Antitrust: Is there really a point?

[peritonlogon]

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Government and Business cannot opperate without one another. When Businesses opperate without a strong Govenment to hold them in check, you have things like US steal in Gary Indiana or Walmart's exploitation of US workers and the US Federal Government's entitlement programs, or less frequently, the consolidation of power through monopolies.

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Wrong. Monopolies can only be achieved WITH coercive government power.

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Well, I must be wrong... after all, you did assert that I was.

[tylerdurden]

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Well, I must be wrong... after all, you did assert that I was.

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Hey, I'm open to counterexamples. Bring it.

[The Don]

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Again, I'm confused. Forgive me, but I find it ridiculous to suggest that producers will create ANYTHING due to a desire to produce efficiently.

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This is how they make money. I, on the other hand, find it hard to believe that people will have the desire to innovate on their creations once the are protected by a guaranteed 20 monopoly.


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The fact is, people who create things want to be compensated for the fact that they created it.

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Who said they can’t be compensated? There is just no government-aided monopoly to help them do it.


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I'm not saying others can't study, from an outsider's point of view, the ideas of the producer...that's how competitors form a lot of the time. But, from your point of view, no idea, theory, or anything else from the mind is anything but public domain.

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How are we supposed to draw the line when we are talking about ideas? Ideas are not scarce like tangible property is. If I create a song, and someone copies it, they have not taken anything from me. I still have my song. Knowing this, how is it possible to consider an idea property? By making ideas property you are creating scarcity where there was once infinity. Anyone who knows anything about economics knows that this is a bad thing.

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

-Thomas Jefferson – First US Patent Examiner

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From that point of view, what's to stop me from doing a note-for-note reconstruction of famous rock songs, recording them, performing them, and calling them my own?

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Nothing, if people like your version and decide to buy your album and see you on tour, that’s good for you and good for them. It is not likely that they will think it is yours though considering that people tend to attribute songs to the first person they heard it from (I am only citing your specific example of course).

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After all, there are no IP laws...so who's to say that the original artist wrote it, anyway...and who cares if he did? The song became everyone's when he introduced it to the market.

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Agreed. People are not stupid though. Just because there are no IP laws doesn’t mean that everyone will start stealing everyone else’s ideas and get away with it (the credit that is).

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It seems fun to believe that artists and producers would continue to produce sheerly for the joy of it...and they might...but we would never have any new ideas...because what fool would ever be so stupid as to share one of these ideas?

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Again, I realize that the artists/inventors will be losing out because they will lose their precious right to an idea which is backed by governmental force. The problem is the arbitrary nature of IP laws. If one idea can be protected by force, who’s to say that ANY idea can’t be protected by force. Also, should the protection expire or should it be perpetual? All of it is very arbitrary and impossible to categorize.


Read this article. It's a bit arduous, but it goes over all of points pretty well (although, admittedly, the author does agree with my perspective).

IP Reading

[peritonlogon]

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Hey, I'm open to counterexamples. Bring it.

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An Example won't cut it. Reread the whole thread and you should have a better idea of what I think.

And "bring it"? I'm not here to debate or for some sort of competition..... discussion... that's why I'm here. That's where I try to understand all that you have to say, you try to understand all I have to say, any correction in the course is to aid in understanding one's own reasons and those of the other.

And BTW if you hold that Government does little but harm the private sector, the consumers and the Economy as a whole as an immutable founding principle, then we probably don't have much to say to each other, rather, only past each other.

[coffeecrazy1]

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Who said they can’t be compensated? There is just no government-aided monopoly to help them do it.

[/ QUOTE ] Okay...I'm willing to hear non-government options. I'm a libertarian...I have no problem with those. But my question then becomes...why would they be compensated, if all of their ideas belong in the public domain?

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If I create a song, and someone copies it, they have not taken anything from me. I still have my song.

[/ QUOTE ] Okay...but then, how would we have professional musicians? If they are not being compensated for their creation, then how could they live?

Plus, you are making a fundamental mistake in attributing equal value from one idea to the next...when ideas are anything but equally valued.

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Nothing, if people like your version and decide to buy your album and see you on tour, that’s good for you and good for them. It is not likely that they will think it is yours though considering that people tend to attribute songs to the first person they heard it from (I am only citing your specific example of course).


[/ QUOTE ] So you would see no problem if someone else performed your song, that you wrote, and got rich from it, and never paid you for your composition?

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Agreed. People are not stupid though. Just because there are no IP laws doesn’t mean that everyone will start stealing everyone else’s ideas and get away with it (the credit that is).

[/ QUOTE ] I was not agreeing with you. I was continuing the line of your thought. I don't agree, because we HAVE IP laws, and people still try to steal everyone else's ideas and get away with it(hip-hop sampling, corporate spying, etc.) Again, I'm not saying that we have to have laws, but just having no laws provides no incentive for someone to ever come public with their ideas, so they need recourse if the theft of ideas does occur.

I appreciate the link to the article. I am glad I'm not completely off the libertarian reservation with this one. As I said, I am certainly willing to entertain alternatives to IP laws(or almost any laws, for that matter), but their outright abolition would almost certainly lead to the demise of the professional artist and innovator, at least in my estimation.

[The Don]

I am going to be lazy. Here is my response:

Beethoven wrote his symphonies, Newton developed the theory of gravity, Homer wrote the Iliad... all before IP laws.

Creators will create, and they will get credit in the absense of government interference. What they may not get is overly compensated (at the expense of the consumer) in the absence of force.

[tylerdurden]

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Hey, I'm open to counterexamples. Bring it.

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An Example won't cut it. Reread the whole thread and you should have a better idea of what I think.

And "bring it"?

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Yes, "bring it." I'm sick and tired of hearing the "without government, monopolies will form" line. It's routinely spouted in this forum, but nobody will back it up. One example WILL cut it, because I'm saying, absolutely, that a monopoly CANNOT form without some sort of coercive power behind it. ANY counterexample will suffice.

[tylerdurden]

On the IP debate, it seems that lumping patent and copyright together is a mistake.

First, note the difference in their enforcement.

To enforce a copyright, the rightholder must prove that the alleged infringer had access to the rightholder's work. If the alleged infringer came up with the work independently, there is no infringement. Intent to commit theft is necessary for there to be damages.

With patents, proving such access to previous work is not necessary. Intent isn't necessary. If you develop something independently, you're still in violation.

In a free market, theft is outlawed. Copyright does fit logically into a free property market, while patents do not.

Cf. Rothbard:

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The crucial distinction between patents and copyrights, then, is not that one is mechanical and the other literary. The fact that they have been applied that way is an historical accident and does not reveal the critical difference between them. The cru*cial difference is that copyright is a logical attribute of property right on the free market, while patent is a monopoly invasion of that right.

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[Man, Economy, and State, chapter 10]

[peritonlogon]

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Hey, I'm open to counterexamples. Bring it.

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An Example won't cut it. Reread the whole thread and you should have a better idea of what I think.

And "bring it"?

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Yes, "bring it." I'm sick and tired of hearing the "without government, monopolies will form" line. It's routinely spouted in this forum, but nobody will back it up. One example WILL cut it, because I'm saying, absolutely, that a monopoly CANNOT form without some sort of coercive power behind it. ANY counterexample will suffice.

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Reread the thread, I am not going to to come up with a "counterexample" or, for that matter, in any way defend a position I have not even put forth. "bring it?" reread the thread.

[tylerdurden]

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Reread the thread, I am not going to to come up with a "counterexample" or, for that matter, in any way defend a position I have not even put forth. "bring it?" reread the thread.

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Earlier:

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When Businesses opperate without a strong Govenment to hold them in check, you have things like . . . the consolidation of power through monopolies.

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