wombatron: Maxliberty:Your arguement is that no contract can compel any person to take any physical action with their body. For instance, I can't compel the doctor to maintain the equipment that is providing oxygen for me during surgery because that would make him my slave. So by definition the contract is invalid, so there is no breech because the contract is a physical action on the part of the doctor. So the only recourse is the doctor reimburses the family for the cost of the surgery. Is that what you are saying? Yes, you cannot compel specific performance. In your example, however, the doctor is acting negligently, and would be liable for his actions. Up to the moment before the surgery, the doctor may abstain from performing, and he would have to pay back anything that he got beforehand. Once he starts, though, it may be said that he has a duty of care towards the patient until the operation is over.
Maxliberty:Your arguement is that no contract can compel any person to take any physical action with their body. For instance, I can't compel the doctor to maintain the equipment that is providing oxygen for me during surgery because that would make him my slave. So by definition the contract is invalid, so there is no breech because the contract is a physical action on the part of the doctor. So the only recourse is the doctor reimburses the family for the cost of the surgery. Is that what you are saying?
Yes, you cannot compel specific performance. In your example, however, the doctor is acting negligently, and would be liable for his actions. Up to the moment before the surgery, the doctor may abstain from performing, and he would have to pay back anything that he got beforehand. Once he starts, though, it may be said that he has a duty of care towards the patient until the operation is over.
Exactly, it's the exact same thing with blackmail contracts.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
CurtHowland: Please, show me where I said anything about you at all. I said, and you quoted above, "I don't see any reason".
CurtHowland: I'm saying explore the profit motive in the industry and what that incentivizes people to do. Those incentives are very well known. So long as there is a government to fall back upon, there is huge incentive to utilize the limited liability and power of the state for personal gain, in supporting an otherwise inefficient business model. I don't see any reason to support coercion just because someone made a big profit from it.
I'm saying explore the profit motive in the industry and what that incentivizes people to do.
Those incentives are very well known. So long as there is a government to fall back upon, there is huge incentive to utilize the limited liability and power of the state for personal gain, in supporting an otherwise inefficient business model.
I don't see any reason to support coercion just because someone made a big profit from it.
So you quote me and start talking about what I said, but I should assume you're talking about someone else? Why even mention it if you're addressing me and it has nothing to do with me? I told you in my last post that I apologized if I misinterpreted anything you said, but what do you do? You continue to insult me despite me never making anything personal. If you can't keep things respectful, don't expect me to either. I offer you an olive branch and you sh*t on it. That takes a really special type of person.
Or was this not directed at me either?
CurtHowland: I am reminded of a phrase from a song, "You probably think this song is about you..."
I am reminded of slimy lawyer that thinks he can hide behind his words if he phrases them the right way.
CurtHowland: My reason for bringing up OpenSource software was to present an example of software being produced without coercive government monopoly grants.
Then you did a poor job. Are you aware that "Linux" is trademarked (an example *you* brought up, not me)? Are you aware that there have been open source lawsuits for copyright infringement? Educate yourself, I'm done with you.
It is important to distinguish between open source, and free.
vBulletin is open source forum software. It is not free.
phpBB is open source forum software. It is free (GPL).
Linux is open source, and GPL.
A reading of this link may shed some more light...
http://www.linux.org/info/gnu.html
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
wombatron: Yes, you cannot compel specific performance. In your example, however, the doctor is acting negligently, and would be liable for his actions. Up to the moment before the surgery, the doctor may abstain from performing, and he would have to pay back anything that he got beforehand. Once he starts, though, it may be said that he has a duty of care towards the patient until the operation is over.
Why is it negligent to stop performing surgery. Is he not in control of his own body? Your arguement is that no contract that requires one person to perform a certain action can be valid. My contract requiring the doctor to perform surgery is no different than the contract to require no disclosure of information. Both contracts require someone to perform a specific function. There is no functional difference. I would say both contracts are valid and there can be penalties for breach...like prison. You arguement is not consistent.
liberty student: Maxliberty:Please provide an example of a contract that does not limit activity. By definition a contract is an agreement where people agree to certain actions so they by definition are restricted to perform those actions in lieu of performing some other action. Trade by definition, increases activity. It also leaves both parties better off, as long as it is done consensually. All prices are reached by contract, verbal, written or by the act of exchange. Check your premises. Maxliberty:Again, you can not address the issues. What issues? You haven't provided a source for any of your assertions regarding what people on this board believe. After ranting about contracts for a dozen posts (?) now, we find out, you don't really have a working definition of contracts. You can go back, and start providing sources, or you can stop attributing false positions to people. Because no one can address a false claim in the manner you make them except to challenge it's source. You wanna debate, then let's debate like big kids. Honestly.
Maxliberty:Please provide an example of a contract that does not limit activity. By definition a contract is an agreement where people agree to certain actions so they by definition are restricted to perform those actions in lieu of performing some other action.
Trade by definition, increases activity. It also leaves both parties better off, as long as it is done consensually.
All prices are reached by contract, verbal, written or by the act of exchange.
Check your premises.
Maxliberty:Again, you can not address the issues.
What issues? You haven't provided a source for any of your assertions regarding what people on this board believe. After ranting about contracts for a dozen posts (?) now, we find out, you don't really have a working definition of contracts.
You can go back, and start providing sources, or you can stop attributing false positions to people. Because no one can address a false claim in the manner you make them except to challenge it's source.
You wanna debate, then let's debate like big kids. Honestly.
Again, never willing to address specific issues. Where is an example of a contract that doesn't restrict behaviour?
CurtHowland: What facts? Again, you seem to be having an argument with someone else. Copyright and patent are coercion, pure and simple. If you were arguing about something else, then maybe you are taking the wrong person to task for "still haven't shown anything to the contrary."
What facts? Again, you seem to be having an argument with someone else. Copyright and patent are coercion, pure and simple. If you were arguing about something else, then maybe you are taking the wrong person to task for "still haven't shown anything to the contrary."
The point Peter makes is simple. If there is value in protecting Intellectual property then the market can provide ways of doing that. I agree completely. Your arguement is that by definition all protection even privately supplied is coercive and therefore prohibited.
Peter brings up contracts and as Peter is learning, most people here think that contracts can not be written regarding the protection of IP or for that matter to have any person perform any act with their body because this is a slave contract. Peter and I believe in the free market and enforceable contracts that can have penalties for breech and you and your collegues here do not.
Jump in Peter if I have misstated your position.
liberty student: It is important to distinguish between open source, and free. vBulletin is open source forum software. It is not free. phpBB is open source forum software. It is free (GPL). Linux is open source, and GPL. A reading of this link may shed some more light... http://www.linux.org/info/gnu.html
How are they charging for something they don't own? Obviously based on your past postings this must be some form of coercion.
Maxliberty:Again, never willing to address specific issues. Where is an example of a contract that doesn't restrict behaviour?
Already been answered. I am always ready to answer specifics. What I am not prepared to do is answer 1000 hypoetheticals you post, desperately hoping to find an exception to prove your case.
Get a set of principles which withstand every test, and that is the truth. For example, subjective valuation is not a definition of property, because we know everyone values goods differently, and thus what one person feels is property, another may not.
Back to your asking the same question again, here is an example.
Peter Wellington agrees to sell me WellingtonOffice Suite 2009 for $500. We have a contract for him to deliver a product at an agreed price. It can be verbal or written. It is trade, and thus based on Austrian principles (human action) we are both better off if we voluntarily make the trade, so it is a net positive, not a net negative or restrictive on one party rather than the other.
As your definition of property is subjective and imprecise, your definition of contracts is far too narrow.
Maxliberty:How are they charging for something they don't own? Obviously based on your past postings this must be some form of coercion.
They who?
If you're asking me how logic reconciles with the statist paradigm, that's just being argumentative. Obviously, I think the statist paradigm is illogical and immoral.
That said, vBulletin charges by offering support, upgrades, free conversion from competitor products, and of course, the best product (IMO) on the market. People still steal it and they do try to police piracy. More people use the "free" phpBB, but I'm fairly certain vBulletin is profitable.
Maxliberty:Why is it negligent to stop performing surgery. Is he not in control of his own body? Your arguement is that no contract that requires one person to perform a certain action can be valid. My contract requiring the doctor to perform surgery is no different than the contract to require no disclosure of information. Both contracts require someone to perform a specific function. There is no functional difference. I would say both contracts are valid and there can be penalties for breach...like prison. You arguement is not consistent.
It is negligent because the doctor put the patient in a situation where they could die without further action by the doctor. Hence, the doctor is responsible for seeing that the patient survives, at the very least, to the best of his/her ability. The negligence has nothing to do with contracts; it just so happens that your example couldn't be resolved by just referring to contract theory.
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
Maxliberty:Why is it negligent to stop performing surgery.
If I push you into a lake, I have an obligation to save you when you start drowning. Same thing here.
Maxliberty:Your arguement is that no contract that requires one person to perform a certain action can be valid.
That still wouldn't justify IP. The problem is you don't own the ideas or the musical notes or whatever in question it may be that you are selling this person.
Jeez. So much how does an idea or IP have to overlap with another before you consider it theft, intentional or otherwise? How the heck are you going to draw that line and get others to agree with your placement of said line? If you give an inch with something like this that does not make sense, then IP laws will inevitably degrade to ridiculous point that they are at now, and that is entirely because of this ambiguous line. For this to work, some sort "Board of IP regulations" would need to bet up, which is by definition a limited government. When regulation is not working, tweaking or adding to the regulation is the tendency of most people--but this sort of regulation does not need to be present at all in the first place. Contracts will not do much, if anything, because they don't make sense to begin with. You cannot contract something that is not property the way that you are suggesting and expect things to be fixed. You don't need contracts like this in the first place.
As I've and others have tried to argue previously, the market will work itself out here if somebody explicitly borrows somebody's artistic endeavor, claims it as their own, and begins to highly profit off of it. Taking a musicians music and making it available for less or free, without claiming credit, will not stop an industry... the Internet has yet to stop software, music, or movies, despite the RIAA loons, even (they have done nothing to fix the problem). If you do this same thing, but take credit, you won't logically win over the creator in the end. The original creator would generally be recognized moreso in the end, and he will be most successful.
There is nothing wrong with drawing from the ideas of others, or ripping them off entirely, because that is how progression works. Claiming credit may be dishonest, but I cannot see how the market will allow this to thrive to the point of strangling creativity, not by a long shot.
liberty student: Get a set of principles which withstand every test, and that is the truth. For example, subjective valuation is not a definition of property, because we know everyone values goods differently, and thus what one person feels is property, another may not.
If you had actually read what I wrote then you would know that I defined property exactly as you did except I allowed for multiple owners. What I said about value is that is what we use to recognize property in the market place. So the pricing mechanism is how we recognize property. Value is an intrinsic element of property. There is no such thing as property without value.
So if we look at the market place for information we see that people have assessed value to information and as value is intrinsic to property then information can be property.
liberty student: Peter Wellington agrees to sell me WellingtonOffice Suite 2009 for $500. We have a contract for him to deliver a product at an agreed price. It can be verbal or written. It is trade, and thus based on Austrian principles (human action) we are both better off if we voluntarily make the trade, so it is a net positive, not a net negative or restrictive on one party rather than the other.
And thus you are restricted from selling that particular thing to someone else.
liberty student: Maxliberty:How are they charging for something they don't own? Obviously based on your past postings this must be some form of coercion. They who? If you're asking me how logic reconciles with the statist paradigm, that's just being argumentative. Obviously, I think the statist paradigm is illogical and immoral. That said, vBulletin charges by offering support, upgrades, free conversion from competitor products, and of course, the best product (IMO) on the market. People still steal it and they do try to police piracy. More people use the "free" phpBB, but I'm fairly certain vBulletin is profitable.
You said open source does not mean free. So now you have clarified and are saying that they are not seling the software but services related to the free software. Then you go on to mention that they still try and prevent piracy which flies in the face of what you have argued would occur in a free market.
It's always tough when what people are actually doing interferes with your pet theory.
wombatron: It is negligent because the doctor put the patient in a situation where they could die without further action by the doctor. Hence, the doctor is responsible for seeing that the patient survives, at the very least, to the best of his/her ability. The negligence has nothing to do with contracts; it just so happens that your example couldn't be resolved by just referring to contract theory.
And what if I will be physically harmed if you reveal the secret that you agreed to keep? So if I understand you correctly then you disagree with Rothbard and you think that parents do have obligations to their children. So people can make contracts that require them to give up control of their body for certain periods of time. Is that what you are saying?
GilesStratton: If I push you into a lake, I have an obligation to save you when you start drowning. Same thing here.
So you would agree then that parents have these same obligations to children?
GilesStratton: That still wouldn't justify IP. The problem is you don't own the ideas or the musical notes or whatever in question it may be that you are selling this person.
Then why are they paying for it? If it is not owned why would you buy it from someone?
If you look at what people actually do you can come to no other conclusion than that people view IP as property. It doesn't have anything to do with the government. Information has value and as such the control/ownership of that information can be bought and sold like anything else and the same restrictions that contracts can place on physical property can be placed on IP.
Maxliberty:If you had actually read what I wrote then you would know that I defined property exactly as you did except I allowed for multiple owners.
Right. You contradicted yourself. You agreed it was scarce, and then you said it was not scarce. A fundamental of libertarian property rights theory is that ownership is unique and transferable. I couldn't sell something as unique to you, if there were other people who also owned it. It would either be a violation, or a dilution of value.
Maxliberty:So if we look at the market place for information we see that people have assessed value to information and as value is intrinsic to property then information can be property.
Sure, if you twist it enough, you can make anything property in a theoretical sense.
Maxliberty:And thus you are restricted from selling that particular thing to someone else.
That's completely illogical and you know it. Wow, what a stretch.
Of course, your theory on property says that I can sell over and over again, so there is no restriction, because you believe property is scarce, not scarce, scarce, not scarce, scarce, not scarce simultaneously.
Maxliberty:So you would agree then that parents have these same obligations to children?
No, how is it the same. IF I push you into a lake I've coerced you in such a way that without my help, that I am able to give, you'll die.
Same doesnt apply for the child.
Maxliberty:Then why are they paying for it? If it is not owned why would you buy it from someone?
But that's just it, I'm not buying the notes. I'm buying a CD with those notes arranged in a certain way. Those notes exist independantly of the CD.
Maxliberty:You said open source does not mean free.
Right, that is actually correct. I was clarifying a misconception held by others in this thread.
Maxliberty:So now you have clarified and are saying that they are not seling the software but services related to the free software.
I'm saying they add value. Just because the source is open, doesn't mean the software is exchanged without a cost. You're mixing ideas here.
Maxliberty:Then you go on to mention that they still try and prevent piracy which flies in the face of what you have argued would occur in a free market.
Sure. They aren't in a free market. The DMCA applies.
Maxliberty:It's always tough when what people are actually doing interferes with your pet theory.
It's always tough when having lost numerous arguments in this thread already (property, contracts etc) you are trying to understand and attack posts you either can't comprehend, or are attacking maliciously. vBulletin ads value, through service and such to differentiate it from phpBB. Both are open source.
vBulletin carries a price tag around $160. phpBB is free. One could therefore argue, that in order to collect a price, given that phpBB is priced free would be to add value. And there is where we can see not only why people buy commercial software already (looking for value) and people continue to make commercial software that is available for free, because they can add value.
Btw, you can charge to distribute Linux IIRC. You just can't prevent the person who buys it from you, from copying and distributing it for free.
Now why would anyone sell Linux, given that it can be had for free?
Because there is some value add involved.
Maxliberty:Your arguement is that by definition all protection even privately supplied is coercive and therefore prohibited.
Again, you're having an argument with someone else.
When copyright and patent were presented as reasons for software being written, I presented OpenSource software as an example of software being produced without coercive protection.
Now could someone tell me where I ever said I object to people making contracts, dongles, time-bombs, DRM and other methods to prevent unauthorized copying? I don't like them, but they are not coercive.
Will you please be more careful with your attributions?
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