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by foobarbazqux 4679 days ago
Do you have the freedom to profit from your ideas in the state of nature?
2 comments

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).

If I have a natural right to profit from my ideas, isn't it reasonable that I might want a legal right?
In a state of nature, there is no such thing as a "legal right", or law of any kind other than might-makes-right.
But legal rights are synonymous with might-makes-right. A natural or human right is something we would like to have but cannot guarantee until it is made into law. I am just asking whether laws about intellectual property correlate to natural rights in the same way that laws about physical property do, since the original claim was that they are 100% fabricated.
Whether they're synonymous is entirely a matter of your world view with respect to the origin of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is the defining feature of a state. Do individuals delegate their right to the use of force to the state, in the process giving them a monopoly on it? Or do states impose said monopoly on the individual, in effect overriding their natural rights? To avoid committing a fallacy here: or is there a third option?
The fallacy is that the choice is presented as either/or instead of both/and. Some of my natural rights are embodied in law, some of them aren't, that's how it goes.
Do you have the freedom to use violence to prevent others from profiting from your ideas?
You have the freedom to use violence prevent anything you bloody well like.
Was your first question rhetorical?
Yes, sorry :/

Well, maybe I didn't realize it though since I don't spend much time thinking about my freedoms in the state of nature, and people were making all these arguments about physical property being a natural right.