AncapFTW

Except that I didn't say anything like that. Why do you assume that by "organize" I mean coercion? Do the umpires point a gun at your head when you play baseball? If you don't follow the rules, the other teams don't turn violent, they just don't play with you. An anarchist society could easily work the same way. If there is a "big brother statist paradigm" here, it's your view of how things would be organized. Organization doesn't have to be through violence, though. Any group of people, and most groups of things, will automatically organize themselves even without violence. My main problem with DROs is what Stephan says in podcast #2, that anyone who wasn't in a DRO would essentially be an outcast. If you HAVE to join one of several groups or your life will be ruined, then if it really a free choice? In his idea of an anarchist society, DROs are the only way to seek justice, and not being a part of one would make everyone automatically assume you were a criminal by punishing anyone who didn't.

Thank you for the link. It is a pretty good explanation of one method for organizing a stateless society, but there are others as well. I'd be interested in discussing them as well if anyone wants to talk about them. For example, DROs wouldn't need to exist, and individuals could deal with their problems individually or in more personal groups, as many ancient anarchys did.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/property No, it isn't. Ownership of something is independent of possession of something. Supposition. Please prove that it is impossible. Also supposition. Also, it doesn't need to be destroyed, just not used directly. There are no new lifeforms. They are all derived from previous lifeforms. So yes, it is analogous to planting a new tree. Time investment/labor is how something becomes property if it is unowned, and it is how new property is created out of what is owned. In a way, animals are also infinitely reproducible, so would it be accurate to say that when you buy a puppy you aren't purchasing the puppy, but supporting the future production of puppies?

printing more leads to inflation. Borrowing from other countries doesn't, as it doesn't affect the exchange rate between your currencies.

Thank you for the story. I didn't realize people did this already. I did here that one of the rich families, the Vanderbilts I think, donated a huge amount of land to the government as a national park, but I didn't realize people created parks like this.

But it is, and it's special pleading to argue that it isn't just because it isn't a physical object. And, of course, you are accusing we of wanting to use violence when that is exactly what you are doing by not respecting my property rights. That's a standard tactic of those that have your views on the matter. I consider it to not be that different than a slave owner saying "but you're just going to let them hurt me because I own a few slaves?" I'm going to get even more downvotes on this, now, because those who don't want to respect property rights of a certain sub-class of property will want to do what they can to show their disapproval of me, but that's fine. I don't really want to deal with people who can't respect my rights anyway.

I was planning on ignoring you, but I'm going to have to call you out on your hypocrisy. You stated multiple times in the "you wouldn't steal a car" thread that you have no respect for other peoples property rights when that property isn't a physical object. If the conditions of entering the person's house was not copying the sheet music for a new song they wrote and not emailing every nudes of their girlfriend you found on their computer, you would argue that you hadn't violated their property rights at all because they weren't physical objects, just ideas. Yet here you are arguing that you can't violate their wishes as far as their property is concerned and still claim to respect property rights. That is exactly what you do, however. So please, stop telling us that you have a right to do whatever you please with everyone's data regardless of their wishes or stop telling us that you respect property rights. Otherwise you are just contradicting yourself. A statement I actually agree with.

In another topic I mentioned public areas and they said "there wouldn't be any public areas in a free society". While they probably were referring to the government-created public areas like we now have, there will probably be areas where people congregate or travel to for reasons that have nothing to do with the owner. There could also be areas where the owner essentially makes it a public area, such as a park, or lets people treat it as more-or-less unowned territory. This also got me thinking of rights in these areas, and how rules would be created for society as a whole. I think that people would have rights based on what they believe their rights to be regardless of where they were and that the only way to take them away would be to have them specifically agree to losing a right. That asks the question "what if I say I have a right, but you don't think I do?" I assume it would go to arbitration. I guess all of this is a long-winded way of saying, "how do you think an anarchist society should work?"

It's unlikely your friend would have a problem with it, but if he did it would really be a matter of whether or not you harmed him by doing it. That kind of idea copying is unlikely to affect him at all, and is probably inspired by his work, not an exact copy. On the other hand, art is produced to make money. You earn money by selling the artwork or copies of it. If someone else copies your art without your permission, then they are essentially taking money from you by using your labor to out-compete you due to lower costs. Let me give you a more extreme example. Pharm company A spend 100 million developing a new drug to treat cancer. A week after it is released, Pharm company B releases a copy of it for half the price. Because company B doesn't have to make up 100 million worth of research costs, they can make more profit but do little of the work that company A had to do producing the drug. While the amount of money that they cost company A is speculative, they essentially stole from company A by taking the drug formula (company A's intellectual property) and selling it for less than company A. Because they can always undercut company A on cost due to the lack of 100 million in research costs, company A cannot earn money on the product that they put time, effort, and resources into, and therefore had their product stolen. Society already has agreed upon boundaries for a number of things, some of which are NAP violations, some of which aren't. I was merely trying to point out that the degree to which a person violated your rights were subject to society's dictates, and that we abide by those limits in order to function in society. In some societies things that are violations of NAP aren't considered to be crimes, and in some societies things that aren't violations of NAP are considered crimes. There are also various degrees to which these things are punished based on society's rules. For example, in most nations theft is punished by a few days in jail to a few years in prison, depending on what was stolen and how valuable it is. In the past in many countries, though, theft could be a hanging offense (such as horse theft in the 1800s, as you threatened the person's life by doing it) or by cutting your hand off. If we disagree on whether or not he did violate my rights, then it would be a matter for the courts to decide, through arbiters, and eventually those judgements would form a pattern. If the general consensus was that recording a movie or concert for personal use was ok, but distributing it was not, then that would be the rule for IP of that type, and it would form a precedent for future cases. If the case went more extreme (say that you friend was entitled to massive compensation for you copying his studio layout) that would also establish a pattern, though it is unlikely that something that severe would last long, as it would ruin the arbiter's reputation. Technically both could be considered theft, but one is so minor, like taking pens home from the office, that no one would care about it.

So, you find their copying of your work to be beneficial to you. That doesn't mean that it's true for everyone, and even if it was it wouldn't mean that they should be able to copy the art of everyone. If people find it beneficial to have others copy their work, then they should be able to let others copy their work. If you don't want others to copy you, then you shouldn't have to let them copy it. That is what I was arguing, that the person who created an idea, information, technique, etc. should be the one to decide what does and doesn't happen to their work. Also, I feel like I need to point out that the idea of personal freedom and rights also was anti-thesis at that time, as most people were essentially owned by the local lord, king, or queen, and slavery was legal. Still, if you are saying that the non-existence of IP benefits creators, you are arguing effects, not principles.

The projection is strong with this one. I've explained how it is, and explained my how I came to my conclusion multiple times. You, however, have decided to ignore what I wrote, use special pleading, and accuse me of bigotry instead of looking at my point of view, which you reject out of hand because it doesn't fit the way you want things to be. That would make you the bigot. And now you are accusing me of manipulation because I recognize that you are using logical fallacies and aren't even discussing the topic, just continuously stating your point in hopes that one of these times I'll accidently accept your poor arguments. That means that you are trying to manipulate the conversation. As long as the two of you keep claiming ownership over the fruits of other people's labor and can't even acknowledge that that's what you are doing, then there's no way we can have a conversation. You are behaving like the statists or Communists who think that there is some special situation in which it's ok to take another person's property by force, only you can't even see that that is what you are doing.

No, I am not claiming ownership of your body. You are, however, claiming ownership of the body of and one who creates an idea you want to use. We're obviously not going to get anywhere if you are just going to keep projecting your own views on to me.

Actually, you can in various ways, but most of the time it is immoral to do so. That doesn't have anything to do with the statement, though. No, no it isn't. The idea is work, because I put effort into creating it, which is the definition of work. Your inability to accept that something is the way it is doesn't change the facts. And if you are affecting me by committing violence against me, ie theft, then yes, they are the same thing. Obviously your definition of "scarcity" doesn't fit the standard economic definition of scarcity. If there isn't a lot of something, then it is scarce. It doesn't matter if more can be created. If I have a stockpile of gold that I won't sell, then gold for sell is more scarce than if I am willing to sell it. the fact that it can be decreased doesn't change whether it's currently scarce or not. You reveal that you can't understand parallels when you state that you control someone else's idea because a copy of someone else's work resides inside the biological harddrive of your brain, but don't see the connection to a video that is uploaded to a digital harddrive of a Netflix server. Also, not bigotry. bigotry [big-uh-tree] noun, plural bigotries. 1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own. 2. the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot. just because I don't accept your premise that theft is ok under certain circumstances. Actually, I'm stating that that's the way it should be because it respects the property rights of all involved. I don't expect you to understand that, however, because you've already stated that property rights are meaningless to you when your "special pleading" conditions are met. Tell me, do you also accept the "special pleading" conditions that I can't own the means of production, or are you a third kind of anarchist?

1) Supposition. Possibly special pleading. Why should it only refer to one type of thing you can produce? 2) I didn't claim ownership over things which have a SIMILAR pattern, I claimed ownership over things which have the same pattern, and only so much as they have that same pattern. I posted a response explaining this, but apparently it hasn't been approved yet.

Knowledge does exist, as a particular arrangement of neurons in the brain, just as computer information exists as arrangements of electrons in a circuit. Just because that form can be easily duplicated doesn't mean that the creator of it relinquishes control over it. Your use of the idea does affect me because it devalues my work. Things have value because they have scarcity and demand. If you copy my idea, you decrease its scarcity and therefore its value. You also decrease the demand for it, and therefore its value. That's arguing consequences, though, not principles. The principles involved still stand. Yes, you "own" a copy of the song, but I own the song. I can't use that which is in your head because to do so would be to use your labor, but neither can you use that idea as is, as that would be to use my labor. If I were to demand to be able to use the information I placed in your mind, that's slavery, but if you use that information, it's also slavery, as you are using that which I put effort into against my will. You are essentially claiming that YouTube owns all of the content uploaded to it, as does Netflix. They only own that copy of it, though, and therefore have only a very limited number of things that they can do with it. Like I've said before, whether it is made of matter or not is inconsequential, as is the ease with which it is copyable. I'm not arguing that you can't be in possession of someone else's ideas, or that you can't use them at all, just that you can't use them in their original form as they were not the product of your labor, but someone else's. Let's say you are obsessed with the "Rickrolling" meme, so you remix Rick Astley's song. You would own the changes you make to it, but not the original song. In the same way, if Scientist A invents a fusion reactor, he owns his specific version of a fusion reactor, not the Fusion Reactor idea itself. If Scientists B & C come up with modifications to it, they own the modifications, not the original. It doesn't use the fruits of his labor to make their improvements and offer them to his customers, but if they were to build his version of the reactor of the parts he designed it would use the fruits of his labor, and therefore is infringing on his property. The last statement in your post is just someone, once again, trying to claim that I want to use violence against them, in this case rather extreme violence. I don't want to though, as I prefer suing you to using physical violence and the violence you are using doesn't threaten my life significantly. As you are committing violence against me by using my property without my permission, though, there wouldn't be anything wrong with a proportional response. You simply don't see what you are doing as theft, and therefore don't see that a punishment is warranted. At this point I feel as though I'm arguing with a religious nut about what is and isn't violence, and therefore is or isn't something which self defense applies to. "But they are the infidel. They threaten my way of life, therefore I should be able to kill them." In this case you are the one who wishes to engage in violent activity against another person but don't see it as violent action because "it's not a physical object" or "I have a copy, therefore it's all mine!"

I wrote a logical proof for it and posted it here. Please read my post and discuss it if you want to. If you don't want to read my post, then at least don't say I didn't write it.

Special pleading. I own the idea. Just because it is now on your property doesn't make it yours. If you don't want it on your property, forget it or delete it or don't let it on your property in the first place. Using my idea without my permission is still a violation of my property rights. By using it, you impede my ability to use it in the same way that poaching impedes my ability to hunt on my land. Your ability to copy it has no bearing on ownership of it. You label it "violence" to protect that which you own, but there is little difference between you driving my car without permission and you playing my song for profit without my permission.

Who decides what the bound are for anything that is subjective? How about if two people disagree on something? What if one person sees it as a violation of their rights and the other doesn't? That's what arbiters are for. Eventually you'll reach a point where a limit is understood. Every society has agreed upon bounds that aren't codified or forced on people. That's why I don't understand it when anarchists ask questions like this. You may as well ask "why can't I have a drunken orgy in public?" After all, you aren't technically harming anyone. The reason that probably wouldn't happen in a public place in a free society is that most people don't want it to happen. There would be people who refuse to deal with you based on such behavior, and eventually people will place restrictions on themselves performing the activity in order to avoid the consequences of it. In this case, its doing such things in a private area. In the case of something like IP limits will eventually arise out of the various opinions on it and such opinions may vary by area, in the same way one area may develop as a clothing-optional community, while others won't. Now I'm curious as to if the people on this forum have ever thought about how rules that aren't strictly derived from NAP will arise in a free society. If you are interested, the easiest to understand idea of a free society I've seen is in a web-comic called "Escape From Terra" and the characters actually talk about it in the comic. I would like to list my logic on this topic so that we can all at least understand each other's positions. 1) People own themselves and their labor. 2) That which does not exist cannot be owned until it exists. 3) If a person only uses that which they own, they have the permission of the owner to use, or that which is unowned to create something, they own it. The one who gave them permission to use their equipment may require payment, including part of what they created, but that is a transfer of ownership. 4) Ownership allows a person to decide how, when, why, and by whom property is used. 5) Ideas are created when someone uses their brain and knowledge to create new knowledge that didn't exist before. 6) Because all that went into the creation of the idea was either owned by them or unowned they own the new knowledge they created.

I think that there was a study that said that homosexuality likely developed for closer social ties within a species. Essentially, more breeders aren't as important to the survival of the species as stronger social bonds between its constituent members, as societies are a larger driving force than speed of reproduction at this point. Also, most people with homosexual attractions aren't purely homosexual, and can therefore pass on those genes. (1% strictly homosexual vs. 8% bisexual I think)

Do you realize how much female porn stars can make? Many are making 150k+ per year, so there's plenty of reasons a woman might choose to do this kind of thing for a living. In fact, I heard that in Japan it's not uncommon for a woman to pay her way through college by being a prostitute. Yes, some of them are emotionally scarred, and do it because they think that's all they're good for, but many more do it because it's a relatively low-skill job that pays as good as, if not better than a job you'll get after college. (NSFW Alert: look up Bella Knox. She's a Libertarian College student that does porn to pay for college) Assuming that they're just wounded woman who were coerced or forced into it is a bit judgmental. Sure, some are, but many are there because they like the work and the pay.

1) It's not begging the question, though I guess I should have said "otherwise no one would want to USE it". If it wasn't at least more valuable than anything else they could get easily (including the large amounts of legitimately free music out there) then it wouldn't be used. 2) No, you didn't "prove" anything. You made a statement, which I showed to be poorly reasoned. Read the rest of what I wrote in response to your statement, as that's where I showed it to be poorly reasoned.

This doesn't even warrant response, as it wasn't even a response to what I wrote, much less an intelligent one.

So you think a single note (like writing a single word) is the same as an entire song (or a poem/novel)? One is a single action that everyone takes while playing the instrument/writing a story, and is practically public domain. The other is a unique combination of those things which takes time, effort, and creativity to do and to make something of value. And we already know it has value, otherwise no one would be interested in stealing it.

Libertarian, perhaps, as libertarian includes minarchists, tea party, etc. and this could theoretically make the government smaller and decrease taxes. The problem is that if everyone is guaranteed $20k per year, prices will increase to advantage of the extra $20k/person in the economy and people will end up in the same place if not worse financially. Anarchist-wise, it's a choice of letting the 10% of the population that has the least sex rape 10 people per year and letting everyone rape 5 people per year.

You mean those people who basically created something, made it public domain, and have been dead for thousands of years, therefore nullifying any claim that they had to it? No, I didn't. Also, I'm pretty sure that the alphabet and language in general was created by large numbers of people working in concert and is only useful because it's an agreed upon standard. That's like saying "did you get permission to create a car?" The car, it's use, an some aspects of its design are based on societal norms, not one person or a group of people's work, just like language. Comparing using language to giving your buddy a ripped copy of Star Wars is worse of a comparison than comparing eating Beef to the cannibalizing of slaves.