TT's Lost in Tokyo

Stephan:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, laying it out for us and providing all the links. I’ve been listening to the radio show.

I also appreciate your effort to expose what you see as fundamental problems with statist IP and to explore a different intellectual foundation.

I have a few comments.

First, the co-host, Mark Edge, basically has it right: FreeTalkLive radio host Ian Freeman has acted like a jackass and a jerk, and appears “congenitally incapable of not being condescending”. Someone else on the show mentions Freeman’s “d*ck move”. And “crusty” L. Neil Smith clearly over-reacted as well. This is not simply a surface issue, but a deep one. What the brouhaha is about is REALLY about is about frustrated human reactions when community breaks down and leaves us with little but emotion and self-righteous posturing on “principle”.

Rather than really being about IP, the whole thing seems to me to be about Smith feeling – understandably in my view – like he was slighted, and the negative pissing contest that resulted. The eager young Shire guys got caught up in their own project, and it seemed never even to enter their minds that they should have troubled themselves to let Smith know in advance that they intended to use Smith’s work in drafting their own declaration. If that happened in a real community of people who knew each other, wouldn’t we all think that the Shire guys had ignored what seems like a natural protocol? Where is the “compassion” that some on the talk show referred to?

This discussion of human interaction and emotion is NOT a side issue — in a real stateless word, how would people deal with each other, and reach agreement on principles and how they apply in particular circumstances? Our mass society makes it easier to act more shallowly and self-interestedly, and easier to diss and mock others while finding convenient self-justifications – including statements of principle (“my work is property!” or “IP is theft!”) – for doing so. This is clearly evident in the Smith-Freeman IP dispute, but we also see it on practically every blog, including threads here. Modern technology makes it possible for us to have great conversations with interesting people all around the world, but it also makes it difficult to satisfy our need for REAL community, and makes it easy for us to act more immaturely and less responsibly.

Second, as to what IP “should” be, Stephan will not be surprised to hear that I agree with Mark Edge’s suggestion is that “property” is really no more than what a community of people AGREE is property … and it there is a very wide realm of economic interests that human societies have treated and do treat as a legitimate property interest. (A separate, but related issue, is the negative role that the state can play.) In short, a society can very well agree that a producer of intellectual work has some claims regarding control, compensation and copying, even when the work passes out of his/her hands.

I made a few comments to Stephan’s November 2009 post on “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism”, which I have gathered together here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/12/20/what-is-quot-property-quot-a-few-weird-thoughts-on-evolution-society-quot-property-rights-quot-and-quot-intellectual-property-quot-and-the-principles-we-structure-to-justify-them.aspx

I copy them here for the interested reader two of my comments (on society, property and IP) that Stephan left unaddressed;

2.1 http://blog.mises.org/11045/intellectual-property-and-libertarianism/#comment-628161

Basically, “property” is simply the name we give to the resources that we are able personally to protect, as well as those which – via sophisticated shared mechanisms that continue to be developed within communities over time – we can protect, plus our recognized share of common assets.

In a state of nature, very little is secure, as most life forms have limited means of securing or maintaining exclusive control over assets. What one predator catches, another often soon steals. Different species have developed different ways of coping with the ongoing struggle, utilizing varying degrees of cunning, speed, strength and cooperation.

Humans have triumphed over the rest of nature because we have found sophisticated ways of balancing individual initiative and moderating intra-group struggle with cooperation, and devised methods to acquire, use and defend resources.

Property has been a key tool, but we can readily see that our “property” has its roots in the ways that our cousin creatures invest energy in marking out territory, fighting (individually or in groups) to protect their young, and growling over bones. At the same time, we can see that animals treat each other as dinner, make calculated decisions as to when to “steal” resources that others are guarding, and as well find advantage in cooperating, both with relatives of their kind and with others.

Our need to defend property from other groups has fed our inbred mutual suspicions of “others”, and our ongoing battles, both for dominance within groups and to acquire the resources held by rival groups, – and has led directly to states.

Bruce Yandle has addressed the ascendance of man through methods such as property to facilitate cooperation and to abate ruinous conflicts over resources; he has an interesting short piece I`ve excerpted here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/11/20/bruce-yandle-on-the-tragedy-of-the-commons-the-evolution-of-cooperation-and-property.aspx#

To tie this in more closely with Stephan’s battle with libertarians and others over IP, I note I have further discussed the ways that groups have, in order to strengthen group cohesion and dampen conflict, of developing and inculcating mores; formal religions are obviously just one branch of this tree:

- see my discussion with fundamentalist here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/08/30/a-few-simple-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-moral-codes-and-why-we-fight-over-them-and-religion-liberty-and-the-state.aspx

- and my discussions with Gene Callahan and Bob Murphy on whether there are “objective” moral truths, or simply a felt need on their part to find some: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=callahan+moral

These are relevant because they explore not property per se, but our related need to make our property rules stick, by tying them to “sacred postulates” of one kind or another. The problem with this, of course, is that it makes us difficult to abandon what we all pretty much assumed was sacred, like IP. (Of course it also makes even discussing property quite difficult at times.)

Published: November 20, 2009 9:13 AM

2.2 http://blog.mises.org/11045/intellectual-property-and-libertarianism/#comment-628253

The deep roots of “property” are not in principle but in simple competition, physical defense of assets valuable enough to make the effort worthwhile, and in the grudging recognition by others – more willingly offered by those who share bonds of community – that yielding to others’ claims may be more productive than challenging them. This is as true for rest of creation as it is for man. While we have developed property to a a very sophisticated degree, at it’s core property remains very much about the Darwinian struggle to survive and prosper, violence, theft and calculations as to when challenging control over an asset is not worth the effort.

To the extent we’re past that, which is quite a ways indeed, property is a social construct that is flexible (though rigidified in various ways, including legislation) and based primarily on practical considerations as to what parameters best engender wealth and respond to shared purposes by minimizing free-for-alls, externalities, free-riding & rent-seeking and facilitating voluntary transactions.

Elinor Ostrom has spent alot of time documenting sophisticated local community property rights, all of which at the end of the day all supported by threats of sanctions and violence against rule breakers and outsiders. http://bit.ly/2caqUr

It’s natural that we feel strongly about what we consider to be ours, but this feeling is a gut one that is not in essence grounded on principles deeper than our sense of fair play and just desserts in a community to which we feel we have bonds of common purpose.

And we have a natural tendency to dress up our shared institutions – such as property rights – in moral precepts.

But we always remain subject to problems of theft, especially so as our bonds of community and shared purpose loosen. Libertarians are absolutely right to keep shining a spotlight on how the state has become an instrument of theft.

As for IP, as specialized knowledge can be quite valuable, it seems quite possible for me to imagine a society that developed IP and enforced it mutually, as a way to minimize high costs for protecting trade secrets.But such rules would not be enforceable against other societies, unless resort is made to government. And it seems clear to me that there are substantial rent-seeking costs now associated with state-granted IP.

Published: November 20, 2009 at 11:54 am

Kind regards, your local friendly misanthropic enviro-fascist,

TT