I'm going to discuss an ethical and decision-theoretic intuition that underpins my support for intellectual property rights, and which seems to be absent, or unintuitive, among anti-IP libertarians. (See the discussion linked in yesterday's post for lots of good examples.)
But first let's consider a puzzle in decision theory. This one is known as Parfit's Hitchhiker and, as best I can tell, comes from Derek Parfit's book Reasons and Persons, though the term "hitchhiker" didn't come up in a search of the book.
It goes like this (well, my version does anyway): Assume you're lost in the desert, with nothing of value on you. You're approached by a superpowerful, superintelligent being we'll call Omega. It is willing to take you back to civilization and stabilize you -- but only if you will withdraw $5 from your bank account and give it to Omega once that's over with. (Yes, such a being might have reason to do this.) It has no enforcement mechanism for if you don't pay.
But here's the catch: Omega can scan you in detail and find out if you're really intending to give it the $5 when you're safe, rather than -- I don't know -- reasoning that, "Hey, I'm already safe, I've already got what I need and all, and you know, this Omega thing is powerful enough anyway, I think I'll just keep the $5." And if it finds that you wouldn't give it the money upon reaching safety (i.e. you don't have a decision theory that outputs "pay $5 to Omega" given that you are safe), then it just won't take you back and you can die in the desert.
At this point, a lot of you might be recoiling in horror: "What? Keep a measly five dollars when this thing saved my life? Are you ****in' nuts?" Yeah -- you're the people with the intuition I was referring to at the beginning -- the one that I have, and the anti-IP libertarians don't seem to. More about that in a minute.
Those of you who didn't recoil in horror may be thinking something like, "Whoa whoa whoa, I don't like dying. See, I would just make a contract -- or heck, even a simple promise -- that I will give Omega the $5. Since I feel honor-bound to abide by my promises, of course I would pay, and wouldn't have such diseased thoughts" as I referred to above. But I didn't make it that easy: note that Omega doesn't ask you anything and can't even receive your messages. Its decision is based entirely on what you would do, given that you know the details of the situation.
Here's the neat thing to notice: you will never find yourself in a position to be deciding whether to take that final step and give the Omega-like being $5 unless you adhere to a decision theory (or "ethic", "morals", etc.) that leads you to do things like "give Omega $5 for rescuing you at least in those cases where it rescued you conditional on expecting you to give it that $5" even when you already know what the Omega-like being has decided, and that decision is irreversible.
(I know, I know, I'm doubling up on the italics. Bear with me here.)
Conversely, all of the beings who come out alive have a decision theory (or ethic, etc.) which regards it as an optimal action (or an "action they should do", etc.) to pay the $5. Omega's already selected for them!
Now at this point, those of you who don't have the recoiling intuition I referred to, or are still worried I'll derive implications from it you don't like, may insist that this is a contrived scenario, with no application to real world -- you can't make your decisions based on what capricious, weird, superpowerful agents will do, so why change your decision theory on that reasoning?
And there is something to that belief: You don't want to become a "person who always jumps off the nearest cliff" just because there's some rare instance where it's a good idea.
But that's not what's going on here, is it? Omega makes its decision based upon what you would do, irrespective of what decision process led you to do it. So for purposes of this scenario, it simply doesn't matter whether you decide to pay that $5 because you:
- feel honor-bound to do so;
- feel so grateful to Omega that you think it deserves what it wanted from you;
- believe you would be punished with eternal hellfire if you didn't, and dislike hellfire;
- like to transfer money to Omega-like beings, just for the heck of it;
- or for any other reason.
So, then, is it normal for the world to decide how it treats you based on (a somewhat reliable assessment of) "what you would do"? Yes, it is, once you realize that we already have a term for "what you would do": it's called your "character" or "disposition" (or "decision theory" or "generating function").
Do people typically treat you differently based on estimations of your character? If you know where they don't, please let me know, so I can go there and let loose my sarcasm with impunity.
So, to wrap it up, what does Parfit's Hitchhiker have to do with intellectual property? Well:
- Omega represents the people who are deciding whether to produce difficult, satisfying intellectual works, conditional on whether we will respect certain exclusivity rights that have historically been promised them.
- The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works.
- The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to continue to respect that exclusivity once it is produced "even though" they're "not scarce anymore", and we could choose otherwise.
The lesson: if you don't believe that the Omegas in your life "deserve", in an important sense, to be paid, you won't find yourself "rescued". We are where we are today because of our beliefs about what "hitchhikers" should do, and we miss out on rescues whenever we decide to become ungrateful hitchhikers. (Edit: that should probably be phrased as "... whenever we decide that it's right for hitchhikers to be ungrateful.")
(Note: this post was heavily influenced by Good and Real, Chapter 7, and by this article on Newcomb's problem.)
A blog by Silas Barta
Showing posts with label intellectual property. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intellectual property. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Intellectual works aren't scarce -- just like money
If you listen to Stephan Kinsella or his acolytes, you're probably well familiar with the argument that "Intellectual property rights should not exist" because "intellectual works aren't scarce", though this is often confusingly shortened to "IP isn't scarce". Here's Kinsella's latest compilation of the anti-IP arguments, that being one of them. (Which led to a very lengthy discussion.)
Well, I've been reading Jaron Lanier's recent book, You Are Not a Gadget, which gives a good reply (p. 102):
I've made a similar point before: Money is information -- specifically, the relative amount that the world (believes that it) owes you. When money is stolen from you, then you can certainly force yourself to think of it in terms of
-a physical item being removed from your possession, or of
-a server having "unauthorized use".
But what's really important is the editing of that information: where before, the world thought it had a remaining balance against you of $X, now it thinks that the thieves are owed that $X. This problem persists even after you are given compensatory paper or the bank gets standard compensation for trespassing, and it's what people care about.
MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc.) have already assimilated this lesson. In such online games, your money really is nothing but a database entry. It doesn't correspond, even in principle, to a physical object, just the knowledge of a relationship.
Lanier's alternate suggestion, following Ted Nelson, is that we could instead simply have an automated system that charges for each time a given intellectual work is accessed. People could "pirate" these (already freely-accessible) works by only using versions stored outside of where there access would be recorded, just as they do today when pirating works. But so long as the public regards this as wrong, and wrong for the same reason as counterfeiting, they would run into the same problem as counterfeiters. And the relatively low cost with which the works could be accessed under such a system would remove most of the sympathy for them.
I note that one particular snag of this is that people will not want to have to think of the costs each time they want to look at a book again. However, if everyone paid a fixed amount each year, and their choice of what to access only determined which fraction of that payment went to each creator, then choosing to view anything would cost nothing on the margin, further eroding any incentive to pirate.
Well, I've been reading Jaron Lanier's recent book, You Are Not a Gadget, which gives a good reply (p. 102):
It is a common assertion that if you copy a digital music file, you haven't destroyed the original, so nothing was stolen. The same thing could be said if you hacked into a bank and just added money to your online account. ... The problem in each case is not that you stole from a specific person but that you undermined the artificial scarcities that allow the economy to function. In the same way, creative expression on the internet will benefit from a social contract that imposes a modest degree of artificial scarcity on information. [bold added]
I've made a similar point before: Money is information -- specifically, the relative amount that the world (believes that it) owes you. When money is stolen from you, then you can certainly force yourself to think of it in terms of
-a physical item being removed from your possession, or of
-a server having "unauthorized use".
But what's really important is the editing of that information: where before, the world thought it had a remaining balance against you of $X, now it thinks that the thieves are owed that $X. This problem persists even after you are given compensatory paper or the bank gets standard compensation for trespassing, and it's what people care about.
MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc.) have already assimilated this lesson. In such online games, your money really is nothing but a database entry. It doesn't correspond, even in principle, to a physical object, just the knowledge of a relationship.
Lanier's alternate suggestion, following Ted Nelson, is that we could instead simply have an automated system that charges for each time a given intellectual work is accessed. People could "pirate" these (already freely-accessible) works by only using versions stored outside of where there access would be recorded, just as they do today when pirating works. But so long as the public regards this as wrong, and wrong for the same reason as counterfeiting, they would run into the same problem as counterfeiters. And the relatively low cost with which the works could be accessed under such a system would remove most of the sympathy for them.
I note that one particular snag of this is that people will not want to have to think of the costs each time they want to look at a book again. However, if everyone paid a fixed amount each year, and their choice of what to access only determined which fraction of that payment went to each creator, then choosing to view anything would cost nothing on the margin, further eroding any incentive to pirate.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Another parallel between IP and EM spectrum rights
I constantly bring up the EM spectrum in discussions of IP, and for good reason. It's quite difficult to justify rights in one but not the other, leading some people to unpalatable conclusions. Heck, even Stephan Kinsella, the big anti-IP poomba, isn't sure whether there should be rights to radio waves.
But recently, I've found yet another parallel. Consider the case of someone who, like in lots of instructive thought experiments, wants to block the propagation of radio waves from a nearby tower so that people can't receive them (well, extract information from them, but you get the point).
There's a device that lets you block EM waves, known as a Faraday cage. I didn't know how they work before, but it turns out that, by being made of conducting material, their electrons realign so as to produce the *opposite* field from the one around it (which superposes over it and cancels it out).
See where this is going? To protect your right to to transmit information via EM waves, you need to be able to prevent others from ... er ... instantiating the same pattern! Now, where else have people asserted that kind of right?
(By the way, first post ever from my first smartphone, the wonderful Samsung Moment. And no, unlike when Tyler Cowen promotes a product, I didn't get it for free or otherwise get paid to say that. No, the links weren't added from the Moment.)
But recently, I've found yet another parallel. Consider the case of someone who, like in lots of instructive thought experiments, wants to block the propagation of radio waves from a nearby tower so that people can't receive them (well, extract information from them, but you get the point).
There's a device that lets you block EM waves, known as a Faraday cage. I didn't know how they work before, but it turns out that, by being made of conducting material, their electrons realign so as to produce the *opposite* field from the one around it (which superposes over it and cancels it out).
See where this is going? To protect your right to to transmit information via EM waves, you need to be able to prevent others from ... er ... instantiating the same pattern! Now, where else have people asserted that kind of right?
(By the way, first post ever from my first smartphone, the wonderful Samsung Moment. And no, unlike when Tyler Cowen promotes a product, I didn't get it for free or otherwise get paid to say that. No, the links weren't added from the Moment.)
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Setting circular anti-IP cliches straight
In a recent discussion on intellectual property (IP) on the Mises blog, I saw Stephan Kinsella advancing (again) a circular argument against IP: that it claims rights in already-owned property. But he very dispute is about which ownership rights people have in property!
I know what you're thinkin: "meh, dog bites man ... what else is new," right? Well, what's interesting is that my standard foil, Peter Surda, actually agrees with me that this specific point is circular, even as he generally agrees with Kinsella in his opposition to IP. Here's what Kinsella said in response:
What follows is my response on the blog, with some hyperlinks for context:
***
The circularity lies in your assumption about which rights you gain by doing how much homesteading, and it is in no way obvious how the rights must work the way you think they do.
Say I homestead a plot of land. How far above and below does that homesteading entitle me to? Yes, you can justify a specific amount, but that's the point: you have to justify why your rights extend to that boundary (abstract or otherwise), not just assume that your land ownership implies ownership of the airspace through which planes fly, and then argue that "airplanes necessarily violate the property rights in already-owned land" ... which, when you think about it, is pretty much what your IP case is.
But that's just the beginning: does homesteading the land entitle you to block (non-nuisance) concentrated sound waves from passing through your land (e.g. ultrasound)? And of course, back to the ol' chestnut: does the land ownership entitle you to block every single frequency of the EM spectrum passing through?
Now, there are many cases where you can assume that homesteading entitles you to certain rights. However, here, the very debate is about which rights you are morally entitled to by virtue of homesteading what. And in that case, it is in fact circular to assume a certain level of homesteading-based rights, since you're trying to prove what the homesteading-based rights are in the first place, which people dispute!
Note that since this is the central argument of Against Intellectual Property, its circularity isn't very encouraging when judging its merit as an argument against IP.
I know what you're thinkin: "meh, dog bites man ... what else is new," right? Well, what's interesting is that my standard foil, Peter Surda, actually agrees with me that this specific point is circular, even as he generally agrees with Kinsella in his opposition to IP. Here's what Kinsella said in response:
Peter, I don't think it's circular because our view of property rights is grounded in a Lockean homesteading view as applied to scarce resources. Under that view you can perform any action you want so long as you do not invade the borders of (i.e., change the physical integrity of) another's Lockeanly-owned scarce resource, without his consent. How is this circular?
What follows is my response on the blog, with some hyperlinks for context:
***
The circularity lies in your assumption about which rights you gain by doing how much homesteading, and it is in no way obvious how the rights must work the way you think they do.
Say I homestead a plot of land. How far above and below does that homesteading entitle me to? Yes, you can justify a specific amount, but that's the point: you have to justify why your rights extend to that boundary (abstract or otherwise), not just assume that your land ownership implies ownership of the airspace through which planes fly, and then argue that "airplanes necessarily violate the property rights in already-owned land" ... which, when you think about it, is pretty much what your IP case is.
But that's just the beginning: does homesteading the land entitle you to block (non-nuisance) concentrated sound waves from passing through your land (e.g. ultrasound)? And of course, back to the ol' chestnut: does the land ownership entitle you to block every single frequency of the EM spectrum passing through?
Now, there are many cases where you can assume that homesteading entitles you to certain rights. However, here, the very debate is about which rights you are morally entitled to by virtue of homesteading what. And in that case, it is in fact circular to assume a certain level of homesteading-based rights, since you're trying to prove what the homesteading-based rights are in the first place, which people dispute!
Note that since this is the central argument of Against Intellectual Property, its circularity isn't very encouraging when judging its merit as an argument against IP.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
What "interference" with radio signals really means, and its implications for property rights
A common confusion often arises: people talk of the "interference" with radio tower transmissions, without understanding what physical process the term refers to. This misunderstanding makes it hard to see the logic in my analogy between intellectual property and rights to radio frequencies.
In a recent debate on intellectual property, I finally decided to set the record straight, and what follows in this post borrows heavily from what I said in the debate.
First, how does radio communication actually work? I'll admit that I don't know the answer all the way down to the nuts-and-bolts level. But I can explain it from the perspective of information theory.
Radio communication works, to the extent that it works, because a listener can perform a measurement, and thereby learn something about the source, i.e. the message transmitted. (This "something" they learn is called the "mutual information" between the two points, and is equivalent to so-called "Bayesian evidence".)
And when it comes to your radio, what is that actual measurement? Setting a dial on it that changes a circuit's properties so that it resonates when the surrounding area is filled with electromagnetic (EM) waves around a certain frequency. And when it resonates, an electrical signal in the radio follows a certain pattern that's correlated to the signal the radio tower is sending. Your radio then converts the circuit's electrical signal into sound that is meaningful to you.
All of this functioning relies on an assumption: that by performing the measurement, you do in fact learn something about the source. That assumption is violated when more than one tower transmits with enough intensity at the frequency you perform a measurement on. In this case, no measurement result tells you anything about either source: the transmitted waves overlap each other, coming across a gibberish on your radio. (In the lingo, there's no "mutual information" between you and either source.)
So whenever you talk about "interference" with radio communication, what you really mean is "violation of an assumption some parties were using to communicate which, when violated, makes them unable to communicate."
To understand the significance of using the term "interference" in this way, let's look at a more practical, intuitive example with the same dynamic, but unrelated to the EM spectrum.
An Illustrative Example
Let's say that I live in a small village where I have a few friends. I want an easy way to communicate to them that I expect a rainstorm today. So, I work out an "encoding scheme" with them in advance: if they hear me hit my gong before 8 am, I predict rain. If they don't hear me hit my gong, I don't predict rain. So, instead of having to tell them all individually, I can just hit the gong. They'll hear it, and they'll get a message from me. By "measuring" the sound they hear before 8 am, they learn the "signal" I'm sending.
So far, so good.
But there's a little snag: my friends will hear a gong sound as long as anyone hits a gong not just me! So, our communication scheme only works as long as we can rely on no one else hitting a gong before 8 am. If we can't rely on that, I can't send them the message, at least not as reliably. Because when they hear a gong, sure, it could be me, but it could also be anyone else with a gong. Hearing the gong sound is no longer a reliable sign that I think it will rain.
So there you see it: our communication system can be defeated by "interference" from other people, either because they're trying to set up their own similar system, or because they just like being mean. But this "interference" simply means: violating an assumption that we, rightly or wrongly, thought we could rely on.
And how does this relate to radio communication? Simple: the existence of the gong sound before 8 am is just like a radio signal within a given frequency range: it can provide information to others, but only if others don't try to use the same means to communicate.
Conclusion
So do you think people should be able to "homestead" such "communication assumptions" like that? Should I be able to assert rights as "the only one who can hit a gong in this area before 8 am"? (Or, to be less greedy, the right to hit a gong in this area in a certain five-minute window, with a certain rhythm.) Your answer to that question tells you a lot about how you should look at other issues.
For example, how about asserting rights as "the only one who can broadcast radio waves in this area within a particular frequency band"? How about asserting rights as "the only one who can distribute books containing Harry Potter stories"?
Hey! That last one kinda sounds like intellectual property rights...
In a recent debate on intellectual property, I finally decided to set the record straight, and what follows in this post borrows heavily from what I said in the debate.
First, how does radio communication actually work? I'll admit that I don't know the answer all the way down to the nuts-and-bolts level. But I can explain it from the perspective of information theory.
Radio communication works, to the extent that it works, because a listener can perform a measurement, and thereby learn something about the source, i.e. the message transmitted. (This "something" they learn is called the "mutual information" between the two points, and is equivalent to so-called "Bayesian evidence".)
And when it comes to your radio, what is that actual measurement? Setting a dial on it that changes a circuit's properties so that it resonates when the surrounding area is filled with electromagnetic (EM) waves around a certain frequency. And when it resonates, an electrical signal in the radio follows a certain pattern that's correlated to the signal the radio tower is sending. Your radio then converts the circuit's electrical signal into sound that is meaningful to you.
All of this functioning relies on an assumption: that by performing the measurement, you do in fact learn something about the source. That assumption is violated when more than one tower transmits with enough intensity at the frequency you perform a measurement on. In this case, no measurement result tells you anything about either source: the transmitted waves overlap each other, coming across a gibberish on your radio. (In the lingo, there's no "mutual information" between you and either source.)
So whenever you talk about "interference" with radio communication, what you really mean is "violation of an assumption some parties were using to communicate which, when violated, makes them unable to communicate."
To understand the significance of using the term "interference" in this way, let's look at a more practical, intuitive example with the same dynamic, but unrelated to the EM spectrum.
An Illustrative Example
Let's say that I live in a small village where I have a few friends. I want an easy way to communicate to them that I expect a rainstorm today. So, I work out an "encoding scheme" with them in advance: if they hear me hit my gong before 8 am, I predict rain. If they don't hear me hit my gong, I don't predict rain. So, instead of having to tell them all individually, I can just hit the gong. They'll hear it, and they'll get a message from me. By "measuring" the sound they hear before 8 am, they learn the "signal" I'm sending.
So far, so good.
But there's a little snag: my friends will hear a gong sound as long as anyone hits a gong not just me! So, our communication scheme only works as long as we can rely on no one else hitting a gong before 8 am. If we can't rely on that, I can't send them the message, at least not as reliably. Because when they hear a gong, sure, it could be me, but it could also be anyone else with a gong. Hearing the gong sound is no longer a reliable sign that I think it will rain.
So there you see it: our communication system can be defeated by "interference" from other people, either because they're trying to set up their own similar system, or because they just like being mean. But this "interference" simply means: violating an assumption that we, rightly or wrongly, thought we could rely on.
And how does this relate to radio communication? Simple: the existence of the gong sound before 8 am is just like a radio signal within a given frequency range: it can provide information to others, but only if others don't try to use the same means to communicate.
Conclusion
So do you think people should be able to "homestead" such "communication assumptions" like that? Should I be able to assert rights as "the only one who can hit a gong in this area before 8 am"? (Or, to be less greedy, the right to hit a gong in this area in a certain five-minute window, with a certain rhythm.) Your answer to that question tells you a lot about how you should look at other issues.
For example, how about asserting rights as "the only one who can broadcast radio waves in this area within a particular frequency band"? How about asserting rights as "the only one who can distribute books containing Harry Potter stories"?
Hey! That last one kinda sounds like intellectual property rights...
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The IP debate heats up again!
Well, did you miss my posting, guys? I know one fellow who did. STS welcomes "Andras", a commenter on the Mises blog, who has single-handedly revived my older, ultra-arrogant post that presented the serious problems with libertarian anti-IP (intellectual property) theorizing. Apparently, the default setting on Blogspot is that posts don't expire, so they can always get more comments, and I saw Andras's comment there because I kept coming back to it to link that post. Note that in addition to the initial post, I summarize in a later comment, my three biggest problems with opposition to IP in the context of libertarianism. Take a gander!
Andras understandably dislikes the pro-IP groupthink (though he doesn't use that term specifically) on the Mises blog. But, there's reason to be happy. I've noticed a sharp change in the general form of IP discussions there. They used to be a few people against hordes of fanatical IP haters. But now, there is significantly more balance, and far more people are making reasoned refutations of the standard (but wrong) anti-IP arguments. Here's a short list from the past month:
Why People Don't Believe In Paying For Music. Hint: Its All About Deflation.
A Book That Changes Everything
Hayek on Patents and Copyrights
Hayek, IP, and Knowledge
Authors: Beware of Copyright
The Universals of IP Theorizing
Matsushita and the Patent
Does Innovation Require Property in Ideas?
Dangers of Copyright Exhibit
Dissecting Boldrin and Levine: An Alternate View of Intellectual Property
Two things to keep in mind: a) these aren't all the IP posts in the past month, and b) I'm linking these not to endorse the argument at the top, but to show the more numerous and well-reasoned criticisms the Mises blog gets now.
Andras understandably dislikes the pro-IP groupthink (though he doesn't use that term specifically) on the Mises blog. But, there's reason to be happy. I've noticed a sharp change in the general form of IP discussions there. They used to be a few people against hordes of fanatical IP haters. But now, there is significantly more balance, and far more people are making reasoned refutations of the standard (but wrong) anti-IP arguments. Here's a short list from the past month:
Why People Don't Believe In Paying For Music. Hint: Its All About Deflation.
A Book That Changes Everything
Hayek on Patents and Copyrights
Hayek, IP, and Knowledge
Authors: Beware of Copyright
The Universals of IP Theorizing
Matsushita and the Patent
Does Innovation Require Property in Ideas?
Dangers of Copyright Exhibit
Dissecting Boldrin and Levine: An Alternate View of Intellectual Property
Two things to keep in mind: a) these aren't all the IP posts in the past month, and b) I'm linking these not to endorse the argument at the top, but to show the more numerous and well-reasoned criticisms the Mises blog gets now.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Well, I guess I don't count as a libertarian anymore
Yesterday I was kicked off the private LibertarianForum Google Group and mailing list. The reason was that I had the audacity to remind other libertarians of the responsibility side of liberty (with respect to global warming), and for pointing out flaws in really stupid arguments against intellectual property (and, conversely, explaining how an IP-free system is vulnerable to Mises's economic calculation critique). The proverbial last straw was a discussion sparked by someone linking this TokyoTom post about Bob Murphy finally admitting, after being dragged kicking and screaming, to admit he misled readers in his op-ed, though of course he's not going to actually say it where any victims of his deception are going to see it.
The head of the list claimed that he was deluged with requests from people who were asking me to be removed, and who apparently lacked the guts and the brains to actually explain where my points were in error. I'm not going to name any names.[1]
Naturally, people are going to claim that, oh, it wasn't what I said, but my rudeness. This is ridiculous -- it's standard practice on the LibertarianForum list to use the exact same tone I did, as even my detractors readily admitted. A more plausible claim would be that the people there didn't like being uncomfortably reminded of the implications of their stated (though certainly not actual!) beliefs.
So why the title of this post then? I believe, after all, everything I did before. But look at it this way: time and time again, I see people nominally also "libertarian" reveal themselves to have been coming from completely different premises. I never imagined that I would see, for example, Bob Murphy take the attitude of, "Oh, did I destroy your land with my CO2 emissions? I got it! Here's the solution! Fix it your own damn self!" (Yeah, way to preach responsibility and universal adherence to basic morality there...)
There's only so many times I can see cases like that before the self-appellation "libertarian" obscures more than it clarifies.
So what to call myself now? One good option is Birchian, after Paul Birch (a former Anti-State Forum contributor), since I've been seeing my views more and more resemble his, especially in terms of focusing on whether the victims of one's actions have been adequately compensated.
Alternatively, I could -- gasp! -- call myself a mutualist as per the philosophy of Kevin Carson, my former nemesis. (As recently as July of this year he quipped that I couldn't grasp an argument even with velcro-covered mittens!) The reason for that term would again be because of my focus on the extent to which nominally "libertarian"-favored activities are in fact predicated on the state stepping in an exempting certain groups from having to actually bear its true cost.
Before inferring too much from this post, I ask that you heed this caution: There is a big difference between "Problem X is often overstated in an attempt to give politicians more power" and "Problem X doesn't exist." I certainly sympathize with those who have seen so many phony environmentalist rationalizations for statist measures that are thinly-veiled attempts to shut down markets, that they hear about Problem X and immediately view it as the former. But ask yourselves: has the tide turned to the point where it's more common to see anti-environmentalist arguments as thinly veiled attempts to shove onto other people, costs that the arguer should be bearing?
[1] Since a lot of you might be sketchy on terminology, a so-called "name" is a label used to refer to a specific instance of a proper noun. An example of a name might be Brad Edmonds or Max Chiz.
The head of the list claimed that he was deluged with requests from people who were asking me to be removed, and who apparently lacked the guts and the brains to actually explain where my points were in error. I'm not going to name any names.[1]
Naturally, people are going to claim that, oh, it wasn't what I said, but my rudeness. This is ridiculous -- it's standard practice on the LibertarianForum list to use the exact same tone I did, as even my detractors readily admitted. A more plausible claim would be that the people there didn't like being uncomfortably reminded of the implications of their stated (though certainly not actual!) beliefs.
So why the title of this post then? I believe, after all, everything I did before. But look at it this way: time and time again, I see people nominally also "libertarian" reveal themselves to have been coming from completely different premises. I never imagined that I would see, for example, Bob Murphy take the attitude of, "Oh, did I destroy your land with my CO2 emissions? I got it! Here's the solution! Fix it your own damn self!" (Yeah, way to preach responsibility and universal adherence to basic morality there...)
There's only so many times I can see cases like that before the self-appellation "libertarian" obscures more than it clarifies.
So what to call myself now? One good option is Birchian, after Paul Birch (a former Anti-State Forum contributor), since I've been seeing my views more and more resemble his, especially in terms of focusing on whether the victims of one's actions have been adequately compensated.
Alternatively, I could -- gasp! -- call myself a mutualist as per the philosophy of Kevin Carson, my former nemesis. (As recently as July of this year he quipped that I couldn't grasp an argument even with velcro-covered mittens!) The reason for that term would again be because of my focus on the extent to which nominally "libertarian"-favored activities are in fact predicated on the state stepping in an exempting certain groups from having to actually bear its true cost.
Before inferring too much from this post, I ask that you heed this caution: There is a big difference between "Problem X is often overstated in an attempt to give politicians more power" and "Problem X doesn't exist." I certainly sympathize with those who have seen so many phony environmentalist rationalizations for statist measures that are thinly-veiled attempts to shut down markets, that they hear about Problem X and immediately view it as the former. But ask yourselves: has the tide turned to the point where it's more common to see anti-environmentalist arguments as thinly veiled attempts to shove onto other people, costs that the arguer should be bearing?
[1] Since a lot of you might be sketchy on terminology, a so-called "name" is a label used to refer to a specific instance of a proper noun. An example of a name might be Brad Edmonds or Max Chiz.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
How to get Silas interested in Barbie dolls
Because of that whole heterosexuality[1] thing, I've never been interested in Barbie dolls. But I have been interested in the path of American industry and innovation, and where that intersects with Barbie dolls, you've got me hooked.
The big story today is that Mattel, the maker of Barbie, won a smaller-than-expected judgment against MGA, maker of the rival Bratz dolls.
It's a sad story, MGA having to pay damages, but becoming all too common. As the author of the story, Charles Payne, puts it:
What happened in this particular case was that a designer at Mattel came up with an idea for a new kind of doll. Mattel didn't like it, so he went to work for another company that was actually competent enough to see the merit therein, MGA. So then Mattel, seeing their stupidity play out in the Bratz dolls' success, sued on the grounds that well, since the designer developed it under them, some contract gives Mattel rights in it. Except that -- oops -- they couldn't substantiate a case against the designer, and dropped it.
So Mattel's attitude basically comes down to: we deserve all of the reward and none of the risk, and we'll sue you rather than produce innovative products. (For what it's worth, I volunteer at an intermediate school [4th-6th grade, 9-13 year olds], and I've only seen Bratz-themed products, never Barbie.) And keep in mind, it takes quite a bit of innovation and guts to compete with Barbie in the doll market, one in which the buyers want to have what all the other buyers already have. Let alone compete well!
Payne is right: more and more often we see such clowns in charge of big corporations. At American car companies who lose boatloads of money and are valued at a sliver of their foreign competition. ("Honda is an engineering company, GM is a marketing company.") At financial companies that made billions in bad loans based on questionable models. The list goes on and on. When will America get its competitive edge back?
I don't know, but in the mean time, I'll make sure my money with those who deserve it. Today, I finally took the plunge and cast my vote of no confidence in the future of American business (and inability to pay back debts) by shifting my S&P 500 investments to an international stock mutual fund.
[1] Not that the opposite would constitute a valid basis for criticism.
The big story today is that Mattel, the maker of Barbie, won a smaller-than-expected judgment against MGA, maker of the rival Bratz dolls.
It's a sad story, MGA having to pay damages, but becoming all too common. As the author of the story, Charles Payne, puts it:
I write about the deteriorating competitive nature of American businesses... Mattel makes for a great case study in corporate compliancy and hubris. ... At some point, a bell has got to ring. Our largest businesses have to be willing to truly innovate, to find genuinely new ways to get things done. Wall Street was greedy and complacent, and couldn't back away from the trough of easy money.
What happened in this particular case was that a designer at Mattel came up with an idea for a new kind of doll. Mattel didn't like it, so he went to work for another company that was actually competent enough to see the merit therein, MGA. So then Mattel, seeing their stupidity play out in the Bratz dolls' success, sued on the grounds that well, since the designer developed it under them, some contract gives Mattel rights in it. Except that -- oops -- they couldn't substantiate a case against the designer, and dropped it.
So Mattel's attitude basically comes down to: we deserve all of the reward and none of the risk, and we'll sue you rather than produce innovative products. (For what it's worth, I volunteer at an intermediate school [4th-6th grade, 9-13 year olds], and I've only seen Bratz-themed products, never Barbie.) And keep in mind, it takes quite a bit of innovation and guts to compete with Barbie in the doll market, one in which the buyers want to have what all the other buyers already have. Let alone compete well!
Payne is right: more and more often we see such clowns in charge of big corporations. At American car companies who lose boatloads of money and are valued at a sliver of their foreign competition. ("Honda is an engineering company, GM is a marketing company.") At financial companies that made billions in bad loans based on questionable models. The list goes on and on. When will America get its competitive edge back?
I don't know, but in the mean time, I'll make sure my money with those who deserve it. Today, I finally took the plunge and cast my vote of no confidence in the future of American business (and inability to pay back debts) by shifting my S&P 500 investments to an international stock mutual fund.
[1] Not that the opposite would constitute a valid basis for criticism.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The shortest, safest libertarian case for IP
Am I going too far with that claim? Nope. I've argued it many times and haven't seen any response that's even remotely plausible. Here goes:
***
Most libertarians have no problem seeing why property rights in radio waves (i.e. the exclusive right to emit at a certain frequency) are justified.
Next, notice that IP (intellectual property) rights have the exact same form. Just as spectrum rights allow exactly one entity to form his property into a specific pattern (such that it emits at a specific frequency), IP lets exactly one entity form his property into a specific pattern. They are rights to configurations of objects rather than objects as such.
It is true (as many, many will remind me) that to broadcast at the same frequency as someone else "interferes" (!) with their "signal" (!). However, your judgment that there is "interference" is itself an arbitrary value judgment about the merit of someone's intended use. In exactly the same way, copying someone's ideas can interfere with their intended use.
Remember, the ether does not somehow "want" to carry information. It is simply one positive attribute humans have been able to wring out of it; if people merely loved to blast radio waves for the heck of it, the conflict wouldn't arise. So the characterization as "interference" is solely a function of the uses people want to make of it.
Unless and until you can make a libertarian case why one desired use justifies exclusion rights for specific patterns and the other does not, the cases are perfectly parallel.
***
There, that's all there is to it. Don't let the length of this post confuse you; the entire case is self-contained between the asterisk lines. I want to now briefly review my history of making it.
If you look at this comment and the preceding, you see Stephan Kinsella make a seemingly innocuous but actually damning admission: that attempts to differentiate the cases of IP and radio waves reduce to (the very arbitrary decision of) what counts a "relevant use" for purposes of discerning property rights boundaries, a distinction mentioned nowhere in Kinsella's widely quoted case against IP.
The argument persuaded some participants to reluctantly bite the bullet and admit that they couldn't therefore support radio wave rights either. (Yikes!)
You're rightly skeptical to wonder why I'm not quoting a peer-reviewed, published exposition of this argument, and indeed many have suggested I flesh it out and submit it to a (very ungrateful) libertarian journal. While probably a worthwhile pursuit, if I have spare time, it kind of misses the point of journals: to get results, whether they be new, useful scientific laws, or evidence in favor of propositions, or establishment that something is or is not possible. If the above remark by Stephan Kinsella is the best response he, the eminent opponent of IP, can marshal, we already have a result. Wanting it in a journal article is putting the cart before the horse.
I've probed other intellectuals on this and found similar inability to refute -- I'm just posting the best response I've gotten.
Comments are greatly, greatly welcome. Unlike some other people who shall remain nameless[1], I want to see where I'm wrong.
[1] A name is a label intended to refer to a proper noun. An example of a name might be Stephan Kinsella or Bob Murphy.
***
Most libertarians have no problem seeing why property rights in radio waves (i.e. the exclusive right to emit at a certain frequency) are justified.
Next, notice that IP (intellectual property) rights have the exact same form. Just as spectrum rights allow exactly one entity to form his property into a specific pattern (such that it emits at a specific frequency), IP lets exactly one entity form his property into a specific pattern. They are rights to configurations of objects rather than objects as such.
It is true (as many, many will remind me) that to broadcast at the same frequency as someone else "interferes" (!) with their "signal" (!). However, your judgment that there is "interference" is itself an arbitrary value judgment about the merit of someone's intended use. In exactly the same way, copying someone's ideas can interfere with their intended use.
Remember, the ether does not somehow "want" to carry information. It is simply one positive attribute humans have been able to wring out of it; if people merely loved to blast radio waves for the heck of it, the conflict wouldn't arise. So the characterization as "interference" is solely a function of the uses people want to make of it.
Unless and until you can make a libertarian case why one desired use justifies exclusion rights for specific patterns and the other does not, the cases are perfectly parallel.
***
There, that's all there is to it. Don't let the length of this post confuse you; the entire case is self-contained between the asterisk lines. I want to now briefly review my history of making it.
If you look at this comment and the preceding, you see Stephan Kinsella make a seemingly innocuous but actually damning admission: that attempts to differentiate the cases of IP and radio waves reduce to (the very arbitrary decision of) what counts a "relevant use" for purposes of discerning property rights boundaries, a distinction mentioned nowhere in Kinsella's widely quoted case against IP.
The argument persuaded some participants to reluctantly bite the bullet and admit that they couldn't therefore support radio wave rights either. (Yikes!)
You're rightly skeptical to wonder why I'm not quoting a peer-reviewed, published exposition of this argument, and indeed many have suggested I flesh it out and submit it to a (very ungrateful) libertarian journal. While probably a worthwhile pursuit, if I have spare time, it kind of misses the point of journals: to get results, whether they be new, useful scientific laws, or evidence in favor of propositions, or establishment that something is or is not possible. If the above remark by Stephan Kinsella is the best response he, the eminent opponent of IP, can marshal, we already have a result. Wanting it in a journal article is putting the cart before the horse.
I've probed other intellectuals on this and found similar inability to refute -- I'm just posting the best response I've gotten.
Comments are greatly, greatly welcome. Unlike some other people who shall remain nameless[1], I want to see where I'm wrong.
[1] A name is a label intended to refer to a proper noun. An example of a name might be Stephan Kinsella or Bob Murphy.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The true problem with Amazon's one-click patent
Arnold Kling discusses the relative merit of software versus drug patents and brings up everyone's favorite, Amazon's one-click patent. He says that the difference between it and drug patents that makes one-click so objectionable, is that one click is obvious (you could come up with it in an afternoon, and so could anyone else).
I've said before that I think this misses the more fundamental objection: that it seems to patent the end, rather than the means. Buying something using just one click is the thing that is good, rather than the means of a achieving it. So by patenting it, you exclude any possible way of making a website such that one click causes something to be purchased. It is analagous to patenting "quick travel between two destinations" rather than "this specific machine that can get you between two destinations.
Of course, my greatest worry is that such basic interface enhancement is actually non-obvious to the typical software programmer or software interface designer. Heck, if I had a nickel for every time I banged my head on my keyboard due to interface problems, I could buy Amazon out!
I would have posted this comment on the blog I just linked except the they kinda won't let me. But expect to see a lot of ignorant comments about intellectual property there. It's just the nature of the beast.
I've said before that I think this misses the more fundamental objection: that it seems to patent the end, rather than the means. Buying something using just one click is the thing that is good, rather than the means of a achieving it. So by patenting it, you exclude any possible way of making a website such that one click causes something to be purchased. It is analagous to patenting "quick travel between two destinations" rather than "this specific machine that can get you between two destinations.
Of course, my greatest worry is that such basic interface enhancement is actually non-obvious to the typical software programmer or software interface designer. Heck, if I had a nickel for every time I banged my head on my keyboard due to interface problems, I could buy Amazon out!
I would have posted this comment on the blog I just linked except the they kinda won't let me. But expect to see a lot of ignorant comments about intellectual property there. It's just the nature of the beast.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)