[ataggart]

As Orwell wrote, "the English language ... becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

Considering that patents are entirely a government creation, "ban" or "outlaw" does not apply, for such language treats patents as something apart from the state. Perhaps "stops issuing" would be more accurate, but it's not clear from the article whether that's actually the case.

[foobarbazqux]

I don't know. Every legal concept is entirely the government's creation, including both physical and intellectual property, so I'm not sure it's worth quibbling about that part.

[troyastorino]

Legal concepts that are derivative from the natural right to liberty, e.g. freedom of speech, are protected by the government, but that is not the same as them being created by the government. An individual certainly has liberty, and thus freedom of speech, in the context of a state of nature. He does not, however, have a guarantee that an organization with a monopoly on the use of force, i.e. a government, will protect that liberty.

[rayiner]

I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."

[nitrogen]

I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."

As a first pass at a definition, anything you could do in the absence of any other people stopping you from doing it could be considered a "natural right."

That's not superstitious or handwavy, and I didn't have to belittle my audience to express it.

[foobarbazqux]

Do I have a natural right to hurt somebody weaker than me?

[Filligree]

That would seem to be implied.

[foobarbazqux]

From what I can tell, the idea of natural rights is really popular with people who are into anarcho-capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights#Conte...

> Contemporary political philosophies continuing the liberal tradition of natural rights include libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and Objectivism, and include amongst their canon the works of authors such as Robert Nozick, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.

As far as I'm concerned:

  legal rights : natural rights :: laws : morals

[rayiner]

My problem with "natural rights" is that they're a way to take one set of arbitrary priorities and elevate them to some sort of law of nature, without having to justify them on utilitarian grounds. You have a right to property but not a right to education. Why? Because the former is a "natural right." Its no different from resorting to "because the Bible says so." Its also used to undermine democratic consensus in the same way as resorting to theology. Oh, everyone thinks there is a right to education? Wrong! Because the Bible says so... Err... Because its not a natural right, just some creation of government.

[foobarbazqux]

Yeah, it often seems they're a disguise for moral absolutism. Some convenient rule system that you can latch on to and then use to decide if things are good or bad. Tax is the worst thing there is, for example.

But, natural rights are in the same category as human rights, and there are many human rights that I value despite their nonexistence as laws.

It seems to me that natural rights are often a covert argument for male supremacy over women and children. A man is stronger than a woman, therefore he has a natural right to dominate her. The same goes for children. A child has no right to anything from its parents, because if you must depend on someone else, you wouldn't be free to obtain it in the absence of other people.

But dependence is how we are born into the world. Education is given to us while we are in a state of dependence. Is it really only that educators have the right to educate? Perhaps, if you really don't believe in assigning rights on the basis of need.

In the libertarian mindset, it's almost as if the government represents one's parents, and the romanticized state of being alone in the wild represents freedom from one's parents. Actually I believe that it's next to impossible for anybody arguing for an extreme position like anarcho-capitalism in the typical cult-like manner that we see to be reasonable, because doing so would require making the connection from what they're proselytizing to their own lives and processing their own feelings about authority.

[hacker789]

> You have a right to property but not a right to education.

I don't believe in "natural rights", nor do I believe concept has any real value. That said, you're misconstruing their argument.

Someone who believes in natural rights would say:

> You have a right to own property, but you aren't entitled to be given property. Similarly, you have the right to get an education, but you aren't entitled to be given an education.

[kaonashi]

There are no legal rights in the state of nature. There is no liberty in the state of nature. These things don't exist as features of the land, they're concepts created by humans to curtail specific types of human behavior.

[foobarbazqux]

Do you have the freedom to profit from your ideas in the state of nature?

[a-priori]

Assuming we're talking about the Hobbesian "state of nature" then yes, of course you do have that freedom. Along with every other freedom.

But you only have a right to profit insofar as you can keep others from exercising their freedom to steal your ideas (or anything else).

[foobarbazqux]

If I have a natural right to profit from my ideas, isn't it reasonable that I might want a legal right?

[a-priori]

In a state of nature, there is no such thing as a "legal right", or law of any kind other than might-makes-right.

[baddox]

Do you have the freedom to use violence to prevent others from profiting from your ideas?

[foobarbazqux]

You have the freedom to use violence prevent anything you bloody well like.

[baddox]

Was your first question rhetorical?

[humanrebar]

While intellectual property is almost entirely a legal creation, government is not necessary for property to exist. Indeed, John Locke considered property to be a natural right along with life and liberty.

[saraid216]

Locke's definition of property always felt like a philosophical hack to me.

It seemed more like an, "Oh shit, I need a definition of property," than a "Well... so that's what property is. Fascinating."

[Zigurd]

The point is that intellectual property is property in the same way that quarks have "color." It is a relatively novel legal concept compared to physical property. In the US constitution it is completely distinct from other rights: You are assumed to just have rights. Not among the assumed rights are patents and copyright, which are a government granted monopoly.

[humanrebar]

I agree with you about patent and copyrights, but I think it's important that people view essential rights like property rights and freedom of speech as being truly inalienable -- that individuals have them as long as right and wrong exist.

[dublinben]

>property rights and freedom of speech as being truly inalienable

That's a simply preposterous belief though, and we should treat it as such. Many people have their rights to property and speech infringed on a regular basis. There isn't even a consensus on what those rights entail, as is clear any time 'hate speech' is brought up.

[Zigurd]

"Inalienable" is quite an idealistic and American word in this context. Nevertheless, the US federal constitution is written with some assumptions, and a "sense," That is, it is addressed to the government, from the people and the states, which predate the existence federal government, and which can undo the federal government through a constitutional convention. The ninth and tenth Amendments spell out the assumption that rights are not granted by the government, but powers are delegated to the federal government. Rights are open-ended. Powers are enumerated. This is an elegant way of making the constitution future-proof (so beware of people who start a sentence with "The Framers never had...").

Copyright and patents are a notable exception to the above. They are an explicitly granted monopoly, through an explicitly enumerated power of the federal government. The "property" part appears nowhere in the constitution and is a tendentious word added later, like "pro-life."

[humanrebar]

The work "inalienable" implies that it's outside the moral authority of culture, society, and government to remove those rights. It doesn't imply that those rights can never be infringed. That is, violating those rights is immoral, not impossible.

In fact, the consensus that rights are infringed proves they exist. This is a correct example of the often misused phrase, "the exception that proves the rule".

But you are right that the specifics of weighing rights against each other are tricky. That's where cultures, governments, and legal systems come in. To be clear, those human organizations do not create inalienable rights, but they are responsible for enforcing them. And a failure to do so would be a moral failure, not an impossibility.

[saraid216]

Incidentally, this entire thread can basically be summarized here:

http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/02/episode-04/

[baddox]

And, empirically, property existed long before governments.

[a-priori]

Well yes, as soon as a creature needs to expend energy to obtain a thing they plan on using later, another creature is going to try to obtain it in a simpler way: by stealing it. And so, even apes and birds have a concept of 'property': things that are theirs, usually cached food, that they will take pains to hide and/or defend.

With humans it isn't quite so clear. The default societal structure for humans is the band, which is basically an extended family unit. In a band, property is shared by the group. If a member of another band sneaks in and takes something, that's theft and will result in retaliation. So a concept of property exists at the band level. But I don't believe that individual members of a band have stuff they are allowed to use but no one else.

It's only in more complex societies that private property at the individual level definitely exists. But these societies also have some form of government, even if it's just a tribal chief.

So if by 'property' you mean private (i.e, individual) property, it's not quite so clear which came first: property or government.

[iopq]

Except that's not true. Monkeys are supposed to give the eggs or other food items that they find to the senior members of their group. But sometimes they'll eat them when nobody is looking, or if they create a diversion (like they'll call like a predator is coming)

so theft can be done in group, especially when there's scarcity

[foobarbazqux]

How can you have ownership without protection?

[baddox]

People can and do protect what they believe to be their property. Families and tribes can and do protect the territory they believe to belong to their members.

I like David Friedman's description of property rights not primarily as moral or legal constructs, but as mutually recognized commitment strategies which discourage trespasses. He points out that territorialism in the animal kingdom is similar to property rights (obviously without the existence of a state). Animals mark their territory (e.g. with urine), and other animals tend to respect those boundaries, because there is mutual understanding that the territory holder will fight a trespasser to the death if necessary, and the damage to the trespasser (even a stronger trespasser) will most likely not be worth it. Perhaps the territory holder would be better off just retreating, but what makes it "property" is the near certainty that he won't retreat.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Order_without_the_sta...

[foobarbazqux]

I would call that a state; why is it not a state?

[humanrebar]

Whether your property is stolen or not, it ought to be yours. The enforcement of a right is not necessary for a right to exist.

[foobarbazqux]

Enforcement is necessary for a natural right to be a legal right.

[foobarbazqux]

Sorry, if it's you in the forest with a shotgun defending your property in a libertarian utopia, you're the government.

[jlgreco]

Like most normal well adjusted people, I don't steal and I expect and find that those around me do the same. The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me. Clearly the concept of property, at least as it exists in my office, is not an artifact of some governing body. It exists despite that; it exists without any threat of force.

Or is that most basic mutual respect now "the government" in an office environment? If that is the case then we are basically removing any useful meaning from the word.

[foobarbazqux]

That's a good point. The last time I was reading about this I found out that some anarchists (pacifists, maybe) refer to this idea as "possession", to distinguish it from property. It's not "your" keyboard (in this case it probably belongs to the company), but you're using it right now, so it would be indecent to take it away from you.

[jlgreco]

Hmm, sounds about right. I haven't read much anarchist literature at all, but that meshes pretty nicely with what I know of anarcho-syndicalists.

Either way, I think it stems from the same basic human desire, probably hardwired, to not have things taken and to have some basic loyalty or respect to members of your 'tribe'. (After all, governments are made of people and those people must have thought the concept of 'property' was a good idea for some reason.)

[saraid216]

There is a concept called stewardship, too. "I have a responsibility to this piece of property. I have a moral duty to safeguard, cultivate, and appropriate utilize this property. I expect that it will be passed on to another for usage at some point for some reason, and in recognition of that future steward, I will do my best to forward it in the best condition possible."

I don't feel like I'm doing the concept justice, but hopefully I'm conveying the gist well enough to distinguish from "ownership" and "possession".

[jusben1369]

"The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me." - Do you really believe that? If someone wanted your keyboard their thought process - if conscious - probably follows the following: "If I take that and get caught then I'll likely be fired. So it's not worth me putting my monthly salary of $5000 at risk for a $50 keyboard" Well what if you do get caught? Just tell them they can't fire you! You won't leave the building!! Then they'll call the police and I'll be charged with a

I don't think it's good or bad. I just think it's entirely inaccurate to think that if someone covets what you have that they hold back due to a base level of respect for the other person. If that held true there'd just be no crime period in society because everyone would say "I'm not going to do that because I'd hate for that to be done to me as another human being"

[betterunix]

"If someone wanted your keyboard their thought process - if conscious - probably follows the following: "If I take that and get caught then I'll likely be fired. So it's not worth me putting my monthly salary of $5000 at risk for a $50 keyboard" Well what if you do get caught?"

That is a depressing but thankfully unrealistic view of how people behave. In my office there are no specific rules about taking keyboards, monitors, or even computers off each other's desk. Once a year the department takes an inventory of the equipment to make sure it is still in the building, and once in the past five years an email was sent out to remind everyone not to take monitors home with them.

The reason nobody takes things from each other here is respect and courtesy. There are only about 100 of us in this building, making us a small enough group that we can trust each other. When things are truly stolen -- taken out of the building, rather than just moved between desks -- emails are sent out asking if anyone knows what happened. It is almost always the case that an outsider came in and grabbed something valuable, and that almost never happens.

Obviously this is not something that scales past a hundred or so people, but the point is that in small, trusting groups there is no real need for iron-clad rules or harsh punishments. People can and do behave respectfully and courteously.

[jlgreco]

> Do you really believe that?

Yes, I do. It is how I think, and I think well enough of my coworkers that I believe they think the same. I wouldn't assume that they don't think that way without evidence of it, since that is a vile thing to assume.

Are there some people without this respect who are held in line merely by the law, or fear of losing their job? Sure, of course there are some people like that. The fact remains that a notion of property/possession exists for the rest of the population; for the people who are not defective in such a way.

Not everybody would steal from those around them if they thought they could get away with it. To be perfectly honest, I am rather suspicious of anyone who assumes that everybody would steal if given the chance.

[iopq]

Of course they can fire you. They can stop paying you. You can stay in the building all you want.

[homosaur]

I get what you're aiming at but if you're holding the shotgun, that's not government. Government is when I cede the right to protect my forest with a shotgun in order that a government entity will do it for me. We give government a monopoly on force under the agreement that I generally should not be shooting people to protect my rights.

[orclev]

That's not entirely true, at least in the United States. That's part of the purpose of the 2nd amendment. We cede some of our rights to use force to the government, but things like Castle Doctrine and the 2nd amendment mean we also retain those rights in specific circumstances.

Another aspect of the 2nd amendment people often overlook (particularly gun control advocates) was that it was originally intended as a check to the power of the army. The idea being that should the government ever try to use the military to suppress the public, that an armed public would be able to fight back and presumably being bigger than the military, win. That theory has been greatly eroded in the last 70 years or so by the increasingly large gap between the weapons the military has access to and what the public has access to. Back when the constitution was drafted a rifle was a rifle was a rifle, and 200 soldiers versus 1000 citizens all armed with rifles, the citizens would likely win. These days with the military having tanks and jets and nightvision and all manner of other advanced weapons (including the much debated fully automatic rifles) means that your average group of citizens wouldn't stand a chance against the military in serious armed conflict.

[Karunamon]

>your average group of citizens wouldn't stand a chance against the military in serious armed conflict

I disagree with this - traditionally the US military hasn't fared very well in guerrilla warfare scenarios. Look at the number of deaths out in the middle east - fighting in city streets, that kind of thing.

I'd also wager that if the military was used against the populace, a great deal of the military would defect out of principle. So not only do you have an armed public in unfavorable conditions, our hypothetical evil government also has an unknown number of traitors in the ranks.

That leaves more indiscriminate options (bombs of various flavors) - and if things ever got that bad, we'd probably have other countries getting involved and even more defection.

In short, it's not near as simple as "government has tanks, therefore government wins".

[homosaur]

In general, the point of something like castle doctrine is to maintain defense of life, not property. If I went down to the edge of my property and someone came onto my property and was not threatening me you can't then shoot them. The argument for castle doctrine is you can consider the act of home invasion itself to represent deadly force and can respond freely.

Castle doctrine is a states-only policy and the feds have no position on it. The second amendment states only that people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed, it doesn't state anything about the application of force.

I don't want to get into this debate on HN but there's not that much evidence that the 2nd Amendment was meant to be a check on the army. It's related to the long-standing English principle of the right to self-defense and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. The English always thought you had the right to defend yourself with deadly force and a long standing tradition of a natural right to bear arms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms

[foobarbazqux]

It's a totalitarian government where the dictator and the sole citizen of the state are the same person, and the citizen works for the dictator (well, there's no choice). Government is simply the application of force to create rights. No more, no less.

But also, if you come onto my property, you don't have to cede authority to me, I'm still the government and I will make decisions about what happens to you, so you are bound to my laws whether you like it or not.

[sliverstorm]

Government is when I cede the right to protect my forest

We give government a monopoly on force

No, that's just one incarnation of government.

[betterunix]

You need a society for a government to make any sense. One person defending their property is neither a society nor a government.

Until you have the minimum viable population for our species (i.e. the smallest group of humans that can avoid extinction) you cannot really have a society.

[foobarbazqux]

So Adam and Eve then?

[betterunix]

Actually it takes more than one man and one woman for humanity to avoid extinction with a reasonable degree of success:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population

Of course, that number depends on things like the environment (a favorable environment will mean a smaller number) and the genetics of the "first" generation. I seriously doubt that the number could be as small as two for any species even under the most ideal circumstances.

[humanrebar]

The inability to enforce rights in nature is independent of the existence of those rights. You might need a shotgun to defend your life in a "libertarian utopia", but that doesn't mean you don't have a right to it.

In fact, your hypothetical correctly assumes that people need to protect their stuff. This need is evidence of self interest. The fact that there are universal norms that allow the use of force to protect things is evidence of a right to property.

In other words, a victim of theft is rightfully angry. This lets us conclude that he has a right to be free of theft. This indicates a right to property.

[foobarbazqux]

There's a difference between legal rights and natural / human rights. The latter are ideals, the former are what are brought into existence by the application of force.

Intellectual property corresponds (somewhat poorly) to the natural right of being allowed to profit from your ideas.

[betterunix]

There is no natural right to profit from your ideas. Your ability to even try to profit from your ideas is substantially dependent on external factors in your life -- your position in society, your ancestry, the availability of capital and your ability to acquire it, etc.

Do not confuse the right to think with the right to profit from your ideas. You do have a natural right to think about whatever you want, as well as a natural right to communicate your thoughts to others.

[humanrebar]

I disagree with your definitions. Rights, though abstract, are real. This is why atrocities outside the reach of law (murder in international water, war crimes, genocide) are clearly wrong.

Laws are nothing but codified decisions from government. Sometimes they define the specifics of how natural rights are balanced against each other. However, laws sometimes violate rights, such as the now-repealed Jim Crow laws in the American South. Furthermore, the term "legal rights" can also be a misnomer for government-guaranteed privileges such as the "right" to government-provided benefits or (in my opinion) intellectual property "rights".

[baddox]

You're free to define "government" in such a way, but that's not a very useful definition in a discussion about what role the "government" should play.

[foobarbazqux]

I think we went through this before. What was your definition of government again? A man and a woman alone together in a forest and the man has the shotgun?

[baddox]

No, that was never my definition of government.

[johnchristopher]

Every legal concept is entirely the government's creation, including both physical and intellectual property, so I'm not sure it's worth quibbling about that part.

Not entirely true. I want to point out that we have to consider how lobbying is influencing lawmakers.

[foobarbazqux]

Sure, lots of things influence the government. But the point is that none of our legal concepts actually exist until the government decides to make laws and enforce them.

[diminish]

Would NZ accept patents from USA (or other WTO countries), in legal processes?