Here’s proof you are right:
In the SAB, I identify the Bible's verses that contain good advice about how we should live our lives, whatever our religious views might be. For example, I think it's a good idea to try, at least as much as possible, to treat others kindly. So I include Leviticus 19:18 ("Love thy neighbor as thyself.") in the "Good Stuff". Of course, not all the verses that I've marked good are as good as this verse, but I marked them good because they seemed (at least somewhat) good to me.
So take a look at the SAB's good stuff to see if you agree, at least most of the time, that the verses that are marked good are, in fact, good. If so, then the following analysis should be reasonable for you, as well.
I'll begin with a plot of the number of good things in each book of the Bible.
There are two far outliers in the data: Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. Proverbs has the most good stuff, but it is also a much bigger book. Here is how it looks when size is taken into account. (The graph on the left is a histogram; the graph on the right is a box plot.)
So Ecclesiastes has nearly twice as much good stuff (per 100 verses) than any other book in the Bible.
But what about all the bad stuff in the Bible? Shouldn't we try to find a way to rate the goodness of a book by weighing both the book's good and bad stuff?
The simplest solution, I think, is to count up the good things in each book and subtract the bad. The result is the net good. (I totaled cruelty, injustice, intolerance, family values, women, and homosexuality to get the number of bad things, since the verses marked with these categories are all morally objectionable.)
When I did that, I found that there are only two good books in the Bible: Ecclesiastes (of course) and Proverbs. There are three others that have a zero net goodness. The other 61 books are all more bad than good (with a negative net goodness).
Here are the statistics for the two good and three not bad books in the Bible. (I'll deal with the bad books elsewhere.)
| Good Verses | Bad Verses | net good (good - bad) | net good / 100 verses | |
| Ecclesiastes | 37 | 1 | 36 | 16.22 |
| Proverbs | 54 | 47 | 7 | 0.77 |
| James | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Jonah | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 John | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
And here's a plot of the net good / 100 verses.
==
Check out the rest on that site – it’s brilliant – and don’t miss the fact the authors did the same to the Koran and the Book of Mormon
I don’t think Krugman is stupid because he disagrees with Austrian Economics – I think he’s stupid because he so obviously is, as revealed in this particular gem:
[w]hy doesn't the investment boom—which presumably requires a transfer of workers in the opposite direction—also generate mass unemployment?
Yup – that’s what he asks. Not rhetorically, but in all seriousness. You don’t believe it? Check it out here.
Krugman really went to pot.
seems so unfortunate – a bit like being vegetarian in Argentina; fine, if your tastes run that way, but you are certainly missing out on the best of the local cuisine!
by Anatol Lieven
06.10.2009
EMAIL ARTICLE | PRINTER FRIENDLY
Over the last several days, two pieces attacking the realist approach to Russia were published in prominent media outlets in the United States and Russia. One, co-authored by Lev Gudkov of the Levada Center, Igor Klyamkin, vice president of the Liberal Mission Foundation, Georgy Satarov, president of the Russian NGO the Indem Foundation and Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center was featured on the editorial page of the Washington Post. The other, by Andrei Piontkovsky, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, was released in the Moscow Times.
I read these pieces concerning the moves to improve relations between America and Russia with a profound feeling of depression. This is not just because there is something bizarre and twisted about pro-Western Russian liberals attacking the recommendations of the Hart-Hagel Commission or statesmen such as Henry Kissinger and James Baker. It is also because their criticism serves as a mouthpiece for the agendas of the most bitterly anti-Russian and geopolitically aggressive liberal interventionists and neocons who help maintain tensions between Russia and the West—and actually between the United States and the rest of the world.
And these tensions are extremely damaging to any hopes of the long-term liberalization and Westernization of Russia which these liberals want to further. Do Piontkovsky, Shevtsova and the others seriously think that the U.S.-Russian rivalry in the Caucasus, and the war over South Ossetia which resulted, helped the cause of liberalism in Russia? Do they ever actually talk to any ordinary Russians, one wonders? Or do their duties briefing Americans simply leave them no time for this?
My depression is also because Russia does in fact desperately need a strong liberal movement which can influence the state in a positive direction. Thus figures like Igor Yurgens, a leading businessman and adviser to President Medvedev, are playing an extremely valuable role in resisting moves to further authoritarianism, centralization and nationalization in response to the economic crisis. They could do much better if they had bigger support within the population at large.
Tragically however, many Russian liberals in the 1990s—through the policies they supported and the arrogant contempt they showed towards the mass of their fellow Russians—made liberals unelectable for a generation or more across most of Russia; and to judge by these and other writings of liberals like the ones under discussion, they have learnt absolutely nothing from this experience. They think that they form some kind of opposition to the present Russian establishment. In fact, they are such an asset to Putin in terms of boosting public hostility to Russian liberalism that if they hadn’t already existed, Putin might have been tempted to invent them.
Two aspects of their approach are especially noteworthy. The first is the profoundly illiberal—even McCarthyite—way in which Piontkovsky tries to disqualify views with which he disagrees by suggesting that they are motivated purely by personal financial gain, rather than conviction. Where, one wonders, would this leave all those Russian liberals, and U.S. think tanks, which took money from Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other Russian oligarchs in the past? Where would it leave those U.S. officials linked to leading U.S. private financial companies whose shares benefited so magnificently from the plundering of Russia in the 1990s? Where, indeed, does it leave Russians—like two of the writers under discussion—who draw their salaries from U.S. think tanks? Actually, I do believe that most are motivated by sincere conviction—but all the same, they would do well to remember the old adage about people who live in glass houses.
The other is the intellectual sleight of hand by which Shevtsova, Gudkov and the others suggest—without arguing or substantiating the suggestion—that the desire of ordinary Russians for greater democracy and the rule of law equates both with hostility to the present Russian administrationtout court, and to acquiescence in U.S. foreign-policy goals in Georgia and elsewhere. According to every opinion poll I have seen, it is entirely true that most Russians would like to see more of certain elements of democracy in Russia, including, as the authors mention, the rule of law and a freer media.
But, according to the same polls, this certainly does not add up to approval of “democracy” as it was practiced under the Yeltsin administration, and praised by some of the authors. Georgy Satarov was, in fact, a top official in Yeltin’s political machine with direct responsibility for some of the undemocratic practices of that administration. What is also absolutely certain according to the same polls is that whatever their feelings about Russian domestic policies, the overwhelming majority of Russians support the basic foreign-policy line of the present Russian administration and oppose that of the United States vis a vis Russia. This is not to say that every American policy decision has been wrongheaded and Russia remains justified in all of its positions, but rather that people who blindly back a U.S. democracy-promotion line are doing an injustice to the very liberalization they seek.
They are also very bad for the interests of America. The military overstretch produced by Iraq and Afghanistan has now been compounded by the colossal burden on U.S. resources created by the present economic recession. In these circumstances, as the Obama administration has recognized, the United States needs firstly to identify its truly important international interests and prioritize them; to reduce the hostility of other states to America wherever this can be done without surrendering important U.S. interests and values; and to enlist the help of other states, including Russia, in dealing with truly important issues like Iran’s nuclear program and the long-term future of Afghanistan.
Do these Russian authors really think that U.S. interests and values are served by giving lectures on democracy that only infuriate ordinary Russians? By making further commitments to a regime such as that of Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia? By pressing upon Ukraine a NATO membership which most Ukrainians oppose? The truth of the matter is that like Ahmed Chalabi and other “democracy promoters” who have sought U.S. aid, these writers care neither for American nor for Russian interests, but only to enlist U.S. help in trying to bring themselves and the groups they represent to power and influence in their countries—and do not even know enough about their countries to see that appealing for U.S. help in this way only reduces whatever popularity they still have.
By this kind of approach, foreign liberal informants like the Russians who authored these editorials have contributed to a deep flaw in Western journalism, reflecting in turn a tragic flaw in humanity itself: namely an extreme difficulty in empathizing with those whose background, culture, experience and interests differ from your own.
For of course, for better or worse, other peoples are just as nationalist as Americans themselves. They may well wish for democracy—but not always or necessarily if it comes with unconstrained capitalism and the assumption that to be a democrat means sacrificing your national interests to those of the United States. In the case of Russia, these American assumptions in the 1990s helped lead to the reaction of Vladimir Putin. And Putin’s Russia isn’t the worst we could see by a very long chalk. If the present Russian system falls, as the writers under discussion so ardently desire, we can be very sure of one thing: It would not be Russian liberals like them who would rise from the resulting ruins.
In none of the statements by the Hart-Hagel Commission or the likes of Henry Kissinger, is anyone an apologist for potential Russian aggression. Instead, they argue that compromise, when the West can afford it to get cooperation from Russia in the areas we need it, is the ultimate goal of sensible and realistic U.S. policy—not all or nothing strategies that will never achieve anything, and which these Russian liberals in any case never spell out in detail.
Understanding what narrative a specific nationalism is based on is key to creating better outcomes for U.S. policies in a number of countries of the world, including Iran and Pakistan. It is equally crucial in establishing better relations not just with the present Russian administration, but much more importantly with the Russian people; and thereby over time helping Russians get the freer media and more open elections they desire.
Part of the reason why both Russian liberals and many Western analysts tend to get Russia so badly wrong is that they instinctively compare that country with former Communist states, Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations. There, mass movements were generated in support of economic reform and democratization processes which, however flawed, spared them from the dreadful experience of Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s.
This comparison is dead wrong, and wrong for a reason that goes to the heart of the Russian liberals’ failure to win mass support in Russia. In Eastern Europe, successful democratization, the adoption of successful economic reform, and the eventual achievement of economic growth proceeded in tandem because they were backed up by very powerful mass nationalist drives in these countries that were directed first and foremost towards taking these countries out of the orbit of Moscow, and into their “rightful” historical place as members of the West.
The other aspect of Eastern Europe that cannot be replicated for Russia – or indeed, anywhere else in the world - is the pull, and the discipline, provided to the East Europeans and Baltics by the genuine offer of membership in the EU and NATO. The need to conform to the EU accession process in turn greatly limited opportunities for the kind of outright kleptocracy seen in Russia.
The failure to date to generate mass support for Westernizing reform in Russia has been a key factor in the extremely hesitant pace of such reforms compared to the central European countries and the Baltic states. This is due simply to the obvious fact that among Russians, anti-Russian nationalism cannot be a force of reform; and that, indeed, the whole drive to escape from the Soviet past has a completely different meaning.
If nationalism is to play a part in Russian development, then it will inevitably be along very different lines, and linked in some form to the restoration of Russia’s position as a great power (not of course a superpower) in the world. A key problem for Russia, however, is that given the geopolitical ambitions of both Russia and Western powers, such a course of development inevitably brings with it a strong measure of rivalry with the West.
That pro-Western Russian liberals like Lilia Shevtsova have the greatest difficulty confronting or even recognizing this dilemma stems from the tragic nature of their situation. They genuinely believe not only that their program is in Russia’s national interest, but that reform in Russia requires the closest possible relations with the West. This necessarily means that Russia has to sacrifice a range of lesser interests for the sake of their higher, indeed all-encompassing goal of “integration into the Western community” (a virtual leitmotif of her 2005 book Putin’s Russia).
But integration into the Western community, whether it be NATO or the EU, is not on offer at least for the foreseeable future. From the point of view therefore not only of Russian nationalists, but of ordinary nonideological Russians, there just are not enough benefits on offer in return for the concessions that Shevtsova and her allies are willing to make to the West in international affairs: like agreement to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, reincorporation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Georgia, acquiescence in a U.S. missile shield in central Europe and so on. And indeed, even for a non-Russian, there is something a bit nauseating about Shevtsova’s determination in her published writings to agree with the United States and condemn her own country on every single issue on which they have disagreed.
This goes not only for issues where America was in the right, for example over past Russian interference in Ukraine’s presidential election campaign; but for issues where by far the greater part of the world supported Russia’s position, as over Bush’s abrogation of the anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The Putin administration’s efforts to maintain the treaty were, however, attributed by Shevtsova in her book to Soviet-style “complexes” and “neuroses.”
Nausea aside, the point once again is that such sentiments on the part of these sorts of liberals contribute to making them unelectable in Russia. And this of course is not the result of some form of unique Russian chauvinism or hatred of the West. Any American political grouping which openly and repeatedly identified with foreign interests over those of the United States would not, I think, be very likely to do well in an American election.
But then, Shevtsova and her allies do not really give a damn what ordinary Russians think or feel, and certainly take no interest in minor issues such as their incomes or living standards. The radical decline in the real value of state pensions in the 1990s, accompanied by long arrears in payments and the destruction of savings through devaluation, condemned many elderly Russians to hunger, despair and a premature death. Every reliable opinion poll on Putin’s popularity in his first years gave as one of the chief reasons the fact that under his rule pensions were paid on time, and their value had risen. The same was true of state wages.
By ignoring these issues, Shevtsova is able to write in her book that “For the intelligentsia, people who lived in large cities, and the politicized section of society, 2000 was much harder than 1999.” Statements of this kind consign the mass of the Russian population—including the elderly and the state-employed workers of the big cities—to non-existence. They implicitly state that the only sections of society whose opinions and interests should be of concern to the government are educated, young and dynamic urbanites. This was the approach of brash elite globalizers everywhere. They should not be surprised however if populations disagree, sometimes violently.
Gary Kasparov, treated by much of the Western media as the political face of Russian liberalism, has a very different approach. It has been to plan for Russian economic collapse, and with this in mind, to forge an alliance with savagely chauvinist neo-fascist groups, which will provide the tough street fighters who will exploit mass economic discontent. Shevtsova and her colleagues should take a close look at this repulsive but insightful strategy and ask themselves whether they really understand the country, and the world, that they are living in.
Anatol Lieven, a senior editor at The National Interest, is a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.
I've always found it much more satisfying to laugh at other people.
Brian Cantin
(who ever he may be)
I have been struggling with the question of abortion and libertarianism for some time now, and while my instincts tell me that abortion would probably be at least tolerated in a libertarian society, I am not sure whether it is compatible with the strict logic of libertarian thought.
I’m therefore quite pleased to have found Wendy McElroy’s thoughts on the issue, and while they are probably not the last word on it, I think they make a good case that libertarians have no choice but to support the right to abort foetuses, regardless of their status as human beings:
Abortion is still hotly debated within libertarianism. This has always seemed odd to me since I believe libertarianism is based on self-ownership and that a pregnant woman has an unquestionable right to her own body, including the right to expel the fetus or have any other body part amputated. This right has been subjected to critical scrutiny by anti-abortionists in the movement who claim the fetus is a human being with full individual rights that are violated in an abortion. Basically, anti-abortionists pit the woman's rights against the alleged rights of the fetus, and give the latter priority.
The argument is a weak one and open to attack from several directions. But my purpose here is a bit different. I want to explore some of the implications of the anti-abortion position because they are usually ignored even though they are vicious in nature.
Implication #1: If the fetus is accorded individual rights, then the aborting woman and anyone who assists her are murders and must be subject to whatever penalty society metes out for that crime, up to and including capital punishment. The punishment should be applied to past abortions as there is no statute of limitation on murder. If anti-abortionists shy away from this conclusion, then they do not really consider abortion to be murder. Note: it does not matter that the woman didn't view the fetus as a child; if her state of mind exonerates her, then it follows that a racist should be exonerated for killing blacks.
Implication #2: if a woman cannot 'kill' her fetus because it is a separate human being, then she also cannot injure it. If she does, she should be prosecuted in the same manner as if she assaulted an innocent bystander. If she ingests harmful substances, then the law should view the act as though she had strapped down a child and force-fed a toxin to it. Thus, the pregnant woman is vulnerable to criminal prosecution based on her diet, her lifestyle choices, etc. If anti-abortionists do not follow their own logic this far, it is not because the logic doesn't lead here. It is because the conclusion makes them uncomfortable.
Implication #3: if a woman wishes to abort or to take actions that will harm the fetus -- e.g. smoking crack -- then she should be imprisoned or otherwise forcibly restrained from inflicting death and/or injury on the innocent "child." Constant monitoring would be required -- presumably by the state; the woman would be a slave to her fetus. Anti-abortionists must explain how -- short of totalitarianism -- they intend to protect fetuses in peril.
Implication #4: anti-abortionists are effectively defining pro-choice libertarians out of the movement. If anti-abortionists are correct, then pro-choice libertarians are morally sanctioning and/or legally encouraging the deliberate mass murder of defenseless children. If there is any line that cannot be crossed without losing all claim to the word "libertarian", then surely the advocacy of mass murder is that line.
Implication #5: anti-abortionists are destroying the concept of natural righs itself which claims that every human being properly has jurisdiction over his or her own body. It is only because each human being is a self-owner that is is improper to initiate force against another. But if the fetus possesses the right to live off the pregnant woman's body functions -- to share the food she eats, the blood her heart pumps -- then this is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly own the body functions of another. It is tantamount to saying one human being can properly enslave another.
Implication #6: anti-abortionists are destroying the idea of "a natural harmony of rights" between human beings. If rights are based on being human, then everyone has the same ones to the same degree. The self-ownership of one person in no way violates the self-ownership of another; my freedom of religion in no way violates yours. Consider if human nature were different, however. If I had a biological need to eat human flesh in order to live, then the structure of universal rights would make no sense. One man's life would require another man's death. This would be Hobbes' "war of all against all" and to demand the non-initiation of force would be to condemn mankind to extinciton. Similarly the anti-abortionists posit a fetus whose right to self-ownership is in direct opposition to the self-ownership of the pregnant woman. They posit a biological disharmony of interests. Although such disharmonies can occur in nature -- e.g.. Siamese twins -- these occurences are extremely rare and not commonplace, like pregnancy. If they were not rare, then the idea of natural rights or "harmony of interest" would have no application to human nature.
Implication #7: anti-abotionists are claiming, "The fetus is an individual with rights" and, so, the onus of proof logically rests on the one who asserts a claim rather than upon those who see no evidence for the assertion.
Implication #8: if a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, anti-abortionists must legally require the woman to remain pregnant even if it means her death. Otherwise they do not take their own argument seriously. If the fetus is a separate individual with full rights, then the ill woman has no more right to kill it to save her life than a woman who needs a liver has the right to kill another person to secure a 'donor' organ. You cannot kill an innocent bystander just because your health requires it.
Implication #9: pregnancies that result from rape must also be brought to term. Anti-abortionists who make exceptions for e.g. a 12-year-old who becomes after being raped are saying that it is alright to kill an innocent baby under the 'proper' circumstances... which denies their entire argument, of course.
I just came across an idiosyncratic and very good critique of the Star Wars series. I could never stand Star Wars very much, at least not since I stopped being a teenager – but I never spent much effort analysing why. The obvious absurdity of lightsabers and superluminal flight always seemed enough for me, but it wasn’t until today that I realized how outright malevolent the Star Wars mythology really is. Read it here.
There really shouldn’t be a need to write a post with the title Why Atheism? The absurdity of theistic beliefs has been exposed for centuries, again and again, on strictly logical grounds only, but recent advancements in science have really put the final nail into whatever pseudo-empirical rejoinder the theists had to offer. However, as Atheism still remains the minority opinion globally, it is from time to time necessary to repeat the obvious.
For those who think the issue calls for some humour there’s always the Internet Infidels’ classic “Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence”, made famous in Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”. Some of my personal favourites:
ARGUMENT FROM THE BIBLE
(1) [arbitrary passage from OT]
(2) [arbitrary passage from NT]
(3) Therefore, God exists.
ARGUMENT FROM NUMBERS
(1) Billions of people believe in God.
(2) They can't all be wrong, can they?
(3) Therefore, God exists.
ARGUMENT FROM FALLIBILITY
(1) Human reasoning is inherently flawed.
(2) Therefore, there is no reasonable way to challenge a proposition.
(3) I propose that God exists.
(4) Therefore, God exists.
ARGUMENT FROM ARGUMENTATION
(1) God exists.
(2) [Atheist's counterargument]
(3) Yes he does.
(4) [Atheist's counterargument]
(5) Yes he does!
(6) [Atheist's counterargument]
(7) YES HE DOES!!!
(8) [Atheist gives up and goes home.]
(9) Therefore, God exists.
But, for the more seriously inclined, this discussion should refresh the memory.
Not sure this is a proper way of doing it, but I’m going to steal the debate and move it here.
Stewart said... I think there is an important distinction between what Tucker is speaking against, and what Rockwell is speaking against.
In the former case, Tucker thinks that the "property" aspect of intellectual property is no such thing. That is, that publicly-available information cannot be owned. In the latter case, Rockwell is speaking against the idea that government should use force to compel private organizations to give away private information.
These two positions are entirely reconcilable. If the manufacturers decided, ultimately, to make their repair codes etc. public, then that information could be copied by anyone. But if they don't make it public, the government has no business forcing them to do so.
May 22, 2009 12:11 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
@ Stewart
Just when does something become "publicly available" in your world? The owner of the book Tucker is discussing is clearly not interested in the terms Tucker is offering. Yet somehow, in your world, Tucker has the right to usurp this owners rights and not those of the owner of manufacturing code?
May 22, 2009 12:28 PM
savecapitalism said... Is there a title/release-date planned for the coming book? The intellectual property debate is raging here in Sweden, so it would be very interesting to read more on the topic ....
May 22, 2009 12:36 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
I should have more details on a release date, etc. in about a month.
May 22, 2009 1:04 PM
Stewart said... @Robert, I don't think the distinction between what is public and what is private is actually that important here. I shouldn't have placed so much emphasis on those words in my earlier post.
What's important for Rockwell's post is whether there is government coercion involved in forcing the dissemination of information. For Tucker's series of posts, the critical factor is whether government coercion is involved in preventing the dissemination of information.
If a car manufacturer uses cryptography or secrecy to prevent others from accessing the car's electronic data, Rockwell's position is that the government should not force them to give the decryption keys away. Tucker's position is that, once those keys are known to the public (whether through reverse engineering, espionage, or the owner's manual), the car manufacturer has no basis for claiming ownership of that information. That also applies to the data which is later acquired using those decryption keys, such as internal programming data for the onboard computer.
So these are two different arguments. Whether Rockwell and Tucker agree on them is unclear from the posts you linked to. I suspect that they do, given their respective roles at the LvMI, but it's not necessary that they do in order to reconcile the two positions, because they aren't mutually exclusive.
May 22, 2009 2:07 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
@ Stewart
Let me make it simple. I write a one page analysis of the economy, I give it to you under the condition that you do not show it to anyone else, are you saying I have no righht to contract with you this way, that I must encrypt it?
May 22, 2009 2:42 PM
Stewart said... If I sign that contract, and if I do show it to someone, then I've obviously violated our contract. To that extent, I think you're correct.
In order to extend that logic to the contemporary system of copyrights, however, you have to believe that everyone is implicitly agreeing to contracts between themselves and the creators of every piece of original material that they encounter.
Suppose that I do violate our contract, and I distribute your work to my colleagues. Even if we agree that I hold some moral culpability for that transgression, it's not at all clear that my colleagues have done anything wrong by accepting the paper from me. And if they continue to distribute it on their own, it's hard to see how they're violating any contract with you, since no such contract existed.
Now, you may see that as being akin to accepting and reselling stolen goods. That presupposes that the information itself is your property, however. The contract alone cannot establish that.
May 22, 2009 3:26 PM
James Rothfeld said...
It is actually possible - conceptually - to have something resembling current copyright in a libertarian social order: ISP companies, copy machine manufacturers, and others, can make a condition in their terms of use that copyright is to be respected, and that if anybody uses their technology to violate copyright, then they are liable to pay damages to the ISP or manufacturer. You could further make a condition of purchase that you shall only sell the copy machine if you agree to have the purchaser agree to these terms as well, and so forth.
Even better, manufacturers of computers can make this a condition for the use of their product, and if you violate that provision, you will be taken to court under common contract law for violating the terms of your contract.
There is nothing in libertarian theory that makes such conditional ownership transfer illegitimate.
Of course, this leaves the possibilities of rival companies offering their products without such contracts... and let free competition take care of the argument.
May 23, 2009 2:49 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
@ James Rothfeld
I absolutely agree.
@James Rothfeld and @Stewart
I do note that both of you are not specifically addressing the Tucker view, but if you check his writings,it is clear in his world that private contracts for intellectual creations would not be legitimate.
In his world intellectually created works would not come with ownership rights, even if the creator will only release them under those terms! They are free for all to use, and some how not violate property rights.
May 23, 2009 3:09 PM
James Rothfeld said...
The reason I do not address Tucker's argument is because it is probably one of the lousiest articles on the issue I have read in a long time. :)
And I've no hesitation to rant and rail against the patent laws and argue till the cows come home that patent law as it exists now creates a) plain old rent-seeking, and b) creates waste by forcing people to invent around the patent law.
Basic question about tucker's argument: does the noodle company KNOW how the noodle is designed? Because once it KNOWS it, there is no legitimate way to stop it from using this knowledge.
So, while you the economist have a right to bind the person you gave your paper to a promise not to publish it, should this person LOSE the paper, and I find it, I can, of course, publish it - provided I am not in the process violating any contractual obligations I may have entered to otherwise (such as using a copy machine I bought under condition of NOT violating copyright)....
May 23, 2009 4:43 PM
Stewart said... @Robert, if Tucker really does believe that individuals can't enter into voluntary contracts regarding their own behavior, then I agree with you entirely. That idea is ridiculous on its face.
@James, your question about the noodles is essentially Tucker's point. It's only the temporary monopoly that the government grants patent-holders which prevents the company from making whatever kinds of noodles it likes.
And your last paragraph captures my earlier point nicely: A contact can only (voluntarily) constrain the behavior of the parties who sign it. For everyone else, there is no constraint, and therefore no sense of intellectual ownership.
May 23, 2009 6:51 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
Tucker on rights to your own intellectual creations:
If you have an idea, it is yours. You can do with it what you want. If you share it (sing, speak, broadcast, let others see the products of your ideas), others then have copies of it. They are entitled to do with their copies of the idea precisely what you can do with your idea. They can use it how they want provided they don't prevent others from doing with it what they want. This is a simple application of the non-aggression principle that governs a free society. Whether it is fashion, language, know how, or whatever, people are free to copy...What can you copy? Anything and everything. This is not "taking" anything from anyone. The original idea owner still has his. Other people now have their copies, and are free to improve it...You can even re-republish it under your own name, though that would amount to the socially repudiated vice of plagiarism (vice, not crime).
http://tinyurl.com/qlayfr
May 23, 2009 7:46 PM
James Rothfeld said...
I don't see an immediate contradiction between Tucker's position in the last article you quote, and mine - maybe only because it does NOT discuss the issue of what happens when I have a contract with the person I share my idea with not to copy it.
I think that's the point about the book issue: if it is my book, and i gave it to you - the publisher - with the condition you not publish it without my consent, or that of my heirs, then you are bound to honor that commitment.
no?
May 23, 2009 8:26 PM
Stewart said... Robert, I think you may not fully understand Jeff Tucker's position. Nothing in that excerpt suggests that a person can't enter into a contract regarding intellectual creations. A constraint based on contracts is entirely different from a constraint based on a natural, default right to intellectual property.
Suppose that I possess the only known copy of a never-published play by Shakespeare. I don't have any intellectual property rights over this play, but I nonetheless have complete control over its distribution, since I hold the only copy. As a condition of giving you a copy, suppose that I make you sign a contract saying that you will never redistribute it.
I don't think that Jeff Tucker would have any problem with that contract. The excerpt you posted earlier is a description of what you, me, or anyone else can do with a Shakespearean play qua a Shakespearean play. Of course he isn't talking about the works of a long-dead author. But for Tucker, there is no difference (property-wise, anyway) between the intellectual works of Shakespeare, and the intellectual works of you or me. For most people, the informational content of the play cannot be owned due to its age, but for Tucker that content cannot be owned period.If you throw a contract into the scenario, it is no different. In my example above, you may very well be contractually prevented from redistributing the play, but you would not be under that constraint by default, or because of the nature of the play itself. With true intellectual property, the constraint is there even without your agreement, and it's that implicit constraint which Tucker argues against.
May 23, 2009 9:25 PM
Stewart said... Oh drat.
I need to qualify what I just wrote. Upon a closer reading, Jeff does seem to contradict my interpretation:
"They can use it how they want provided they don't prevent others from doing with it what they want."If he means what you are implying he means, then I think you're right to criticize him. That statement is just silly.
May 23, 2009 9:28 PM
Robert Wenzel said...
@JamesRothfeld and @Stewart
One problem with Tucker is that he is not a very precise writer. When he says you can copy anything, it is of course open to the clause, unless the original creator by contract prohibits such.
Tucker in the passage I quote simply does not address this point clearly yeah or nay. However, I am quite sure that a full reading of Tucker's views on the topic would clearly show my interpretation of his meaning in the quote that he does not believe that you can have a contract based on the work of intellectual property. That's why he says you can copy anything.
I quote Tucker from another piece:
"But some may object that protecting IP is no different from protecting regular property. That is not so. Real property is scarce. The subjects of IP are not scarce, as Stephan Kinsella explains. Images, ideas, sounds, arrangements of letters on a page: these can be reproduced infinitely. For that reason, they can't be considered to be owned."
http://tinyurl.com/23toxg
May 24, 2009 6:36 AM
Robert Wenzel said...
@JamesRothfeld and @Stewart
Here's Tucker explaining Kinsella:
"He made a strongly theoretical argument that ideas are not scarce, do not require rationing, are not diminished by their dissemination, and so cannot really be called property. All IP is unjust, he wrote. It is inconsistent with libertarian ethics and contrary to a free market. He favors the complete repeal of all intellectual-property laws."
http://tinyurl.com/9px9gd
Tucker again is not completely clear, but it is implied, if something can't be owned, you really can't have a contract about it.
I really believe that Tucker would say you can't contract with regard to a book. May I suggest you email him and ask. I would do it myself, but he has advised me that he has blocked my emails, after I published, here at EPJ, examples of the vulgar language he sent to me in emails!
May 24, 2009 6:56 AM
Erick said... @Robert,
Who gets the copyright/patent when two people invent something independently?
Are thoughts alienable?
May 25, 2009 6:09 AM
Robert Wenzel said...
@Erick
One of the problems with current IP thought is that it is generally viewed within a statist framework and there is further aggregation of IP protection than is appropriate.
Are thoughts alienable?Absolutely.
What is a consultant, if not a seller of thoughts?
Who gets the copyright/patent when two people invent something independently?This question implies the aggregation trap which I am going to address in detail in my book.
But, the short answer is they both do. If they both invent something independent and are not stealing from each other, then why shouldn't they both have the right to their creations?
May 25, 2009 6:50 AM
James Rothfeld said...
Erick,
we are not talking about a centrally administered state monopolisitic IP system, but about a common law system. If two people invent something at the same time, both have the right to use it, and to contract it out. Also, if somebody else figures out how do duplicate the invention simply by knowing about what it does, then that is fine, too.
The idea as such is not protectable.
Historic example: Mozart famously attended the performance of a piece of music that the author and owner had protected in so far that any copies of the music were not allowed to be duplicated, and that all performers were contractually obliged not to transcribe it. However, there was no contract that prohibited members of the audience to memorize it and then recreate it indepedently.
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/allegri/miserere.php
So that's what Mozart did.
Similar rules can be applied to cinemas: it may not be possible to prohibit the recording of a movie in principle, but it is possible for movie theaters to prohibit its patrons to record it. If anybody does, he would be guilty of violating the property rights of the cinema owner (analog to crying 'fire' in a theater not being illegal, but a property right violation).
May 25, 2009 7:24 AM
earth that was said...
I think Lawrence Lessig has staked out a "middle of the road" position on Copyright somewhere to the right of the "abolish all property in IP" position of some libertarians, and the corporatist statist machine that we have seen under DMCA, WIPO and the US government's, essentially protectionist, use of "free trade treaties" to extend it's IP regime around the world.
Lessig's "copyleft" argument strikes me as the genuine "free market" / libertarian one, even though Lessig himself is something of a liberal (a.k.a. social democrat).
More to the point, Lessig's defense of copyright shows that the founders of the American republic knew something about economics too. The following is a brief intro to Lessig's thinking, see here.
May 25, 2009 7:41 AM
Robert Wenzel said...
@Earth
I am taking things in a completely different direction. See my most recent post:
http://tinyurl.com/h7u6cs
May 25, 2009 9:59 AM
Erick said... Interesting discussion!
Robert, this makes a lot of sense to me:
If they both invent something independent and are not stealing from each other, then why shouldn't they both have the right to their creations?I am curious to see how you develop the idea in your forthcoming book!
What is a consultant, if not a seller of thoughts?How does a consultant sell thoughts?
The way I see it, a consultant sells his promise to appear in a certain place, at a certain time, in order to perform certain actions.
I can see how my finger is alienable. I can cut it off and give it to you. I no longer have that finger. I cannot see how I can alienate my thoughts: I can always continue thinking whatever I want.
Nor is there any guarantee that the person purchasing the person's time will gain any specific thinking process. At best there is a guarantee that he will feel certain feelings like "satisfaction".
The closet thing that might come to this are SAT prep classes that guarantee a specific rise in test scores. But how do "your thinking will improve" and "you will have my thoughts" differ?
@James,
there was no contract that prohibited members of the audience to memorize it and then recreate it indepedentlySuppose there was, would it be valid?
Can I sign a contract alienating rights to my brain?
May 25, 2009 11:00 PM
James Rothfeld said...
Yes, it would have been valid, since it would be a contract regarding action, or restraint from action. "Alienation" has nothing to do with this. Free market copyright regulates not 'ideas' as such, but actions of individuals. Last time I checked, nobody ever argued that we cannot contractually agree to limit our actions - whether it is loud singing in the middle of the night, or looking after somebody kids. Not to copy or reproduce something is merely refraining from a specific type of action.
If I gave you a million dollar under the condition that you never again sing in public, and you accepted this - would that be a valid contract?
If I paid you a million dollar to not reveal a secret about me - would that not be a valid contract?
How is this different from a contract that obliges you not to copy or reproduce something?
At the same time, if two people invent something simultaneously, they are NOT bound contractually to any kind of action.
What would, of course, be possible, is that you happen to work at a private university which stipulates in its contract with you that any invention you make must first be cleared with registry xyz for competing inventions. However, only people who directly or indirectly agreed to this system of clearance would be bound to it.
Again, none of this has anything to do with deep discussions about whether ideas or not are properly 'property' - it's about human action, which any libertarian will agree can be regulated bindingly by contractual agreement.
May 26, 2009 7:20 AM
Erick said... What do you think about Rothbard's thoughts on the matter:
Suppose that Smith makes the following agreement with the Jones Corporation: Smith, for the rest of his life, will obey all orders, under whatever conditions, that the Jones Corporation wishes to lay down. Now, in libertarian theory there is nothing to prevent Smith from making this agreement, and from serving the Jones Corporation and from obeying the latter’s orders indefinitely. The problem comes when, at some later date, Smith changes his mind and decides to leave. Shall he be held to his former voluntary promise? Our contention—and one that is fortunately upheld under present law—is that Smith’s promise was not a valid (i.e., not an enforceable) contract. There is no transfer of title in Smith’s agreement, because Smith’s control over his own body and will are inalienable. Since that control cannot be alienated, the agreement was not a valid contract, and therefore should not be enforceable. Smith’s agreement was a mere promise, which it might be held he is morally obligated to keep, but which should not be legally obligatoryShould we move the conversation to the new post?
May 26, 2009 7:41 PM
