Brush Fires of Freedom - All Comments

re: In Defense of Ron Paul

Robert Kaercher — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:29:03 GMT

I'm positively amazed at what can be inferred from a five-word blog post.

Paul Grad: Got your tickets to the Ron Paul inaugural yet?

re: What Do Global Warmers Fear The Most?

markb — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:41:21 GMT

An educated public. Of course, they can relax, as this is a non-existent threat....

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Jayel Aheram — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:54:11 GMT

@JonBostwick: You cannot argue with libertarians about intellectual property when you call it "property." They will instinctively leap to its defense. Call it for what it really is: government-granted monopoly on concepts.

@Carrie and Sequitur: The problem with so-called "intellectual property" is that it often infringes on other people's individual private property. According to the most extreme of copyright proponents (I call them copyfascists), the mere presence of their original content in your private property is forfeiture of your right to tinker and do what you want with that private property.

Under copyright, you do not own anything. A state-sanctioned entity does.

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Bostwick — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:42:59 GMT

"You consider geography as something that is always privatized, and that private roads should be forced to be made collective property."

No I don't.

I was pointing the difference between a toll road and a highwayman, the difference being legitimate ownership.

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Sequitur — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:56:49 GMT

That's why I hate left-libertarians.

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

sequitur — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:44:05 GMT

"The homesteading theory of property."

You misinterpret the homesteading theory of property. It is NOT applied to owners selling the land and "going to abondon it". It is applied to ALREADY abondoned property. There is a great difference between them. It does not say that you have no right to rent. It only considers already abondoned property or property colluded by capitalists and the state, which is legal to apply homesteading theory. However, voluntary rent and other non-feudal land claims cannot be homesteaded.

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Sequitur — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:40:46 GMT

Your argument is based on a bunch of inrequired ad hoc a priori beliefs. You consider geography as something that is always privatized, and that private roads should be forced to be made collective property. Not always. The atmosphere is considered unprivatizable, and humans have the ability to use airplanes. So if private road companies charge a fee, you still can escape, so that is not a problem.

What do you consider a "road" is? Do you consider your neighbor a road? Do you consider a private park a road, and they so they must be collectivized? Do you consider your neighbor's private sidewalk or river a road and that needs to be privatized? This can get very arbitrary, and everything might be considered "essential rights" and must be privatized. You are on a slippery slope.

What property do you consider "unused". Do you mean "unpossessed"? How do you determine it? If you see an empty baseball field or empty swimming pool or empty private park, do you have the right to use THEIR property? Humans lack perfect information to judge which property is "unused," so that can get pretty arbitrary.

If the swimming pool is actually a chemical storage tank storing chemical waste, you would die. If the private road is actually a runway for airplanes, you are killing the people in the airplanes. Humans lack perfect knowledge, and "judging" what can be privatized without consent of the owner, it is your risk.

If you actually want to collectivize "unused" property, then the owners might, for example, put many fences around their property to prevent "homesteading." The owners might otherwise put electronic devices on the land physically preventing foreigners standing on it by using technology to detect the DNA of the human. They might put nuclear waste on the land to prevent homesteading of it. Your dictatorial judgement of what should be privatized would lead to malinvestment.

And it is perfectly legitimate for the owners to sell their "abondoned" property because it would prevent shortages and conflicts. If you force the owners to charge zero cost for "homesteading", many people would rush to the land and would stir up many fights. This is not "surplus value."

JonBostwick, you overgeneralize. You consider all non-tangible contracts to be illegitamate. If you pay someone to write a book or to make a computer program, are you not allowed to do that perfectly voluntary agreement? That is a comparative advantage. Time is precious.

You dictatorially arbitrary "define" what goods or services should be collectivized or not. There is no clear line between knowledge and tangible goods.

You are believing that the "rent" and the "use-value" of land to be costs arbitrarily determined by the owner. You are false. The "exchange value" of land is actually the cost of rent divided by the interest rate. So rent is perfectly justifiable, otherwise you have to buy the whole land without paying rent. (the "exchange value" is much greater than the "rent")

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Bostwick — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:18:51 GMT

The homesteading theory of property.

http://blackcrayon.com/people/rothbard/property/

re: Criminality, Consent, and Copyright

Carrie — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:48:25 GMT

Under this philosophy, what is to stop someone from building a house in your backyard? Or moving into a vacation home you no longer use? Nothing? What set of criteria do you apply to determine if the land is being "used", and who gets to decide whether these criteria are met? One could assert that one is "using" land by leaving it as a buffer between one's house and the highway, and another could say that it is "unused" and want to "use" it to build on.

re: What Do Global Warmers Fear The Most?

constitutionwarrior — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:21:37 GMT

what the global warming crowd fears is secondary to the underlying group that actually is spearheading it.

that being the anti-capitalist collectivists.

That being said the recent info from NOAA shows that the temperature average is DROPPING.

Now what do they do?

re: The State Is

Junker — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:36:34 GMT

Yes, Jon. Too many of the bloggers and forum users do not get there. At least often enough.

re: What Do Global Warmers Fear The Most?

Quanticles — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:32:38 GMT

Although I'm in the camp that believes that CO2 is harmless, isn't claiming that Global Warming supporters are opposed to "mobility for the masses" a straw man attack? They're not luddites, they only want to avoid a large number of "polluting" vehicles.

re: What Do Global Warmers Fear The Most?

John Reid — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:06:34 GMT

What Global Warmers fear most is a technological solution to the CO2 problem. Such a solution is possible as follows:

1 There are environmental advantages in mixing the upper layers of the ocean by bringing deep nutrients into the light where photosynthesis by phytoplankton can occur.

2 These advantages include augmenting the volume and diversity of ocean fish stocks and sequestration of atmospheric CO2 into the deep ocean.

3 The energy to carry out oceanic mixing is available in the form of superheated water from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

4 A fluidic heat engine has been devised in the form of a large bubble pump which converts superheated water from these vents into the mechanical energy needed to bring nutrient-rich water to the surface.

5 The bubble pump amplifies the vent flow by a factor of 30,000 by virtue of the huge buoyancy created when the vent water boils at intermediate depths.

6 The cost of construction and deployment of such bubble pumps can be justified economically in terms of commercial fish stocks created and carbon credits traded.

7 There are both sufficient nutrients and sufficient energy available to allow such schemes to be developed for decades to come, even to reverse recent increases in atmospheric CO2.

The technology to implement this scheme is already available within the offshore oil and gas industry. Implementation is more of a political problem. Artificial fisheries in mid-ocean will require international agreement about security of investment and changes to the Law of the Sea. Some will have strong moral objections to "tampering with nature" in such a manner.

More information can be obtained at www.ecofluidics.com.

John Reid

re: The State Is

Ronorama — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:23:58 GMT

Well said, Jon!

re: Living By the Sword

Edgar729 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:41:48 GMT

Short and thoughtful. Nice Job!

Keep it up!