Comments (7)

• Person

• Okay, now I'm going to critique it as best I can, given this weird new blog format.

  You spend well over half the presentation on what is basically shock imagery. Okay, the patent system as it currently exists in one part of the world, leads to some absurd results. You didn't quite need fifty slides to establish that; IP proponents will stipulate to that, and honest property proponents will admit that poor handling of a property rights system will lead to similar absurdities (farmers claiming airspace rights, someone sued for trespassing on land he was just expropriated of, etc.).

  What does this establish? Well, there were about 45 too many slides there, that could have been helping show how this is an inherent aspect of IP, but instead you show no evidence of that.

  There is a part about how, hey, property rights are NATURAL and people do them without the state, but obviously, obviously, not IP rights have ever been created without state intervention.

  Problem with that argument:

  1) Historical: people have long had conventions against "stealing others ideas" -- shows a non-state intuition against property rights. Plus, clan trademark rights.

  2) Animals don't do IP? Wrong. Animals stake out specific calls. Another animal makes it, it's looking for trouble.

  3) Theoretical. Let's say Stephan's historical claims are right. Still proves nothing. It's possible for enough people to like IP that there can be non-state mechanisms for enforcing such a system. If you claim that those are NECESSARILY statist, you're assuming your conclusion.

  In fact, the whole argument is based on property right already being justified, while IP isn't. Then, by definition, any deviation is statist. What does that get us other than defining our position as correct?

  Then we get unsubstantiated appeals to authority.

  Then, around slide 90 (!!!) we get to some meat: aha, IP proponents miss the REAL basis of GENUINE property rights: homesteading of a resource. So far, you're just question-begging. Why does homesteading new land not gain me ownership of the RESOURCE of flying over it? Of the RESOURCE of sending radio waves at frequency f over it? And ... the RESOURCE of being able to form Harry Potter books there?

  So, that answers the inflammatory "creationist" smear.

  What's next? Okay, again, I'm supposed to reduce everything to factor ownership. Do you own the factors? Then you can do whatever you want with it! Wait, I own this 3D area, yet, somehow, I'm not allowed to "use it" to stop radio waves from going over it. Hm...

  Then, some proposed reforms.

  Lacking: discussion of the parallels in incentives to physical property. Also lacking is the conflict with Stephan's position on radio waves. He KNOWS this conflict exists, and it has been well-explained to him several times, yet there is not one mention of it anywhere, despite his attempt to show a broad survey of the principles underlying property rights.

  I'm very dissatisfied with this presentation and would like the opportunity to present my own to some gathering of the LvMI.

• Published: March 20, 2008 11:57 AM

• kgderrick

• Well...I was at the ASC and I found it to be the best one in many years. I really had a great time.

  However, the discussion on IP was a complete disappointment. It was one of the main things I wanted to listen to and was left completely empty. Same old drivel from Kinsella. Point out the absurd, get everyone to laugh and deliver no real insight. Nothing new...however, Paul Cwik's presentation was excellent. His paper can be found at http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/cwik3.pdf

  Cwik makes the point that IP goods are akin to what has been traditionally labeled public goods.

  "Public goods are those that have two defining characteristics: 1) non-rivalrous consumption and 2) high costs to exclude. A book seems to meet this definition: if I Green reads Brown’s book, he is not taking away the ability of anyone else to also “consume” the book; and there are very high costs for Brown to stop Green from copying the book, especially when considering digital formats. In main stream economic circles, it has been argued that public goods can only be produced by the government. Austrian economists have devoted a lot of time to showing ways to enclose and privatize public goods (e.g., national defense, air, oceans, etc.). Why is it that the discipline of Austrian economics that has had such a strong tradition now argues for the “unenclosability” of IP goods?"

  I added the emphasis because I find this sentence very important. How many times have I heard Walter Block talk about private roads and give examples of tunneling under my house or building a bridge over my house to complete a private road and read many people espousing the genius of this suggestion. But as soon as the discussion turns to IP all bets are off. No discussion on how private markets might protect copyrights. Just a dismissal of copyrights and absurd examples....not intellectual at all.

• Published: March 20, 2008 11:52 PM

• Inquisitor

• Did Cwik actually dispose of the 'minor' problem that IP pertains to non-scarce goods? Austrians, from Menger to the present, consider non-scarce goods that are appropriated to be instances of artificial scarcity. Did Cwik deal with this?

• Published: March 21, 2008 12:01 AM

• kgderrick

• Did Cwik actually dispose of the 'minor' problem that IP pertains to non-scarce goods? Austrians, from Menger to the present, consider non-scarce goods that are appropriated to be instances of artificial scarcity. Did Cwik deal with this?

  Yes...among other issues.

• Published: March 21, 2008 12:10 AM

• Inquisitor

• And how did he do so? Reproduce his argument, if you will. Because so-called public goods are scarce in a sense that intellectual 'property' is not, so that does not deal with the problem, if it is his alleged solution.

• Published: March 21, 2008 10:27 AM

• kgderrick

• Reproduce his argument, if you will.

  Just read his paper at: http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/cwik3.pdf

• Published: March 21, 2008 10:50 AM

• Nick

• Nice presentation but you're wrong about natural law. There's no such thing. Both IP and tangible property rights are socially created. Property exists because others are willing to honor the concept.

• Published: March 22, 2008 5:23 PM