This morning Joe was awakened by his alarm clock. Thanks to patents, which remove incentives to interoperability and modular design, the clock was designed to be thrown away rather than repaired. Thanks to “intellectual property” law, as well, the company was able to outsource actual production and then charge Joe a 1000% brand-name markup while paying the people who made it pennies. The clock was powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy — a regulated monopoly operating on the same cost-plus markup accounting system as most other public utilities, including the military contractors who gave us the $600 toilet seat. Joe then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility; Joe’s water bill reflects a rate structure which provides below-cost water for large-scale industrial use and agribusiness. Joe watched the news on the kind of legacy broadcast media described by Edward Herman, which thanks to the FCC licensing monopolies is controlled by a handful of corporate gatekeepers.
He watched it while eating his breakfast of General Mills cereal, which thanks to government subsidies was produced at some giant mill in Minneapolis, despite the fact that cereal grains are most economically milled on a small scale near the point of consumption. Joe has no idea what’s in his bacon, because the FDA (at Monsanto’s behest) prohibits labeling food as GMO-free. Most of what he eats is loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, and what little “fresh” produce he eats is shipped from a giant plantation thousands of miles away, thanks to USDA subsidies.
Joe took pills which were declared safe under an inspection regime originally created at the behest of the drug cartel itself, the inflated costs of which serve as a useful entry barrier and thereby benefit incumbent producers. He paid a 2000% markup on the pills thanks to government-granted patent monopolies. Joe’s medical plan stopped paying for prescription drugs because his weak union has been making more concessions at every contract renewal. The Wagner Act criminalized most of the really effective techniques, so unions like Joe’s are forced to fight by the bosses’ rules.
Joe drives to work on a government-subsidized highway system, built under the supervision of former auto exec Charlie “What’s Good for GM” Wilson. Joe’s commute takes almost an hour. Thanks to subsidized freeways and subsidized utilities to outlying developments, it’s artificially cheap to build monoculture bedroom communities far removed from where people work and shop. And thanks to zoning laws and other regulations against mixed use development, it’s extremely costly to live near your employer or be able to walk to a neighborhood grocer.
Joe begins his workday. He’s doing the work of a downsized person in addition to his own, the work environment is becoming increasingly hostile and authoritarian, and the micromanagement increasingly demeaning. He finds his face sore from the fake smile he constantly displays to reassure the bosses he’s got his mind right. He got no COLA raise last time around, and his insurance copay and deductible are higher. (It all gets back to the union thing above). The bosses sometimes drop hints about closing the plant down and moving to China, which is a whole lot more profitable thanks to World Bank subsidies to the road and utility infrastructure the offshore factories need, and thanks to WTO enforcement of “intellectual property” law that corporate headquarters use to maintain control of outsourced production overseas.
Joe pays his bills with legal tender created by banks, under the state-granted power to loan the medium of exchange into existence out of thin air and then charge interest on it.
After work Joe finds his kids back home from the public schools, where they’re being processed into human resources who will cheerfully take direction from some authority figure behind a desk for the rest of their lives — just like Joe does. While they were there, the kids were taught about the wonders of Our Free Enterprise System (suitably adjusted, of course, by government action to protect us from corporate power run amok).
When Joe goes to sleep, if he’s a conservative, he will thank the beneficent Free Market for all the good things he enjoys. If he’s a liberal, he’ll give thanks for the interventionist state as a bulwark against unbridled corporate tyranny. And he’ll get a night’s rest, preparing for another day of serving the unholy corporate-state alliance that rules his life from cradle to grave.
I'm reading this in bed. Now I won't sleep.
Thanks for the terrifying, if sadly realistic, horror story, Kevin.
Been waiting for this. Awesome.
I love this. Very nice!
I enjoy your writing. It is thoughtful and opinionated and fights the good fight, while not resorting to absolutism. Just wanted to say thanks!
Loved it!
This is brilliant. Thanks!
This is mostly an excellent article, but I must take exception to the following passage:
'Thanks to patents, which remove incentives to interoperability and modular design, the clock was designed to be thrown away rather than repaired. Thanks to “intellectual property” law, as well, the company was able to outsource actual production and then charge Joe a 1000% brand-name markup while paying the people who made it pennies.'
This is completely incorrect. A patent protects a company's interest in the designs it creates. Not allowing a patent on something is tantamount to saying that if it ever gets leaked, there is no way for the company to control who has access to the property it created… or for the person who created it to decide how it is used. In addition, by patenting something, an entity puts the design into the public space, thus increasing the opportunity for licensing and interoperability. The alternative is a system like that used by Coke and KFC, where there is a trade secret that is kept with such lack of access that no one outside the organization could possibly hope to interoperate or compete. This is why companies actually never patent their trade secrets.
As for IP law, while it is true it allows people to profit from their inventions (and the inventions of their employees), IP law can also be used to bolster such things as the open source and free software movements and prevent companies from claiming copyright on something that isn't theirs. Without IP law and copyright, nobody would effectively be able to assert control over anything they create. IP law does not *allow* someone to outsource production; that is corporate and tax law, which definitely both need major overhauls.
Maybe I'm biased because I'm gearing up for law school and eventually a career in intellectual property law, but I can tell you that this sentiment is actually extremely dangerous and short-sighted, not to mention completely incorrect. That doesn't stop me from enjoying the rest of the article, however – the rest is well-written and well-considered.
[...] other news, check out Kevin Carson on a day in the life under the corporate [...]
As always, I enjoy what Kevin Carson brings to the table, and this is, overall, a great piece. I second the disgust for which Carson feels for the State/ capitalism, and feel he’s written a piece that succinctly ascertains the life of the “Western” (a dubious concept to begin with) proletariat. But I find some points in the article that beg questions. And market anarchism begs the question: why, if you’re all making this anti-capitalist/ anti-statist critique, would you think replacing this mess with a market apparatus, would be a viable alternative? Do y’all see problems with quid pro quo exchange? If you think people can self-govern/ self-manage, wouldn’t the gift economy be the way to go? What problems do y’all see with this? Is money compatible with anarchism (I argue “Hell no!”)? It seems to me that any market’s going to involve exchange, and lots of rules and regulation. Hence, a “free market” is an oxymoron, even if it is anti-capitalist.
I wonder why their critique doesn’t include the market, when the market tends to be an authoritarian concept, a parameter in which people can do certain things, and not others, much like the State, gender binaries, the concept of “dis-ability” vis-a-vis so-called able-bodied folk, etc. But this is a more macro issue that I have with market anarchism/ mutualism. And I’m not attempting to be sectarian here; I’d genuinely like to have dialogue with mutualists about this particular issue. Obviously, the so-called “anarcho”-capitalists are a joke who suffer from historical amnesia, but I think there are genuine anti-authoritarians within the market anarchist milieu, with Carson being a primary example.
Why don’t we go a step further with the “alarm clock” critique here: if Joe didn’t have to work to sustain the system in which he’s stuck, the extractions made from the finite environment wouldn’t be necessary. If Joe didn’t have to work, he wouldn’t need an alarm clock. We must remember that punctuality is, in fact, a totalitarian concept that is first taught to us in school, which Carson correctly ascertains as an authoritarian institution. If we get rid of the State, we certainly won’t need schools (at least the compulsory, individuality/ diversity-breaking prisons that pass for educational institutions at present). And if we get rid of capitalism, we won’t need to go to the meaningless jobs we attend daily. So, forget intellectual property; in a free society, Joe doesn’t need his clock. Now, if he has to go contribute to perpetuating a market, whether he owns his means of production individually, works at a workers’ controlled firm, etc., he’ll need to get up at 7:30am, and he’ll need the damn thing. So I wonder, would Carson not critique work per se, only the way in which we do it under state-capitalism? Is work itself not inherently brutal, even if we collectively self-manage the market?
Carson is correct that industrial agriculture is a huge problem. But Carson seems to fall into the left-liberal trap here, simply advocating the “locavore” line, as if small farms are not also inherently destructive to ecosystems. Monoculture is monoculture, and growing rows of crops on soil, in geographic regions for which said crop is not indigenous, is bound to cause ecological problems.
Carson talks about Joe’s trip to work, proclaiming the problem as express-ways and suburbs and zoning laws and state-subsidies. Yes, all of this is wretched. But I wonder: is the problem the fact that we use automobiles per se? If we create communities that we work in, live, and shop, it seems Carson thinks this might solve the problem. Of course this would be less worse. But if we’re not growing the food we need ourselves, and simply propping up markets of exchange as wage slaves, it seems like we’re headed straight for the same catastrophe in which we’re currently headed towards. Local autonomous control coupled with decentralization is a good thing. Local markets of exchange? I’m highly suspicious of such entities.
Again, this sounds much like the left-liberal solution. How about the abolition of the automobile, and of shopping as an act in which we bring meaningless currency of equal, arbitrary value to exchange with the things we desire and need? Automobiles destroy ecosystems; it’s doubtful that urban planning can solve this catastrophe with the perpetuation of yet more of these weapons of mass destruction (cars). Maybe if we talk about communities sharing a limited number of electric cars, this would work, but I’m now skeptical on the matter.
Carson discusses the pills Joe takes. The participation in the market, in working for a living, the unhappiness and mundanity of what Carson ascertains, coupled with the physical stress of work, which seems to be completely unnatural (i.e., even serfs in the Middle Ages worked 2/3 of the year, and many individuals from indigenous societies, when forced to work in civilization, literally died) is more-than-likely causing Joe’s symptoms. Western medicine is an absolute sham that seeks to wait until people are broken, and provide them with pain relief or surgery. It functions on the market as yet another pyramid scheme. A great deal of what is breaking people is the way in which we live. Forget the 2000% markups (which are par for the course under state capitalism); if we do away with what’s formally called “work” and markets, we probably wouldn’t need to be taking the pills Joe depends on. Joe would actually be free to spend his days as he wants, in a community that is freely associating, unlike his current position as wage slave and “citizen.”
Overall, these are minor points of contention, but the solutions Carson hints at in the article which, again, I enjoyed, beg questions, much like market anarchism itself. I’m all for a healthy ecumenical anarchism/ anarchy, so my hope is that this response creates dialogue, at least.
@Dave Churvis
For a viewpoint completely different than your own (from a practicing IP attorney) see Stephan Kinsella's writings. http://www.stephankinsella.com/
@Alex. Are Communes allowed to trade with other communes?
Kevin, this is spot on. I'd love to see you do more along these lines — more original content, less commenting on others' work. Also, going with really tangible, concrete examples really brings it home.
Thanks to all for the comments.
Alex Bradshaw: I suppose our disagreement is recapitulating the divide between Marx and Proudhon. Marx saw the law of value and equal exchange as something to be superceded. And as Marx charged Proudhon, I see it as the ethical basis of a just economy. It takes labor to produce the things we consume. And nobody's born with a right to other people's labor product. Joe may not have to work, but somebody worked to produce everything Joe consumed. I'm all in favor of gift economies, and on income pooling arrangements to take care of people when they're old or incapacitated. But when someone who's capable of working and consistently produces less than he consumes, he's freeloading on those who produce it.
Dave Churvis: We fundamentally disagree on "intellectual property" and its effects. Like Todd S., I recommmend Stephan Kinsella's paper. I also did a critique of IP in a C4SS paper last year:
http://c4ss.org/wp-content/…/05/intellectual-pr…
Would you be in favor of a monument being raised to the following two anti-IP heroes?
1) Several years ago perfect copies for less than $3 of the DVD “Lion King” appeared on the streets in China, before its release in the US. The anti-IP champion who did this certainly made money on gearing up production ahead of Disney; and while he certainly didn’t put Disney out of business, he did deny them a huge amount of money that would have been very significant for an independent entrepreneur of such DVDs. Let's say he bought the original fairly from a demo disk; under your scheme, he is fairly entitled to all of the profits from the copies.
2) David Sarnoff of RCA famously said of demands that Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, that “RCA does not pay royalties." And he engaged a pack of lawyers to deny Farnsworth a dime for his creative effort. This anti-IP champion surely deserves recognition for stiffing a real creator like Farnsworth, doesn't he?
Note that these are real historical cases, not the confections of an armchair casuist. They are examples of real monetary loss due to copying and refusal of attribution. A consistent reading of your position is that they are your heroes.
RE: Alex…
Well, that's not much of an argument. If you're going to make the (seemingly absurd) claim that a medium of exchange can't or won't exist absent the state, you should, at least, hint at your reasoning.
A free market is not free from regulation, it's free from state intervention. For "free market" to be an oxymoron, you'd have to be using your own definition of "free market" (or "oxymoron"). I'd be interested in hearing how you define a "free market".
How is economic activity conducted through voluntary exchange an "authoritarian concept"?!?! How do you define "authoritarian"?
RE: Dave…
Only if you incorrectly assume that intellectual property is actually property. Todd mentioned patent attorney, Stephan Kinsella. I recommend his latest, The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism.
Terry Hulsey: 1) I believe that "intellectual property" is illegitimate. 2) I've repeatedly championed as heroes those who undermine the state's ability to enforce legislation like the DMCA, or undermined the power of proprietary content industries like those represented by the RIAA and MPAA. It's quite a leap to get from there to lionizing as a "hero" anyone who violates IP law, regardless of what else they're doing in the process.
I don't believe that disregarding patents or copyrights is wrong, as such, under any circumstances. Determining whether I regard the people engaged in it are "heroes" requires a little more analysis, however.
Knowing nothing more than the details you relate about the Lion King case, yes, I probably would regard that guy as a hero — stipulating that there may be other relevant factors you didn't mention. Ceteris paribus, he reduced the amount of revenue a gigantic proprietary content company was able to extort from its state grant of monopoly power.
Re RCA, I've never argued that IP is the only state granted privilege. When a company possesses concentrated oligopoly power from a range of state privileges, in addition to IP, it's no wonder that big guys are in a position to obtain differential advantage from ignoring IP claims compared to the little guy. In a decentralized market of small manufacturers serving local markets, OTOH, I would expect business models based on open-source design to be a lot more tenable. It's also worth noting that RCA had absolutely nothing about claiming IP rights of their own, or collecting royalties. As a matter of fact RCA started out as a patent pooling arrangement among the major radio manufacturers.
I stand by my position that nobody has a "right" to a guaranteed revenue stream from innovation, if that means barring competitors from producing the same thing. And I say that as someone whose books are available in pdf facsimile at torrent sites all over the Internet.
Truth is, Windows7 is for sale downtown Shanghai for the cost of the copy disc and little else! U.S. Copyright laws and patent laws simply not understood by communists who believe everything belongs to the proletariat – even the streets and their garbage! Sadly the American democracies are mired in contemptible cancers of corporatism, capitalism, run amok. Google, Torrent, "Who Stole The Electric Car" and see for yourself in this great revealing documentary. GM(America) actually sold out the EV-1's batteries to big oil! The same fools struggle today to buy Chinese batteries for the "Volt" to save their corporate butts.
American labor no longer competes on a level playing field. China has up and running, nuclear/electric sourced, electric bullet train networks and the ensuing infrastructures, eating veggies and rice and producing, oil free , for world and American markets, goods with and enormous oil free advantage! As these folks sophisticate in what they manufacture, America will feel economic subjugation from them!
Oil fired, car driving, suburban dwelling Americans cannot compete with this new paradigm, and as oil dwindles in the world and the price rises for it Americans will face economic system collapse.
We do not necessarily witness the collapse of the American Empire in the world as the rise of the Asian one as it over-shadows every aspect of our lives. We must now play the survivors mode, a game of scurrying for safe havens as the game is changed from exterior forces, and usually Asian ones.
Kevin Carson:
Quod erat demonstrandum. You have just made the case for most defenders of IP.
They are very mindful of just these cases that you champion, and recognize that many innovators will suffer. That is not to gainsay the very real flaws in the current IP regime (well described in Boldrin/Levine's celebrated book) where the state is the arbiter. But it very much does say that by simply destroying that regime it is not guaranteed that a new dawn of unprotected innovation will dawn.
In that case, Terry, I guess defenders of IP must be a pretty dense lot. But if my comment "made the case" that opposing IP and considering it illegitimate logically implies not objecting to those who ignore it, then I'm glad to have been of service. That IP advocates would require someone to "make a case" for them to grasp the logical principle that being against something means being against it, might be suggestive of why the quality of pro-IP argumentation is so poor.
I read Stephan Kinsella's blog post; I disagree with one of his core arguments (more on that in a moment) but in the interest if learning more about his viewpoints, I am going to read his essay Against Intellectual Property to get more insight into his argument; never let it be said that I am not willing to challenge my beliefs
However, I have familiarized myself with the broad details of his argument, and the problem I have with it is that at its core, the anti-IP viewpoint seems to be based upon the idea of trying to fit someone's creative output into the same vein as real estate, money, or other scarce resource. This is especially telling when Kinsella evokes the Randian argument that nothing is created; it is merely "reorganized." (Which is especially strange to me, considering that he is essentially saying that everything else she says is wrong, but this little bit is correct! I find it strange that he would cherry-pick one tidbit out of an inconsistent argument and then use it as a source.) This may devolve into a metaphysical argument with no clear winner, but it is my belief that every line of code that I write, every piece of music I make, and every visual design that I create, is not just a mere "reorganization" of an existing pattern. I have created something new, and as its progenitor, it is my right to decide how it is to be used. I may want to allow it to be freely used by anyone else, or I may want to try and profit off of it myself. The whole point of a framework of IP law is to ensure that I have that right.
To give an example, I have recently invented a convention registration system that I am working on building. I had the idea for it, I am writing the code for it, and as such it is very much something I have created. Now, once I start deploying this system, it would be a rather trivial manner for someone to take my software, circumvent my licensing protections, and start deploying it themselves. They are now able to easily profit off of the labor that I have put into my creation, as well as my act of creating it in the first place.
The standard libertarian argument would be that if I don't have the ability to defend my property, then I have no claim to it. The problem then is that I am always at the mercy of those more powerful than me when it comes to how the content I have created is to be used. It may not fit easily into the overly narrow mold of Lockean homesteading, but intellectual property is something very real and very tangible, even if it doesn't quite work the same as "real" property.
Getting back briefly to a metaphysical argument, I believe that one of the main things that makes humanity so different from our relatives elsewhere in the animal kingdom is our capacity to create and innovate. It seems to me that the anti-IP argument would seek to deny individuals the right to defend their right to profit from that which they create… that which makes them most human. I'm not going to say that innovation cannot happen without IP protections in place… but I will say that innovation would not be nearly as profitable for those doing the innovating.
A right to profit?
This is the core of the pro-IP argument and it isn't very convincing.
Sure, a right to profit. Or more accurately stated, a right to control (which includes the right to attempt to profit from it at the exclusion of others). It's no more unreasonable to me than positing a right to homestead physical property. It ultimately comes down to an argument about what can be considered a natural right, and it seems to me that we have a natural right to control what we create.
On the IP debate: My current theory for what would happen in a world without "intellectual property" is that people who are distributing X would display some form of "[Author|Inventor|etc.] Sanctioned" mark. This could be done either as a simple notice, or, I believe, more commonly a mark "controlled" by an organization that may also help the author to ferret out unauthorized uses of the work falsely claimed as being authorized and prosecute the perpetrators. For an example of what I am talking about see[1]. I also see all legitimate suits based on copyright/patent/trademark laws as also being properly categorized as a fraud, or in some cases theft situation – and that it would be more proper if they were treated as such.
It has also been empirically demonstrated to my satisfaction that most people have no particular problem with paying to have a song or other work they like, even one distributed electronically. Case in point bands who have released songs available for download with a suggested payment, but allowing people to choose how much to pay – and had many people pay quite a bit more then the suggested amount. Consider also the Baen Free Library[2]. Data from at least one (I think it was two) authors who released at least one work in the library had sales of paper copies of their work, both the one released in the library and their other works, go up. Rather dramatically. This latter example is written up in the Baen Free Library itself.
Eric Flint, the maintainer of the Free Library, actually looked to see if he could "steal" an electronic copy of one of his own works[3]. His result? He couldn't find any of his works available for free download – except those works that were already in the free library. I believe he also mentioned, although I think many have said it, that most of those who download "illegal" copies would not have purchased them in the first place – something which I do believe to be true, from my own experience.
Given that people have demonstrated that they do want to make sure artists whose works they like get paid, it seems to me that abolishing the laws and replacing them with "artist sanctioned" marks would still get artists paid, although the richest would probably not make as much – something which I can't say would be a bad thing, especially as I expect that a good bit of what they lose would go to other artists who might not make it under today's rules.
As an artist myself, I would prefer credited use regardless of payment rather than uncredited use of my work. Admittedly my work is not exactly duplicable, but I do think I would see this the same way even if my primary work were electronically duplicable.
Tor
[1] http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed
[2] http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
[3] Ibid., see Prime Palaver
@Chris George: What a fantastic article. I think I really need to reread it again and mull some of it over, as I'm not sure that I agree with most of your points, but you really do make an excellent case. I am especially impressed with your argument against patents; I did not make a distinction before that I do not agree with the idea of a patent being an absolute monopoly on a product. In my ideal world, a patent would basically be like an automatically-expiring copyright, where content was protected for a certain amount of time and then emerged onto the free market. (Although I'm also not especially fond of free markets anyway
) I have serious problems with patents being exclusive against independent inventors, especially when they can prove they came up with the idea independently. It is admittedly a problem, but I certainly don't believe that it nullifies the concept of IP as a whole. Thanks for the link; I will definitely put some more thought into it.
@Tor: I believe that is a very optimistic view of what would happen in a world without IP protections. You mention instances where people have put their items up for download + donation; in other words, pay what you want. What you're ignoring is that the great majority of those who have "paid what they want" have actually paid nothing. While this is perfectly in line with the desires of those who put the content up for download, in that they fully expect that not everyone will want to pay, it still does not bode well for someone who would want to make sure that people pay for access to the content they've created. For me, IP protections are about protecting the rights of those who want protection; stripping that ability away from someone in the name of libertarian purity strikes me as wrong. I will completely agree with you, however, that I would also prefer credited use of my work regardless of payment than someone using it uncredited. It's just that I would also like to be able to prevent, say, the Republican party from using some piece of music I wrote as their new theme song.
Dave, you may be more receptive to an argument such as my own:
http://newkindofmind.blogspot.com/2010/04/rationalist-position-on-intellectual.html
Dave: The right to homestead real estate and exclude others from it follows directly from the fact that it is a finite, rival good; and excluding others follows, given the laws of physics, by the very act of maintaining physical possession. Ideas, on the other hand, are not naturally finite or rival; and the only way to control them and exclude access is through an artificial construct that enables the state to invade the real, tangible property of other people and control what they do with their own stuff. Without DRM and anti-circumvention laws, digital copyright would be as dead as the passenger pigeon. And even with them, it's still wheezing and coughing up phlegm by the bucketfull. Real property follows directly from natural scarcity, and is enforced by the very act of maintaining physical possession of one's own tangible goods; artificial property creates artificial scarcity where it does not otherwise exist, and can be enforced only by invading other people's property.
There is no right to derive a revenue from anything, except to the extent that it's possible to do so through otherwise legitimate property rights. The need to collect a revenue is certainly not a source of property rights where none otherwise would exist. That way lies the kind of yuppie fascism by which my neighbors have the right to restrict my use of my home in ways that "reduce their property values."
Kevin, I want to make a distinction where you are not. I am not arguing that there is a natural right to derive revenue from anything; I am arguing that there is a natural right to *control* something that one has created, which includes the right to *attempt* to derive revenue from it. The argument that you're making is that, for example, if I produce a piece of music, and I happen to play it in a concert rather than keep it secret forever, then from that moment forward, I have no right to insist that nobody else play my music and claim it as their own. I have no right to insist that the work that I created through my own labor be used in a way that I approve. This runs completely counter to the idea of homesteading, although through the neat loophole that one is *copying* instead of *taking* the content, anti-IP libertarians justify what would otherwise be seen as outright theft of one's labor product. And it is my contention that it is precisely because of this different paradigm that we must alter our conception of homesteading when it comes to intellectual property. A work of content is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a piece of land whose value has been improved by building a home on it, and as such we must adjust our thinking on the topic.
I would also point to Chris George's excellent blog post re: ideas not being a scarce resource. He puts the argument better than I can at this late hour
Dave, I certainly agree that you have a right to control the physical iteration, or copy, of the music you created. What you don't have a right to do is control someone else's use of their own tangible property to reproduce the *pattern*. Any more than, when I build a new kind of house, I have a right to stop other people from building the same kind of house on their own land with their own materials. I don't believe you can own a pattern — just the physical expressions of that pattern you create with your own property.
You really make an excellent point, but I still disagree. I think it is the content that we create that ultimately makes us who we are, and it just feels to me (yeah, I know, not the most convincing way to form an argument) that denying someone the right to control how their ideas are used in some small way denies them their right to self-determination. But again, that's because of a fundamental difference in the way we perceive what ideas really are. I doubt this argument will ever be resolved, even by future generations.
Frank says: "If you’re going to make the (seemingly absurd) claim that a medium of exchange can’t or won’t exist absent the state, you should, at least, hint at your reasoning."
It would only be a "seemingly absurd" argument for someone who's only glossed over the history of anarchism. Exchange is anti-solidarity; this is why most anarchists oppose the use of money. I wouldn't have a problem with money if there are solidarity-based, from-ability-to-needs ways of acquiring things that people want/ need within said community. In other words, let people use their arbitrary medium of exchange with each other, so as long as there are parallel options for "everything for all."
I argue it's doubtful that this will happen, and people who favor quid pro quo interactions might monopolize a service that someone needs, like a crop or water, etc. Hence, this becomes manipulative, coercive, and forceful, to tell someone they have to use exchange to acquire a good they want/ need. Hence, money is not compatible with a free society, insofar as people do not have a viable alternative in any case. Again, if individuals in a community want to create some arbitrary currency for their personal use, I'm all for it. But when I think of "money" (which is actually not the easiest thing to define), I think of an arbitrary currency for which I'm coerced into using; there's no viable gift economy alternative for me in my community.
Frank says: "A free market is not free from regulation, it’s free from state intervention. For “free market” to be an oxymoron, you’d have to be using your own definition of “free market” (or “oxymoron”). I’d be interested in hearing how you define a 'free market'."
My point is that in any community/ region in which a so-called "free market" is implemented, it becomes this parameter that delegates us to certain interactions, e.g., if you need goods, you may have to work comparable hours to others in said communities to exchange these goods, but you cannot have viable communistic alternatives within this community, as you'll be facing destitution or starvation.
You may say "Yeah, but you're free to leave." Having a community in which there are no viable alternatives in manipulative and coercive. What about children born into a market society in which they're told exchange is the only way?
So, a market becomes analogous to binary sexual orientations, gender binaries, bourgeois morality, etc., i.e., there may not be specific laws on the books prohibiting one do certain acts and not others, but these ideas manipulate individuals to act in certain ways. We have to remember that authoritarianism isn't merely force; it's any "power-over" social relation, which I've mentioned some others (coercion, force, manipulation, and authority–I'll explain this later). Again, if a "free market" can coexist with folks who want to do gift economics or communistic interactions, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just highly skeptical in regards to a market ever being benign, not re-establishing hierarchy through the division of labor, expanding exponentially, over-working communities, etc.
Frank says: "How is economic activity conducted through voluntary exchange an “authoritarian concept”?!?! How do you define “authoritarian”?"
A market is an established concept; once we have it, we are coerced into operating in it, in a stateless society or a statist society. If there aren't formal markets, like with indigenous populations, they could trade goods if they wanted, but largely operated on gift economy principles. This would be the kind of voluntary change I perceive. That is to say, if two individuals have something, and they'd like to trade these items, I'm perfectly fine with this. But a formal apparatus with currency, in which I can't get what I need if I do not have said currency, is coercive, hence a "power-over" social relationship, which makes it authoritarian in my view.
@ Kevin Carson:
Thanks for the dialogue and I really do appreciate your work.
Kevin says: "Joe may not have to work, but somebody worked to produce everything Joe consumed."
I guess I should make it clear what I refer to as "work." As you know, many of us go somewhere 5-plus days weekly that we wouldn't choose to go to. That is to say, we loathe our shitty jobs. Anti-work sounds fringy, but I think these ideas resonate tremendously w/ the proletariat, who largely hates her work.
That said, there are different ways one can be productive other than what I perceive to be "work." For example, friends /loved-ones can grow food together, prepare it with the children who will then eat it. Enjoying spirits they fermented themselves, they clean up their mess while dancing and listening to music. All help, from old to young, according to their abilities. Why couldn't most of our needs and desires be provided to communities this way? Instead of going to insipid workplaces that create disease and stress, why not, through mutual aid, prefigure a different kind of productivity?
"[w]hen someone who’s capable of working and consistently produces less than he consumes, he’s freeloading on those who produce it."
I'm not completely comfortable with this concept, because I think in a market system (any kind), there will be utterly superfluous jobs existing. It's hard for me to imagine a market (maybe you can) w/o numerous pencil pushers who simply waste their own time, and resources, calculating useless numbers, managing money, selling insurance, writing wills, etc. To say these folks are contributing to communities is, well, absurd.
And I'm not saying they're bad people; most of the production we do is also useless and counterproductive, i.e., automobiles that destroy the environment, plastic toys, goods that fall apart 6 months after we buy them, etc. Again, not judging the people who do these things, or the lawyers, accountants, teachers, etc., but I feel as though a great majority of these jobs could disappear tomorrow and we'd still be able to provide for our needs and desires. So to talk about who's contributing to society and who's not is a bit tricky in any kind of society.
"Now, if he has to go contribute to perpetuating a market…" he doesn't. The market is voluntary, and thus he can withdraw from any form of exchange just as he can take part in it: this is irrespective of what choice he is likely to make.
"A market is an established concept; once we have it, we are coerced into operating in it, in a stateless society or a statist society. If there aren’t formal markets, like with indigenous populations, they could trade goods if they wanted, but largely operated on gift economy principles."
A market allows for a gift economy as well. A market economy simply asserts voluntary relations between people. It doesn't even have a necessarily propertarian assumption within it, although for some people the market does since they equate voluntaryism with propertarianism.
"For example, friends /loved-ones can grow food together, prepare it with the children who will then eat it. Enjoying spirits they fermented themselves, they clean up their mess while dancing and listening to music."
I don't see how this could not be considered work. There are other things loved one and friends that may be quite stressful and tiring: many times when one labors towards a goal, there is a certain amount of friction between the results or process and the intended results an processes, naturally causing one to feel uncomfortable. Work can be fun and stressful. What I think you mean is that people should not do work they don't wish to do, and I don't see how the market fails counter to that, whether people are producing for themselves or for gift or for exchange. A society where most individuals put high priority in exchange may have a certain amount of social pressure in having others participate because that's the only agreeable way they are able to get the goods needed from such exchange-based peoples, but there can be communities that rely on gift as well. However, since all action is an exchange (ex-, out or previous-but-no-longer, change), at least in some abstract form, "gift" is rather confusing: I would put "gift" as referring either to autistic exchange or exchange that involves no tangible good, and whose only end is maintaining sociability, i.e. it puts value in the person itself that receives the good, thus the exchange simply involves the amiability and acceptance of another, or not even that, but simply that person's presence.
Dave: It probably is rather optimistic, but I still think that when people can devote a professional amount of time to something, a certain amount of quality will often come out of that, and I do think people are prepared to pay for that. The question is a matter of how that funding comes, and to a lesser extent, how much there is to go around. What I do not like is the current system, which, so far as I can tell, points government guns, paid for by consumers, at those same consumers if they choose to make bits on a friend’s hard drive match a set of bits on their own hard drive that you claim ownership of. Even if it reduces the number of professional authors[etc.], I am not sure that that would really be a bad thing.
You also seem to confuse the right to duplicate something with the right to be credited for the work. To me these are two very different issues. Unless there is some specific, two party agreement to the contrary, I find nothing (in the general case) to legitimately stop someone from putting a sheet of paper they own in their photocopier, telling it to make n copies, and giving those copies to any number of people for whatever sum is agreeable to the parties directly involved. If, however, they copied (for example) a one page essay but left out the cover page which contained all references to who wrote it, then they would properly be in trouble.
Dave wrote: “The argument that you’re making is that, for example, if I produce a piece of music, and I happen to play it in a concert rather than keep it secret forever, then from that moment forward, I have no right to insist that nobody else play my music *and claim it as their own*.” (emphasis added)
Wrong compared to what I am saying, and what I believe Kevin is saying as well. True, you might not be able to stop people from making copies, but they still must give an appropriate level of credit according to how much of the work is yours. If they fail to give credit you still can go after them just as surely as you could with copyright, although the area of law you make your claim under would be different (I favour fraud).
As for your example of not having the republican party make one of your songs their theme song, I see no particular reason even without copyright that you couldn’t, for example, insist that you be credited as “Dave Churvis, Anarchist”, and have a page on their website about the song which also mentions your anarchist views with appropriate links to your website with a good bit more detail. If they are stubborn I think you could get a recognized free market court to fairly agree with you. At this point they would have three options: 1: Credit you as requested; 2: Negotiate terms under which they can credit you in a manner more agreeable to them; or 3: Not use the song. Now, to continue the example, I rather doubt the republican party would find option 1 an acceptable option. As for option 2, well, that has merit. With enough money, you might be able to use it to undermine them just as much as option 1. Of course, probably the most likely case would be option 3, in which case you might as well have had copyright all along. If your song showed up as one piece on a program of music you would have to content yourself with the standard name, unless there were a short bio of each composer for the information to be in, but I think in the case of your song being made their theme song you would reasonably be able to specify how you were to be credited more specifically.
As for the great majority paying nothing under download and pay what you want, the band in question was reporting in the article I saw as definitely making more than they would have made had they sold their work through iTunes, and if I understood and recall correctly, they actually made more than the amount iTunes would have charged. Either way, however, they did better than they would have under the more “traditional” approaches.
On the Baen Free Library, I will agree that most people probably do not pay for the electronic version those works – but I do think it has probably spurred sales of electronic “copies” of other of those author’s works, and it has been recorded to notably increase sales of paper copies – including the very work distributed for free. Also, it appears to me that one of the driving forces behind “illegal” sharing is the exorbitant monopoly prices charged for legitimate copies, very little of which actually gets to the artist. As near as I can tell, people are much more willing to pay if they know that at least a large portion, if not all of the money goes to the artist than if big corporations suck up most of it and leave the artist still nearly starving on the street. It should also be noted that “illegal” copies of a work are often superior to official copies, especially when it comes to music, and video.
Even in the circles that want to completely abolish copyright (including me – note that I have paid more attention to copyright than the other things also lumped in as “intellectual property”, but think all should be abolished as separate laws) I have not seen people saying either that people shouldn’t need to be credited for their work or that they shouldn’t try to profit from them – just that copyright is broken without hope of successful reform and needs to be abolished.
Tor
P.S. This is a very cogent article I found on the subject from Action Institute: http://www.acton.org/publications/mandm/mandm_controversy_13.php
Dave, honestly, the best case against IP, or more accurately, it's subsidized enforcement, is the sheer cost involved in protecting it given our current technology. If you haven't heard of ACTA, you should read this: http://mises.org/daily/4593
It would seem to me that if IP is going to be enforced, ACTA is the only option.
With such IP laws, privacy is impossible and abuses highly likely, to the point of it being guaranteed to happen.
I think there are ways of preventing major IP violations (such as commercial use of art without permission) that would be fine. I'm not sure how others on here feel since I'm not anti-IP, but rather anti-Intellectual monopoly.
And I'll just speak for myself, as a musician and writer, I would love to make more money off my music and writings as I believe I produce quality work that others can enjoy and do benefit from. But it's not strictly a unilateral benefit (for I engage in such activities for their own sake), and when the costs and risks of tyrannical laws which will always be abused and selectively enforced to benefit the politically well connected, I'd have to say freedom of artist and consumer alike is gravely harmed by IP laws.
Also Dave, thanks for the compliment. I'd be happy to address any issues you have with my analysis.
Alex: If by "work" you mean primarily wage labor, I agree that it's undesirable. I think in a market without artificial scarcities and artificial property rights, it would be — to paraphrase Clinton on abortion — legal, less onerous, and rare.
I agree that there are a lot of superfluous jobs under corporate capitalism (i.e. what Sam Bowles calls "guard labor"), but I don't think the labor under a genuine market would be superfluous. It would exist only to the extent that a money accounting system of any kind made it necessary; but I think the calculational problems that would exist without money would exceed the inefficiencies created by money accounting.
“…General Mills cereal, which thanks to government subsidies was produced at some giant mill in Minneapolis, despite the fact that cereal grains are most economically milled on a small scale near the point of consumption.”
I’m not really knowledgeable in this area, does anyone have any sources I should read up on this?
Thanks.
Mr. Civil Libertarian: According to Ralph Borsodi, the invention of electric motors meant mills could be economically scaled to virtually any level of output. The unit cost of flour milled in the kitchen from wheat berries was much lower than that from large mega-mills in the Midwest, when all the costs of marketing and transportation were figured in. And the electric mill, according to Lewis Mumford, was a prime illustration of the principles of lean production made possible by electric power (i.e. siting production as close as possible to the point of production, scaling production flow to demand, and scaling production machinery to flow). Most of the "innovations" of 20th century grain processing, OTOH — refining and bleaching of flour — were responses to the needs of batch-and-queue production, with large volumes of flour produced without regard to any immediate demand. Refining and bleaching, by removing the perishable germ, created "embalmed" flour that could sit indefinitely in warehouses without spoiling. OTOH, with small mills scaled to demand at the point of consumption, wheat could easily be milled fresh as it was used, with the germ left intact. Cf. also tomatoes bred for ease of transport rather than flavor.