need to be pretty unlucky or pretty…unskilled, let’s say…to get caught.

Artisan and Jean Paul, you can’t buy or drink that beer without homesteading, since it wouldn’t exist.

Homesteading is the only logical answer to who has the better claim on a previously unused resource. It answers that the first user does, since the first user is the one who took it from a de facto state of non-ownership to a de facto state of ownership (i.e., in the sense of physical use by a sapient being). All the homesteading principle does is state that how property is in actual reality brought into de facto ownership is also rightful.

All other allocations of rights to ownership are illogical because they violate how resources are actually brought into use. That is, they violate the very nature of mankind’s relation to physical reality.

For example, let us consider a socialist allocation of rights. In this case, everyone has an equal rightful share of all property brought into de facto ownership (including the property of everyone’s person). But then, nothing could have been rightfully brought into use in the first place, as that would require permission to do so from every other person. Even if we set a 50+% voting rule, no such voting can rightfully take place as it requires standing room and the usage of people’s bodies, yet where did rightful permission come to use them? Based upon such an allocation of property rights, it could have never come about.

The other option is a monarchist (or oligarchist) allocation of property rights. In this case, one person (or certain group of people) rightfully own all de facto property (including the property in every person’s body). Yet how did such ruler(s) come to have this right which no one else has? If one says via might making right, via voting, via greater intelligence, or via anything else, then one is presupposing a prior, more fundamental allocation of property rights (since in order to exist, people would have had to have been making use of property before this ruling class obtained this position, and if such use wasn’t rightful then mankind’s very existence isn’t rightful).

The above are all the available logical options for allocation of rightful ownership. Any other conceivable schemata will simply be mixtures of two or more of the above three, and hence necessarily suffer from the same logical problems of one or both of the latter two.

Furthermore, regarding rightful self-ownership and the homesteading principle:

1.) One cannot deny the principle of rightful self-ownership without committing a performative contradiction. For one must, at the very least, presuppose one’s own rightful self-ownership in order to be able to argue against the principle. As it may well be asked: How can one give such an argument if one does not even believe onself to be the sole rightful owner of one’s very own body (and vocal chords)? Thus, it is for this reason that the principle of rightful self-ownership rises to the level of an inescapable axiom–i.e., that which cannot be denied without necessitating its use in the denial. Thus also, it could never be argued that argument is impossible without thereby committing a performative contradiction. As well, this logically means that the principle of rightful self-ownership is only valid as a per se universal human principle. For A cannot coherently argue that only he is a proper natural self-owner whereas others are not. For then B could “steal” A’s argument and use it against him–i.e., if it is valid for A then it must be valid for B as well. For as Abraham Lincoln pointed out (if only it had been that Lincoln himself had bothered to follow the logic of his below argument!):

“”
If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.–why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?–

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.
“”

From Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on Slavery” (circa 1854), in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. 2 (New York: Francis D. Tandy Company, 1894).

In addition we would not then have a universal ethic for mankind as such, but instead an arbitrary ethic–i.e., we would have to posit an unnecessary and arbitrary additional ethical rationale as to why rightful self-ownership is not universalizable, and would thus be violating Ockham’s Razor.

It is for this reason and others that the libertarian concept of self-ownership is apodictically true. Nor, it should be mentioned in passing, does it derive an “ought” from an “is”–rather, it derives an “ought” from an “ought”: an “ought” everyone must necessarily presuppose in order to even begin to deny it.

2.) This same logical principle also applies to external property (i.e., external from one’s body). Since all virgin land had to be at some point homesteaded by a first user, one cannot coherently argue against the properness of this principle for then the human race could not even exist (and hence the arguer could not even exist). Thus, to argue against the homesteading principle would be to necessarily argue against one’s own existence, but the very act of arguing presupposes one’s own right to argue and hence right to exist (as one cannot argue without existing). Thus, one arguing against the homsteading principle would be committing a performative contradiction.

It is for this reason and others that the libertarian concept of righful ownership of homesteaded resources is also apodictically true. Nor, it should also be mentioned in passing, does it derive an “ought” from an “is”–rather, it derives an “ought” from an “ought”: an “ought” everyone must necessarily presuppose in order to even begin to deny it.

—–

For more on the above, see the following:

Chapter 8: “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” and also pages xvi and xvii (paragraphs 14-18) of the introduction by Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the new edition of Prof. Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1998; originally published 1982) http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

The section entitled “Property Rights” in Chapter 2: “Property and Exchange” of Prof. Rothbard’s For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (New York, N.Y.: Collier Books, second edition, 1978; originally published 1973) http://mises.org/rothbard/newliberty.asp

See also the below two articles, paying particular attention to the Estoppel in the first article:

“New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” N. Stephan Kinsella, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 313-326 http://mises.org/journals/jls/12_2/12_2_5.pdf

“Punishment and Proportionality: the Estoppel Approach,” N. Stephan Kinsella, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 51-73 http://mises.org/journals/jls/12_1/12_1_3.pdf

James,

(1) Self ownership is fundamental and inalienable. Agreed.

(2) Things that are unowned can become owned by whoever claims them. This is conflict free by definition of ‘unowned’. Agreed.

(3) Things that are owned can become unowned if abandoned. Can’t say ‘agreed’ here, because you didn’t assert this, but I suppose you probably do agree.

(4) Practical applications of (2) and (3) rest on the (interrelated) definitions of ‘claim’ and ‘abandonment’, which are slippery, and everyone seems to have their own subjective ideals for how these should work. These definitional difficulties take most things out of the nice, clean, easy-to-work-with ‘unowned’ category and into a muddy grey area of conflicting claims and partial ownership.

(5) Things that are not purely ‘unowned’, but for which a variety of claims of different character and degree exist, are ineligible for the nice clean homesteading rationale in (2). This state of ‘commons’ which appears over time is by far the more prevalent situation.

(6) Generally then, the only thing you can absolutely count on is self ownership, since pure homesteading applies in a impractically narrow set of circumstances.

I think all things work better when inalienable self-ownership is extended to encompass other property – your clothes, your gadgets, your home, etc., all become PART OF you, and an offense against them is an offense against your person – but that doesn’t get me past the HOW of justly unravelling common ownership into private ownership.

When homesteading is posed as the solution even in conflict-charged situations for which it is unsuited, where the absolute ‘unowned’ state of the resource cannot be established, then something is wrong. This is the situation I was referring to when I stated “homesteading just might be absurd”.

None of this denies the existence of sovereign ownership of private property – just that the waters are often muddy in trying to establish that ownership, and that the simple definition of homesteading does not preclude a commons.

Anyway, what’s the relevance for IP? I only need point (1) above. I own myself. This is axiomatic and uncontestable. My person (which I own; which in no way do I ever cede any degree of control over) is a remarkable machine capable of intaking, storing, and outputting ideas in various forms. In other words, my body is CAPABLE of making IP violations.

And my body is ENTITLED to make IP violations, since my absolute self ownership, which was never, and will never be, waived or subjugated to external authority, includes the complete freedom to exercise the capabilities of my person, up to the boundaries of someone else’s person.

If the institution of IP is incompatible with the most basic fact of self ownership, then what more discussion do we need on this topic?

Jean Paul
“Private property in ideas suddenly grants you, at time X > T, the right to compel my actions inside my borders – which you do by invading my borders.”
———————————

No, that’s what homesteading does, not just IP.