Taking "Noone" as a person's name... That reminds me of a story we had to read in 3rd-grade (8-9 year olds) English class. If someone can remember what it is, I'd appreciate it.
Basically, it went like this. One day, a rural African farmer, let's call him Mkembe, left his farm to visit a major city, just for the heck of it.
First, he saw a stable of donkeys. He asked someone nearby who owned them. The response: "Nbwadike."
"Wow," Mkembe thought, "Nbwadike must be a wealthy man, to own all these donkeys."
Then, he saw a very tall, impressive looking building. He asked someone nearby who owned it. The response: "Nbwadike."
"Wow!" Mkembe thought, "This Nbwadike must be wealthy beyond my imagination. To have all those donkeys... and this huge building!"
Then he passed by a funeral procession. He asked someone nearby who this famous person was, that died. The response: "Nbwadike."
Mkembe was horrified. "Nbwadike... such a wealthy man... he owned all these great things. But it couldn't save him. He still died. We all die. No matter how much wealth we acquire, no matter how fabulous... they don't mean anything in the end. How pointless to spend one's life in pursuit of wealth."
He returned to his farm and devoted the rest of his life, not to expanding production, but to giving selflessly to others. His village came to love him for his kindness.
No one ever bothered to tell him that they spoke a different language in the city and "Nbwadike" means "I don't understand."
Okay, I don't know why you're still debating what can be a good. I spelled out my position and yours (accurately, I believe) without reference to "goods", specfically to unveil the real dispute between our views so that it wouldn't be necessary to argue that anymore.
I will note, however, that your use of good, beyond being non-standard, is without precedent. I have never seen those kinds of constraints placed on the concept of a "good" in economics. (And the criteria I listed were not the criteria for being a good, but how the goods of friendship and love could be analyzed within economics. The only criteria for something being a good is that someone deems it good.) I've seen references to "superabundant goods" and "free goods". What you are describing with your criteria are not "goods", but rather, the conditions necessary for a good to have a positive market price. It was your tendency to rely to heavily on intuitions about "what economists do" that bothered me. Intuition is fine, but don't bring it up unless you're going to make an attempt to rigorously define why e.g. "something not being in a box" makes it "not a good".
You still don't seem to understand my problem with your house/information differentiation, because you still seem unclear on whether I claim there's no difference or whether the difference is irrelevant. The answer is the latter, as I spelled out in the blockquoted section of my previous post. Again:
- You claim that accessing information doesn't take away from anyone, so no one should be stopped from doing so. - The implicit principle you justify this with, is "when someone can enjoy a good at no cost to someone else, he should not be stopped from doing so". (I'd welcome hints on what the principle is.) - I claim that, no, you don't really believe in that principle. After all, there are many cases where I can enjoy a house at no cost to its owner, but in that case you suddenly think that I shouldn't be able to enjoy the house. - You claim that there really is a cost: the house is scarce and its use cannot be arbitrarily and infinitely extended (across occupants, time, etc.). - I claim that's irrelevant under your principle - while it cannot be infinitely used without cost, it can be finitely used without cost. Specifically, to let someone use it when the owner's not there would be costless. - I therefore claim that when you refer to something being used "at no cost", you really take "cost" to mean "someone simply doesn't want it to happen" -- that's the only sense in which it's costly for the homeowner, because it otherwise made no imposition. But once you include "someone simply doesn't want it to happen" as a cost, you've permitted "desire to exclude access to information" as a cost, invalidating your anti-IP conclusion.
Now, could you show me where I misrepresented your view?
LiveJournal's official news blog has filled up with hundreds of complaints protesting the decision, so we could have another Digg-style user rebellion brewing.
Both our reasonings are consistent, but, as I said, we start from different premises.
No. My point all along is the opposite: your conclusions simply don't follow, even when I accept your premises, either because you make subtle but significant shifts in their meaning, or because you arbitrarily decide when your principles apply and when they don't.
Before I go on, I want to address this:
A *moral* distinction? My dear fellow-slashdotter, spare me from having to demonstrate morality. It's utterly subjective,...
You are REALLY, REALLY trying my patience with this kind of crap.
Look, you are making claims about how things *should* be and what kind of claims *should* be honored. Those are moral claims. Those moral claims, and their justifications, are exactly what we have been arguing about the whole times: specifically, whether the supposed "non-scarcity" of IP has any moral implications. So please, don't feign surprise.
Second, I already explained to you (albeit indirectly) exactly how you can justify a moral claim to me: simply deduce it from a more obvious claim that I already accept! Don't know what I believe? Guess, and if you're wrong, I'll find the nearest common ground. (We've already been doing a lot of that.)
I may be a lay person, but when I see 'goods' in an economical sense, it means goods which have value.
Yes, so am I. I value air. I value friendship. I value shares of stock. Are you using "value" to mean "market price"? And one entry to list of terms you casually confuse.
It's fine if you approach it with the view that *everything* is a good, even friendship and love, but I haven't seen a box of friendhip that I could buy, yet.
So? Who says that "goods must be boxable and buyable"?
Heck, I doubt even the courts se it as a good (since it is unvaluable and impossible to put a worth on friendship itself - I can't remember any case where the courts condemned someone for stealing friendship, etc.)
The courts do not rule on "what is a good". Their decisions are not predicated on "what is a good". They simply decide which party's desire to favor, based on law, precedent, and common sense. The fact that friendship can't be stolen is immaterial.
In the economic sense, it absolutely is meaningful to view friendship and love as goods.
Do people pursue them? Yes.
Do people value them? Yes.
Do people forgo opportunities for them? Yes.
Do people forgo them for other opportunities? Yes.
I know, I know, "but golly gee, I don't see no one put them on a supply demand curve". Yes, I love hearing your folksy, "I know it when I see it" non-rigorous distinctions.
So, if anything, I would rather think it's you who're forced the debate to hinge on something even less obvious and who's reasoning cannot justify your position.
No, you're the one steadfastly refusing to say, "Okay, being able to exclude people from information X is a good. I just think that the ability of all people to access X is more important." Instead you take the bizarre position of trying to spell out when something can be a good, blurring several more distinctions (see above).
As for whether this is mere semantics, no, it's not. I can express our positions, without reference to "goods" or any implications stemming from something's status as a "good". And I will. But watch what happens -- remember, I have to remove it from your statements too. I think this is a great summary of the exchange, so I've demarcated is blockquotes:
You claim that a) "when someone wishes to copy the informational component of a creative work, that act, in and of itself, should not be prohibited". You justify this on the grounds that b) "copying that information does not take away from anyone, the ability to have their own copy". I claim that b) doesn't follow from a). You insist that does, as an implication of the high
No no no, you're hastily attributing the problem to the wrong market failure story! I think the one you're looking for is path dependence: that is, we could convert an email system in which you can't forge sender information, but the costs are too great and the market participants too uncoordinated to make the transition.
Oh, and as a bonus, I'm going to repeat the myth about the Dvorak keyboard as proof of the harms of path dependence.
Couldn't spammers circumvent this by purging +-type suffixes, (i.e., converting "xyz+ABC@gmail.com" to "xyz@gmail.com") since the email will still get to you?
Okay, maybe I should take that back. While spammers pick thinly-traded penny stocks, you, as an architect of such a plan, wouldn't necessarily be constrained to do so. But nevertheless, the higher the volume of the stock, the more wrongdoing you need to halt trading. You think someone could halt trading in ExxonMobil just by spamming people to buy it?
Based on the comments on other threads on this topic, the flaw with such a plan is in "short it". To short-sell a stock, you must borrow it. To borrow it, someone must be willing and able to lend it. To be able to lend stock, you have to be a large institution, which are generally prohibited from buying (and thus holding) thinly-traded penny stocks. And it's exactly the penny stocks that are targeted by pump-and-dump schemes.
Okay, but it's important that you know exactly where we disagree. I'm not claiming:
1) IP rights enforcement is justified.
I'm only claiming that:
2) Opposition to IP on grounds of non scarcity is flawed, due to a) inconsistency in the use of "scarcity", and b) implicit use of assumptions (about what can be a good) that are even less agreed-upon and therefore don't help.
And once again I think we come to the crux of the matter. You think it's enough that a desire is satisfied to be called a 'real' good, which I deny. I make a further distinction between it being scarce or not (or pertaining to a good that is inherently scarce), before calling it a good (in the economical sense)...which you deny is relevant.
Well then I don't know what to say -- you're flat out wrong. A good *is that which someone deems good*. It can't mean anything else. As I pointed out before, friendship and love are goods, even though they have no clear physical referent. It's true, that "good" often carries the connotation of something physical, as differentiated from a "service" -- but to my knowledge, economists now say "goods" instead of "goods and services" except when dumbing it down for a lay audience. You probably at least agree that "shares of stock" are goods, even though they're non-physical. They refer to a relationship, just like friendship. (The stock certificiate is *proof* of the relationship; it is not itself the relationship.)
You're entitled to use words differently from me, of course, and it's the true meaning of your position that I'm opposed to. But look where this puts you: you were trying to show that IP rights are invalid, on the grounds that information isn't scarce. However, your implicit assumption, now revealed, is "Oh, and only goods that can be completely expressed in terms of a physical object really count as goods." Now, whether or not you can prove that (i.e., *why* I should only count such things as goods), the point is, it's far less obvious than your original justification. Typically when justifying something, people appeal to a *more* obvious claim. ("You think that the moon doesn't exist? Well, do you believe your eyes are giving you valid input? Now, look up...") But since you've forced the debate to hinge on something even less obvious, your original reasoning cannot justify your position.
me:The relevant construct ("legal right to determine access to information X") *is* inherently scarce."
you:I couldn't disagree more. (It confuses me though that you now seem to want to demonstrate scarcity, since I thought that didn't matter for you). Look, I've already tried to explain the differene: the scarcity you speak of, is due to a mental/legal construct....
me:"It is an inherent part of reality that both you and I can't exclusively determine who may access X."
you: No it is NOT. If it would be an inherent part of reality, it would be universal in nature. However, IP-rights differ from country to country, and some even have none (even western ountries have had none during most of their history)....
I'm not sure you understood the claim I was making. The fact that at times and places, entities did not have such a legal right (or ability), does not mean it wasn't scarce. (Triple negative ftw.) It simply means that a good for someone, was denied in favor of a good for someone else. Even today, having a legal right to determine access to information X, doesn't mean no one will be able to access it, just that it will be harder.
Similarly, I claimed that both you and I can't exclusively (key word) determine access to information X, and that this is an inherent part of reality. You objected on the grounds that IP rights differ, animals, etc. That's irrelevant; it simply means I was denied exclusivity. The possibility of two people having exclusivity over something is still logically impossible.
I think this is the crux of the matter and the reason we do not seem to be able to come to an agreement. If an argumentation is made that "rights" (or 'constructs as goods') should only be validated when they pertain to a real good which is always inherently scarce, and not when it doesn't, then the premise that there is a difference between the two is imperative. If you do not accept the premise (and thus, one rejects there is a difference) than obviously the whole discussion remains moot.
Okay, try to give me a teensy weensy bit of credit here by reading my statements in context. I was referring to the real/non-real distinction *you* were trying to make, not "denying reality" altogether. My claim was that the two goods are real in the same sense: that they both satisfy someone's desire, and that to satisfy someone's desire this way comes at the cost of denying someone else a good.
I have given many examples of why and where the goods differ; it seems rather futile to say there are *no* diferences. So either you reject it because you are truelly convinced there are no differences, or you think those differences are not relevant. The former seems a bit absurd, and I think it's rather the latter.
Correct; it does not suffice to point out differences in the particulars. They must be different in the applicability of the principle you invoke to prefer one and not the other.
However, you may be of the opinion that it is irrelevant, but only because you yourself deem it so as a condition to argue about what is scarce or not. As I've already indicated, one can argument that the scarcity of a good is related to its *inherent* scarcity, and constructs are not *inherently* scarce
The relevant construct ("legal right to determine access to information X") *is* inherently scarce. It is an inherent part of reality that both you and I can't exclusively determine who may access X. Again, you may have good reasons for rejecting the idea of giving one person the legal right to determine access to information X -- but the physical fact that more than one person can access X without impeding anyone else's access to X, cannot suffice. There is non-scarcity in many different senses, for which you are being inconsistent. For example, without a second thought, you agree that a homeowner should not be forced to share his house with a second person. Yet, as a physical fact, more than one person can fit in a house, and even thrive. From the fact that a home cannot fit infinite people, it does not follow that it only fits one person. So why should a homeowner be allowed to exclude the second person, when no physical fact prohibits this? The same answer would apply to intellectual property exclusion.
ay we live on Mars, and air is scarce. Would one accept a construct in which the property of air is dealt with?...
In *both* Mars *and* earth, there is a construct. On earth, that construct is "anyone who can breathe the atmosphere, may". On earth, such a construct *already* conflicts with someone's desire that e.g. "my ex-wife not breathe". He may indeed not want his ex-wife to breathe -- that would be a good, from his perspective. The construct simply tells him to go screw himself -- it's not going to grant that desire higher priority over breathers. But you cannot deny that this comes at the cost of the satisfaction of that ex-wife-hater's goal. No matter what rights allocation you pick, you are favoring one party over another in a situation of scarcity. The question is, *why* should we prefer one party over another? That requires appeal to the question of "should", which "is" statements, as you know, cannot answer.
me:"No; the scarce good is "the exclusive ability to determine who accesses information X", not the information X."
you:First of all, it's an ability to distribute, not to access.
To distribute is to facilitate access, so the distinction is irrelevant in the context of that claim.
And isn't that ability a state-ordained granting of a monopoly? It seems to me one would be hardpressed to argument the ability to distribute with exclusion of all others is a real ability in the sense that it is, indeed, only the copyrightholder which can distribute as an inherent consequence of the good or the abilities of the author. As practise has shown us, that's not the case, so the scarcity of THAT ability is only a theoretic, artificial scarcity, because the law in most countries make the mental construct of IP-rights lawful.
All the state is doing is facilitating the possibility of one (desired-by-some) rights-allocation.
(Aside: I strongly disagree with attempts to bring "the state" into this. The real determining factor is the extent of social support. Both physical property rights AND intellectual property rights can exist with or without the state as long as a sufficient number of people will respect them and are willing to punish violators.)
I reject the real/non-real distinction. I see it purely in terms of "goods that people want" where not everyone can be satisfied (i.e. the condition of scarcity or rivalry), and I think the following will clarify my view (and since it applies to a lot of what you said, I'm going to skip those in the interest of time and space):
There are goods that people want. A good is anything that satisifed at least one person. In some cases, satisfying a good for one person, means not-satisfying it for another. In these cases, we say scarcity arises.
One good is access to information. People value this.
Another good is being able to exclude others' access to information. Some people also value this, for various reasons. Satisfying this good, for the same unit of information, call it X, comes at the cost of *not* providing the previous good (access to X) to another person. This conflict is not artificial; it impossible for A to exclude X from B, and for B to access X.
To keep this in context, another good might be "the killing of C". This good (and it might be a good to D) directly conflicts with "C not being killed".
Do we respect D's desire to have a good, just because he desires it? No. But we do need a reason why we respect one's desire over a necessarily-conflicting one.
That is the problem of "resolution of conflict". On that problem, the original poster was submitting a solution with a justification. What is his justification? "Information isn't scarce". Now, what the hell does that have to do with anything? It has nothing to do with the conflict between A and B. They are not fighting over "whether A has access to information". They are fighting over whether B should have access to it. For A, it is a good that B not access it. For B, it is a good that B access it.
You may indeed roll your eyes at the good that A wants, just as you rolled your eyes at the good that D wanted. But it is a good. "A" values it. The fact that they can both access the information does *nothing* to resolve this conflict.
So what is special about the good that A wants? Why should that type of good be categorically denied to anyone who wants it? "Information isnt' scarce" does not provide an answer to this. It is really just another desire that people can have.
Meanwhile, the Ayn Rand tribe would have left the sick and injured to die, reducing their tribe's size and its genetic diversity (and hence their adaptability) as well as possibly losing the benefit of those who might have recovered if cared for. This would have damaged the tribe's survival chances relative to the altruistic tribe.
I'm all for thoughtful criticism of Rand, but...
1) Rand would have advised helping them for a price, NOT leaving them to die. In her novels, the downtrodden one always makes it worthwhile to be helped.
2) You can screw it up just as badly in the opposite direction. When the successful can expect to be expropriated, expect a lot less innovation. There are lots of examples of stagnant societies where anyone who produces more than others can expect to either "share" most of it (an effective ~80% marginal tax rate) or be expelled.
Actually, this is how a book gets classified as literature:
-Ten years after publication: "Hey, people still read this book, even ten years after publication. Obviously, obviously it has literary merit and should be taught to students." -Twenty years after publication: "Hey, people still teach this book in literature classes, even 20 years after publication. Obviously, obviously it has literary merit and should be taught to students." -Repeat until present. Then, the fact that it's taught in literature classes still, is used as evidence of its greatness.
In reality, most people, the overwheming majority, ignore such literature, and when they read it, it's only to "prove themselves", either to look intellectual or to "overcome a challenge", not because they really enjoy it. Even the best authors' work shows up mostly as remakes that carry over very little other than a few pieces of the plot, like in Shakespeare movie remakes. Sad (arguably), but true.
It seems to me this is a circle-reasoning. The reason it can not be refuted on the grounds of 'information not being scarce' in your opinion, is because that information has been made scarce by a state-ordained monopoly:
No; the scarce good is "the exclusive ability to determine who accesses information X", not the information X. The state has nothing to do with this good being scarce. Its scarcity is an artifact of the *logical* fact that only one rule can assign some property (who may access?) to some set (information X). In the absence of a state, there would simply be a different rule for defining "may access?" to information X; it would still come at the cost of denying artist Y the ability to determine who may access X.
In seeming anticipation of this point (I'm going to jump around), you say:
Even your contention that the monopoly itself is scarce is not always true; it's perfectly possible to have a copyright in which you grant everyone the same rights as yourself, for instance...thus making it infinitely useable - again, something which is not possible with a house, even if one wanted to. So, even with a state-granted monopoly, you *still* can choose to make it infinitely abounded, and then it becomes abounded - which you can't do with something that is *really* scarce: yet again, a difference between IP and a real good.
In the case of IP, you are *not* eliminating the scarcity *of the right* by giving it away like that (some kind of copyleft). You are, rather, *removing* the right from yourself. You voided a) "Only N3wsbyt3 may determine how this information is distributed" and subtituted b) "anyone may add additional accessors of this information". But you cannot have b) without violating a).
Therefor, it is an artificially induced scarcity, which doesn't really work in practise (see all the P2P systems in use).
Define "doesn't really work". To the extent that (within the current global legal regime) copyrights still have a market value, it works. It is not necessary for a law to eliminate all instances of its violation, just to reduce it to acceptable levels, which copyright does even today. (No one would say that laws against murder "don't work" because murder still happens a lot.) And if public support for copyright were even greater, it would be even harder to distribute via P2P.
In the case of a house, you have [actual scarcity]. Regardless of a granted monopoly, you just *can not* infinitely use the good (the house) by an infinity number of people. Without a monopoly granted, you can not say the same for IP-rights.
And my point is, you are applying that inconsistently. People routinely accept giving a homeowner the right to exclude others from his house *even when* it's not scarce. That is, even when a homeowner, "isn't using" the house and therefore a new user can be costlessly added, they respect the owner's whim that it not be used. Clearly, the physical possibility of adding another user to a good does not suffice as a reason to permit that user. Non-scarcity cannot imply no exclusion right.
A mental construct, even in the form of a monopoly, can not be considered scarce on itself.
I think you're again making the same mistake, which is to confuse a legal right with its physical referents. Property rights in physical objects, like a house, are mental constructs independent of the objects themselves. When you say, "I have the legal right to this house", what you're really saying is, "If others access this house against my will, more people will intervene on my behalf; if I defend it within certain parameters, I will not be punished, etc.". That ownership is a mental construct, just as IP rights are.
I did nothing of the sort. I jumped into a discussion about scarcity. If you want to talk to someone else about the right to exclude be my guest, but don't try to change it away from scarcity where it was always while I was in it.
Then you only proved there was scarcity along an irrelevant dimension.
Scarcity. Houses have real scarcity; music can only have the artificial scarcity attempted to be imposed upon it by politicians. It's that simple.
And no IP claimant is asserting rights over "music". He's asserting rights over *who may determine access* to the music. That *is* scarce: only one person can have the exclusive right to determine who may access a work of music. Now, you may disagree with such a claim, but you can't do so on grounds of non-scarcity.
I agree information isn't economically scarce. I don't agree that that has any anti-IP implications. See my response here
FIRST, this discussion is not about claiming the right to exclude. That is a separate issue entirely. The discussion is about the nature of the scarcity of ideas; whatever privileges arise from that scarcity is a different matter.
The discussion is about whether there should be a right to exclude, and you tried to take the negative on that by bringing in the concept of scarcity. Both topics are relevant if your attention span is long enough.
So no, I'm not claiming the right to exclude people from my house because such a claim is irrelevant. For you to assert that I AM making such a claim indicates that you fail to understand the matter at hand.
SECOND, you've set your entire argument around a insignificant analogy. Congrats! You've identified a similarity between the cases! That doesn't however, mean the analogy is relevant or telling. In this case, for example, it's neither. Analogies are tools to illustrate points but rarely points themselves.
These two paragraphs are really the same point. It is not an analogy, and it is relevant, as a reductio ad absurdum. You were appealing to a higher principle to justify your position ("no one should have property rights in non-scarce things"), and I was showing how you were inconsistently applying it, meaning you need to refine that principle or admit your error. If you do actually try to refine it though, you'll end up appealing to principles whose truth is even less obvious than the first one you tried to invoke, getting you nowhere.
THIRD, you're completely and utterly factually wrong in your last sentence.
The last sentence was a deduction from what I had said previously, not an assertion. Lengthen your attention span and read it in context.
Appeals to scarcity can EASILY differentiate IP from real property. For proof you need look no further than the simple case of a house being used by one person at once versus a song being used by many at once. THAT is scarcity differentiating IP from real property.
And I already explained how that wasn't enough: you want the right to exclude others from a house, "even when" it's not scarce (i.e., you are not using it).
"Oh, look Honey, another person condescendingly lecturing me about economic rivalry as if it's relevant and as if I'm unaware of the concept."
"That's nice, dear."
I know what rivalry is. I already agreed in my earlier post (that you probably didn't read) that information itself is non-scarce. But when discussing IP, which good are we talking about? The good that the artist is after is not the information itself, but the ability (or legal right) to exclude others from accessing it. Now, you may disagree that the artist is entitled to such a right, but it cannot be refuted on the grounds of "information not being scarce". Your error is to construe the concept of a "good" too narrowly. Anything that is satisfying, is a good. Friendship and love are goods, even though they have no clear physical referent. And being able to exclude others from certain information, whether it be a musical recording or bank account data, is a good, and a scarce one: both I, and you, cannot both have total authority in deciding who may access a given piece of information.
When you think about it, appealing to non-scarcity of IP is a category error. You are trying to resolve a conflict (between those who want IP and those who don't) by claiming there is no conflict. See a problem there?
No, it's not a red herring. You claim the right to exclude others from your house *even when such use doesn't conflict with your use of it*, just like musicians claim the right to exclude others from copying their music, even when it doesn't conflict with their own ability to hear or perform it. In both cases, it's not ability to have an instantiation of the good, but the ability to exclude others from it that is desired by the claimant. That is why appeals to non-scarcity cannot differentiate IP from other property.
Slashdot Mirror
Taking "Noone" as a person's name ... That reminds me of a story we had to read in 3rd-grade (8-9 year olds) English class. If someone can remember what it is, I'd appreciate it.
... and this huge building!"
... such a wealthy man ... he owned all these great things. But it couldn't save him. He still died. We all die. No matter how much wealth we acquire, no matter how fabulous ... they don't mean anything in the end. How pointless to spend one's life in pursuit of wealth."
Basically, it went like this. One day, a rural African farmer, let's call him Mkembe, left his farm to visit a major city, just for the heck of it.
First, he saw a stable of donkeys. He asked someone nearby who owned them. The response: "Nbwadike."
"Wow," Mkembe thought, "Nbwadike must be a wealthy man, to own all these donkeys."
Then, he saw a very tall, impressive looking building. He asked someone nearby who owned it. The response: "Nbwadike."
"Wow!" Mkembe thought, "This Nbwadike must be wealthy beyond my imagination. To have all those donkeys
Then he passed by a funeral procession. He asked someone nearby who this famous person was, that died. The response: "Nbwadike."
Mkembe was horrified. "Nbwadike
He returned to his farm and devoted the rest of his life, not to expanding production, but to giving selflessly to others. His village came to love him for his kindness.
No one ever bothered to tell him that they spoke a different language in the city and "Nbwadike" means "I don't understand."
Okay, I don't know why you're still debating what can be a good. I spelled out my position and yours (accurately, I believe) without reference to "goods", specfically to unveil the real dispute between our views so that it wouldn't be necessary to argue that anymore.
I will note, however, that your use of good, beyond being non-standard, is without precedent. I have never seen those kinds of constraints placed on the concept of a "good" in economics. (And the criteria I listed were not the criteria for being a good, but how the goods of friendship and love could be analyzed within economics. The only criteria for something being a good is that someone deems it good.) I've seen references to "superabundant goods" and "free goods". What you are describing with your criteria are not "goods", but rather, the conditions necessary for a good to have a positive market price. It was your tendency to rely to heavily on intuitions about "what economists do" that bothered me. Intuition is fine, but don't bring it up unless you're going to make an attempt to rigorously define why e.g. "something not being in a box" makes it "not a good".
You still don't seem to understand my problem with your house/information differentiation, because you still seem unclear on whether I claim there's no difference or whether the difference is irrelevant. The answer is the latter, as I spelled out in the blockquoted section of my previous post. Again:
- You claim that accessing information doesn't take away from anyone, so no one should be stopped from doing so.
- The implicit principle you justify this with, is "when someone can enjoy a good at no cost to someone else, he should not be stopped from doing so". (I'd welcome hints on what the principle is.)
- I claim that, no, you don't really believe in that principle. After all, there are many cases where I can enjoy a house at no cost to its owner, but in that case you suddenly think that I shouldn't be able to enjoy the house.
- You claim that there really is a cost: the house is scarce and its use cannot be arbitrarily and infinitely extended (across occupants, time, etc.).
- I claim that's irrelevant under your principle - while it cannot be infinitely used without cost, it can be finitely used without cost. Specifically, to let someone use it when the owner's not there would be costless.
- I therefore claim that when you refer to something being used "at no cost", you really take "cost" to mean "someone simply doesn't want it to happen" -- that's the only sense in which it's costly for the homeowner, because it otherwise made no imposition. But once you include "someone simply doesn't want it to happen" as a cost, you've permitted "desire to exclude access to information" as a cost, invalidating your anti-IP conclusion.
Now, could you show me where I misrepresented your view?
LiveJournal's official news blog has filled up with hundreds of complaints protesting the decision, so we could have another Digg-style user rebellion brewing.
Let's show solidarity with them:
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
No. My point all along is the opposite: your conclusions simply don't follow, even when I accept your premises, either because you make subtle but significant shifts in their meaning, or because you arbitrarily decide when your principles apply and when they don't.
Before I go on, I want to address this:
A *moral* distinction? My dear fellow-slashdotter, spare me from having to demonstrate morality. It's utterly subjective,
You are REALLY, REALLY trying my patience with this kind of crap.
Look, you are making claims about how things *should* be and what kind of claims *should* be honored. Those are moral claims. Those moral claims, and their justifications, are exactly what we have been arguing about the whole times: specifically, whether the supposed "non-scarcity" of IP has any moral implications. So please, don't feign surprise.
Second, I already explained to you (albeit indirectly) exactly how you can justify a moral claim to me: simply deduce it from a more obvious claim that I already accept! Don't know what I believe? Guess, and if you're wrong, I'll find the nearest common ground. (We've already been doing a lot of that.)
I may be a lay person, but when I see 'goods' in an economical sense, it means goods which have value.
Yes, so am I. I value air. I value friendship. I value shares of stock. Are you using "value" to mean "market price"? And one entry to list of terms you casually confuse.
It's fine if you approach it with the view that *everything* is a good, even friendship and love, but I haven't seen a box of friendhip that I could buy, yet.
So? Who says that "goods must be boxable and buyable"?
Heck, I doubt even the courts se it as a good (since it is unvaluable and impossible to put a worth on friendship itself - I can't remember any case where the courts condemned someone for stealing friendship, etc.)
The courts do not rule on "what is a good". Their decisions are not predicated on "what is a good". They simply decide which party's desire to favor, based on law, precedent, and common sense. The fact that friendship can't be stolen is immaterial.
In the economic sense, it absolutely is meaningful to view friendship and love as goods.
Do people pursue them? Yes.
Do people value them? Yes.
Do people forgo opportunities for them? Yes.
Do people forgo them for other opportunities? Yes.
I know, I know, "but golly gee, I don't see no one put them on a supply demand curve". Yes, I love hearing your folksy, "I know it when I see it" non-rigorous distinctions.
So, if anything, I would rather think it's you who're forced the debate to hinge on something even less obvious and who's reasoning cannot justify your position.
No, you're the one steadfastly refusing to say, "Okay, being able to exclude people from information X is a good. I just think that the ability of all people to access X is more important." Instead you take the bizarre position of trying to spell out when something can be a good, blurring several more distinctions (see above).
As for whether this is mere semantics, no, it's not. I can express our positions, without reference to "goods" or any implications stemming from something's status as a "good". And I will. But watch what happens -- remember, I have to remove it from your statements too. I think this is a great summary of the exchange, so I've demarcated is blockquotes:
Excuse me, SIR, who the hell are YOU to tell ME who is and is not my friend?
So, what you're saying is, record companies are *merely* upset at the superficiality of my relationships with my so-called "friends".
You might want to re-think that one.
No no no, you're hastily attributing the problem to the wrong market failure story! I think the one you're looking for is path dependence: that is, we could convert an email system in which you can't forge sender information, but the costs are too great and the market participants too uncoordinated to make the transition.
Oh, and as a bonus, I'm going to repeat the myth about the Dvorak keyboard as proof of the harms of path dependence.
Couldn't spammers circumvent this by purging +-type suffixes, (i.e., converting "xyz+ABC@gmail.com" to "xyz@gmail.com") since the email will still get to you?
Okay, maybe I should take that back. While spammers pick thinly-traded penny stocks, you, as an architect of such a plan, wouldn't necessarily be constrained to do so. But nevertheless, the higher the volume of the stock, the more wrongdoing you need to halt trading. You think someone could halt trading in ExxonMobil just by spamming people to buy it?
Troll-speak translator: Blame Canada!
(TD Waterhouse is Canadian.)
Based on the comments on other threads on this topic, the flaw with such a plan is in "short it". To short-sell a stock, you must borrow it. To borrow it, someone must be willing and able to lend it. To be able to lend stock, you have to be a large institution, which are generally prohibited from buying (and thus holding) thinly-traded penny stocks. And it's exactly the penny stocks that are targeted by pump-and-dump schemes.
I don't think we're ever going to agree,
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Okay, but it's important that you know exactly where we disagree. I'm not claiming:
1) IP rights enforcement is justified.
I'm only claiming that:
2) Opposition to IP on grounds of non scarcity is flawed, due to a) inconsistency in the use of "scarcity", and b) implicit use of assumptions (about what can be a good) that are even less agreed-upon and therefore don't help.
And once again I think we come to the crux of the matter. You think it's enough that a desire is satisfied to be called a 'real' good, which I deny. I make a further distinction between it being scarce or not (or pertaining to a good that is inherently scarce), before calling it a good (in the economical sense)...which you deny is relevant.
Well then I don't know what to say -- you're flat out wrong. A good *is that which someone deems good*. It can't mean anything else. As I pointed out before, friendship and love are goods, even though they have no clear physical referent. It's true, that "good" often carries the connotation of something physical, as differentiated from a "service" -- but to my knowledge, economists now say "goods" instead of "goods and services" except when dumbing it down for a lay audience. You probably at least agree that "shares of stock" are goods, even though they're non-physical. They refer to a relationship, just like friendship. (The stock certificiate is *proof* of the relationship; it is not itself the relationship.)
You're entitled to use words differently from me, of course, and it's the true meaning of your position that I'm opposed to. But look where this puts you: you were trying to show that IP rights are invalid, on the grounds that information isn't scarce. However, your implicit assumption, now revealed, is "Oh, and only goods that can be completely expressed in terms of a physical object really count as goods." Now, whether or not you can prove that (i.e., *why* I should only count such things as goods), the point is, it's far less obvious than your original justification. Typically when justifying something, people appeal to a *more* obvious claim. ("You think that the moon doesn't exist? Well, do you believe your eyes are giving you valid input? Now, look up...") But since you've forced the debate to hinge on something even less obvious, your original reasoning cannot justify your position.
me:The relevant construct ("legal right to determine access to information X") *is* inherently scarce."
you:I couldn't disagree more. (It confuses me though that you now seem to want to demonstrate scarcity, since I thought that didn't matter for you). Look, I've already tried to explain the differene: the scarcity you speak of, is due to a mental/legal construct.
me:"It is an inherent part of reality that both you and I can't exclusively determine who may access X."
you: No it is NOT. If it would be an inherent part of reality, it would be universal in nature. However, IP-rights differ from country to country, and some even have none (even western ountries have had none during most of their history).
I'm not sure you understood the claim I was making. The fact that at times and places, entities did not have such a legal right (or ability), does not mean it wasn't scarce. (Triple negative ftw.) It simply means that a good for someone, was denied in favor of a good for someone else. Even today, having a legal right to determine access to information X, doesn't mean no one will be able to access it, just that it will be harder.
Similarly, I claimed that both you and I can't exclusively (key word) determine access to information X, and that this is an inherent part of reality. You objected on the grounds that IP rights differ, animals, etc. That's irrelevant; it simply means I was denied exclusivity. The possibility of two people having exclusivity over something is still logically impossible.
Ok,
I think this is the crux of the matter and the reason we do not seem to be able to come to an agreement. If an argumentation is made that "rights" (or 'constructs as goods') should only be validated when they pertain to a real good which is always inherently scarce, and not when it doesn't, then the premise that there is a difference between the two is imperative. If you do not accept the premise (and thus, one rejects there is a difference) than obviously the whole discussion remains moot.
Okay, try to give me a teensy weensy bit of credit here by reading my statements in context. I was referring to the real/non-real distinction *you* were trying to make, not "denying reality" altogether. My claim was that the two goods are real in the same sense: that they both satisfy someone's desire, and that to satisfy someone's desire this way comes at the cost of denying someone else a good.
I have given many examples of why and where the goods differ; it seems rather futile to say there are *no* diferences. So either you reject it because you are truelly convinced there are no differences, or you think those differences are not relevant. The former seems a bit absurd, and I think it's rather the latter.
Correct; it does not suffice to point out differences in the particulars. They must be different in the applicability of the principle you invoke to prefer one and not the other.
However, you may be of the opinion that it is irrelevant, but only because you yourself deem it so as a condition to argue about what is scarce or not. As I've already indicated, one can argument that the scarcity of a good is related to its *inherent* scarcity, and constructs are not *inherently* scarce
The relevant construct ("legal right to determine access to information X") *is* inherently scarce. It is an inherent part of reality that both you and I can't exclusively determine who may access X. Again, you may have good reasons for rejecting the idea of giving one person the legal right to determine access to information X -- but the physical fact that more than one person can access X without impeding anyone else's access to X, cannot suffice. There is non-scarcity in many different senses, for which you are being inconsistent. For example, without a second thought, you agree that a homeowner should not be forced to share his house with a second person. Yet, as a physical fact, more than one person can fit in a house, and even thrive. From the fact that a home cannot fit infinite people, it does not follow that it only fits one person. So why should a homeowner be allowed to exclude the second person, when no physical fact prohibits this? The same answer would apply to intellectual property exclusion.
ay we live on Mars, and air is scarce. Would one accept a construct in which the property of air is dealt with?
In *both* Mars *and* earth, there is a construct. On earth, that construct is "anyone who can breathe the atmosphere, may". On earth, such a construct *already* conflicts with someone's desire that e.g. "my ex-wife not breathe". He may indeed not want his ex-wife to breathe -- that would be a good, from his perspective. The construct simply tells him to go screw himself -- it's not going to grant that desire higher priority over breathers. But you cannot deny that this comes at the cost of the satisfaction of that ex-wife-hater's goal. No matter what rights allocation you pick, you are favoring one party over another in a situation of scarcity. The question is, *why* should we prefer one party over another? That requires appeal to the question of "should", which "is" statements, as you know, cannot answer.
me:"No; the scarce good is "the exclusive ability to determine who accesses information X", not the information X."
you:First of all, it's an ability to distribute, not to access.
To distribute is to facilitate access, so the distinction is irrelevant in the context of that claim.
And isn't that ability a state-ordained granting of a monopoly? It seems to me one would be hardpressed to argument the ability to distribute with exclusion of all others is a real ability in the sense that it is, indeed, only the copyrightholder which can distribute as an inherent consequence of the good or the abilities of the author. As practise has shown us, that's not the case, so the scarcity of THAT ability is only a theoretic, artificial scarcity, because the law in most countries make the mental construct of IP-rights lawful.
All the state is doing is facilitating the possibility of one (desired-by-some) rights-allocation.
(Aside: I strongly disagree with attempts to bring "the state" into this. The real determining factor is the extent of social support. Both physical property rights AND intellectual property rights can exist with or without the state as long as a sufficient number of people will respect them and are willing to punish violators.)
I reject the real/non-real distinction. I see it purely in terms of "goods that people want" where not everyone can be satisfied (i.e. the condition of scarcity or rivalry), and I think the following will clarify my view (and since it applies to a lot of what you said, I'm going to skip those in the interest of time and space):
There are goods that people want. A good is anything that satisifed at least one person. In some cases, satisfying a good for one person, means not-satisfying it for another. In these cases, we say scarcity arises.
One good is access to information. People value this.
Another good is being able to exclude others' access to information. Some people also value this, for various reasons. Satisfying this good, for the same unit of information, call it X, comes at the cost of *not* providing the previous good (access to X) to another person. This conflict is not artificial; it impossible for A to exclude X from B, and for B to access X.
To keep this in context, another good might be "the killing of C". This good (and it might be a good to D) directly conflicts with "C not being killed".
Do we respect D's desire to have a good, just because he desires it? No. But we do need a reason why we respect one's desire over a necessarily-conflicting one.
That is the problem of "resolution of conflict". On that problem, the original poster was submitting a solution with a justification. What is his justification? "Information isn't scarce". Now, what the hell does that have to do with anything? It has nothing to do with the conflict between A and B. They are not fighting over "whether A has access to information". They are fighting over whether B should have access to it. For A, it is a good that B not access it. For B, it is a good that B access it.
You may indeed roll your eyes at the good that A wants, just as you rolled your eyes at the good that D wanted. But it is a good. "A" values it. The fact that they can both access the information does *nothing* to resolve this conflict.
So what is special about the good that A wants? Why should that type of good be categorically denied to anyone who wants it? "Information isnt' scarce" does not provide an answer to this. It is really just another desire that people can have.
Meanwhile, the Ayn Rand tribe would have left the sick and injured to die, reducing their tribe's size and its genetic diversity (and hence their adaptability) as well as possibly losing the benefit of those who might have recovered if cared for. This would have damaged the tribe's survival chances relative to the altruistic tribe.
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I'm all for thoughtful criticism of Rand, but
1) Rand would have advised helping them for a price, NOT leaving them to die. In her novels, the downtrodden one always makes it worthwhile to be helped.
2) You can screw it up just as badly in the opposite direction. When the successful can expect to be expropriated, expect a lot less innovation. There are lots of examples of stagnant societies where anyone who produces more than others can expect to either "share" most of it (an effective ~80% marginal tax rate) or be expelled.
Actually, this is how a book gets classified as literature:
-Ten years after publication: "Hey, people still read this book, even ten years after publication. Obviously, obviously it has literary merit and should be taught to students."
-Twenty years after publication: "Hey, people still teach this book in literature classes, even 20 years after publication. Obviously, obviously it has literary merit and should be taught to students."
-Repeat until present. Then, the fact that it's taught in literature classes still, is used as evidence of its greatness.
In reality, most people, the overwheming majority, ignore such literature, and when they read it, it's only to "prove themselves", either to look intellectual or to "overcome a challenge", not because they really enjoy it. Even the best authors' work shows up mostly as remakes that carry over very little other than a few pieces of the plot, like in Shakespeare movie remakes. Sad (arguably), but true.
It seems to me this is a circle-reasoning. The reason it can not be refuted on the grounds of 'information not being scarce' in your opinion, is because that information has been made scarce by a state-ordained monopoly:
No; the scarce good is "the exclusive ability to determine who accesses information X", not the information X. The state has nothing to do with this good being scarce. Its scarcity is an artifact of the *logical* fact that only one rule can assign some property (who may access?) to some set (information X). In the absence of a state, there would simply be a different rule for defining "may access?" to information X; it would still come at the cost of denying artist Y the ability to determine who may access X.
In seeming anticipation of this point (I'm going to jump around), you say:
Even your contention that the monopoly itself is scarce is not always true; it's perfectly possible to have a copyright in which you grant everyone the same rights as yourself, for instance...thus making it infinitely useable - again, something which is not possible with a house, even if one wanted to. So, even with a state-granted monopoly, you *still* can choose to make it infinitely abounded, and then it becomes abounded - which you can't do with something that is *really* scarce: yet again, a difference between IP and a real good.
In the case of IP, you are *not* eliminating the scarcity *of the right* by giving it away like that (some kind of copyleft). You are, rather, *removing* the right from yourself. You voided a) "Only N3wsbyt3 may determine how this information is distributed" and subtituted b) "anyone may add additional accessors of this information". But you cannot have b) without violating a).
Therefor, it is an artificially induced scarcity, which doesn't really work in practise (see all the P2P systems in use).
Define "doesn't really work". To the extent that (within the current global legal regime) copyrights still have a market value, it works. It is not necessary for a law to eliminate all instances of its violation, just to reduce it to acceptable levels, which copyright does even today. (No one would say that laws against murder "don't work" because murder still happens a lot.) And if public support for copyright were even greater, it would be even harder to distribute via P2P.
In the case of a house, you have [actual scarcity]. Regardless of a granted monopoly, you just *can not* infinitely use the good (the house) by an infinity number of people. Without a monopoly granted, you can not say the same for IP-rights.
And my point is, you are applying that inconsistently. People routinely accept giving a homeowner the right to exclude others from his house *even when* it's not scarce. That is, even when a homeowner, "isn't using" the house and therefore a new user can be costlessly added, they respect the owner's whim that it not be used. Clearly, the physical possibility of adding another user to a good does not suffice as a reason to permit that user. Non-scarcity cannot imply no exclusion right.
A mental construct, even in the form of a monopoly, can not be considered scarce on itself.
I think you're again making the same mistake, which is to confuse a legal right with its physical referents. Property rights in physical objects, like a house, are mental constructs independent of the objects themselves. When you say, "I have the legal right to this house", what you're really saying is, "If others access this house against my will, more people will intervene on my behalf; if I defend it within certain parameters, I will not be punished, etc.". That ownership is a mental construct, just as IP rights are.
I did nothing of the sort. I jumped into a discussion about scarcity. If you want to talk to someone else about the right to exclude be my guest, but don't try to change it away from scarcity where it was always while I was in it.
Then you only proved there was scarcity along an irrelevant dimension.
Scarcity. Houses have real scarcity; music can only have the artificial scarcity attempted to be imposed upon it by politicians. It's that simple.
And no IP claimant is asserting rights over "music". He's asserting rights over *who may determine access* to the music. That *is* scarce: only one person can have the exclusive right to determine who may access a work of music. Now, you may disagree with such a claim, but you can't do so on grounds of non-scarcity.
I agree information isn't economically scarce. I don't agree that that has any anti-IP implications. See my response here
FIRST, this discussion is not about claiming the right to exclude. That is a separate issue entirely. The discussion is about the nature of the scarcity of ideas; whatever privileges arise from that scarcity is a different matter.
The discussion is about whether there should be a right to exclude, and you tried to take the negative on that by bringing in the concept of scarcity. Both topics are relevant if your attention span is long enough.
So no, I'm not claiming the right to exclude people from my house because such a claim is irrelevant. For you to assert that I AM making such a claim indicates that you fail to understand the matter at hand.
SECOND, you've set your entire argument around a insignificant analogy. Congrats! You've identified a similarity between the cases! That doesn't however, mean the analogy is relevant or telling. In this case, for example, it's neither. Analogies are tools to illustrate points but rarely points themselves.
These two paragraphs are really the same point. It is not an analogy, and it is relevant, as a reductio ad absurdum. You were appealing to a higher principle to justify your position ("no one should have property rights in non-scarce things"), and I was showing how you were inconsistently applying it, meaning you need to refine that principle or admit your error. If you do actually try to refine it though, you'll end up appealing to principles whose truth is even less obvious than the first one you tried to invoke, getting you nowhere.
THIRD, you're completely and utterly factually wrong in your last sentence.
The last sentence was a deduction from what I had said previously, not an assertion. Lengthen your attention span and read it in context.
Appeals to scarcity can EASILY differentiate IP from real property. For proof you need look no further than the simple case of a house being used by one person at once versus a song being used by many at once. THAT is scarcity differentiating IP from real property.
And I already explained how that wasn't enough: you want the right to exclude others from a house, "even when" it's not scarce (i.e., you are not using it).
"Oh, look Honey, another person condescendingly lecturing me about economic rivalry as if it's relevant and as if I'm unaware of the concept."
"That's nice, dear."
I know what rivalry is. I already agreed in my earlier post (that you probably didn't read) that information itself is non-scarce. But when discussing IP, which good are we talking about? The good that the artist is after is not the information itself, but the ability (or legal right) to exclude others from accessing it. Now, you may disagree that the artist is entitled to such a right, but it cannot be refuted on the grounds of "information not being scarce". Your error is to construe the concept of a "good" too narrowly. Anything that is satisfying, is a good. Friendship and love are goods, even though they have no clear physical referent. And being able to exclude others from certain information, whether it be a musical recording or bank account data, is a good, and a scarce one: both I, and you, cannot both have total authority in deciding who may access a given piece of information.
When you think about it, appealing to non-scarcity of IP is a category error. You are trying to resolve a conflict (between those who want IP and those who don't) by claiming there is no conflict. See a problem there?
It runs Linux, because only Linux programmers would spill that much urine on the concept of "fault tolerance".
No, it's not a red herring. You claim the right to exclude others from your house *even when such use doesn't conflict with your use of it*, just like musicians claim the right to exclude others from copying their music, even when it doesn't conflict with their own ability to hear or perform it. In both cases, it's not ability to have an instantiation of the good, but the ability to exclude others from it that is desired by the claimant. That is why appeals to non-scarcity cannot differentiate IP from other property.
Why is everyone making a big deal that the CG looks crap? BFD! It's about the stories, not the CG.
... maybe because prettiness of the computer graphics is the only thing left in George Lucas's work now, that doesn't suck?
Well
If it's "about the stories" now, everything Lucas made after Return of the Jedi, is crap.
How would you characterize the scarcity of your house when you're not using it? Is that politically or economically scarce?
Right, that's why 9/11 was justified. Oh wait, I forgot, I'm not supposed to think like Osama bin Laden.