Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness!
by
fergalish
on 31/08/2011, 19:47:00 UTC
You might feel you have the right to set up a factory on your lakeside property, and dump chemicals in the lake while fishermen on the lake might feel this constitutes an act of violence against their livelihoods.
Who owns the lake? The guy dumping chemicals or the fishermen?
Let's say it's communal property.  In modern parlance, we might say public property.  Suppose in the Great Transition from the current democracy to your libertarianism, the people can't agree as to who should own the lake.  Or suppose you own one little bit of the lake, and the fishermen each own a little piece.  Two possibilities for you to consider.

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You might feel you have the right to sell meat from hormone-pumped animals even though those hormones can cause damage to the human biochemistry.  No 'violence' involved, you're not coercing them, though victims might feel they have no option but to seek medical treatment, and would probably be quite angry at you.
Are you telling people how the meat was produced when they ask or are you lying to them?
Let's say the seller is not aware of the danger presented by the chemicals I'm using.  But by the time people figure out the damage done (could be years, could be thousands of people affected), the seller has shut up shop, and moved to the next town/city/country.  Of course, the danger is unknown because there's no FDA (or equivalent) to carry out the *extremely expensive* research required, and there's no law saying you can't add arbitrary stuff to the food you sell.

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You might feel you can drink your alchohol and then drive your old broken car at high speed, but pedestrians whose families are maimed or killed will certainly feel aggrieved.
Who owns the road and what rules did they set?
Suppose the pedestrians are walking through the town square.  Is that also private property in your world?  Do you have to read the Terms & Conditions of the town square, and sign your acceptance, before entering it?  What if you own a business on the town square, but reject the rules of whoever owns the road?  Do I have to get one drivers licence for when I drive on RoadCompanyA's roads, and another license for RoadCompanyB's roads?  Are there road-police checking if people are drunk-driving and checking people's cars when they drive on these private roads, one set of police for each road-owner?  I just can't see how road safety could possibly be improved in a libertarian world.

Why not just use the process of private contract (as if there were any other kind of contract anyway) to convince your employees to not blab their research (keep a secret), and then when you produce the drug; contract with the manufacturer to not disclose or divulge, and then after that, contract with the distributor who delivers to the retailer (pharmacist), to not disclose or divulge, and then last but not least, the consumer; contract with him not to disclose, divulge or reproduce?
That's the most absurd proposition I've ever seen from a libertarian.  It had to come to that, but I've never seen the absurdity made so explicit.  Right now, people leak *movies* even when there's no profit to be made.  Imagine the vast vast profits to be made from breaching the contract and handing the data over to a competing company - who could of course, not having signed any contract, reproduce without any repercussions.  Or, the hell with that, find a hit-man who wastes a researcher and steals his notes for you.

It would be great if people all over could be trusted to behave responsibly and take responsibility for their 'wrong' actions (caveat: define 'wrong'); but that's a pipe-dream and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.  People *are* irresponsible and they *hate* taking responsibility, and the more serious the consequences, the more they shirk responsibility and run from it.