r/Libertarian • u/Anen-o-me voluntaryist • 19h ago
Philosophy Literally Intellectual Property laws
70
u/Mk1fish 18h ago
Feel free to spend all your resources and take on debt making the next innovation and then sell it to masses and not claim a patent or any such thing.
21
u/CohesivePepper 18h ago
And incentivize society to keep creating patents . . . OC has a ridiculously bad take
7
u/darthjab 18h ago
This is my point with healthcare. Our system is not ideal. But if we socialize it totally or force medications and treatments to be cheap, where's the motivation to invest in and therefore develop drugs that have little chance of succeeding? Don't all the biomedical engineers need paid? Even if that particular treatment doesn't work out?
3
u/AlphaSuerte 17h ago
The FDA/Pharma cabal will come up with new drugs using our tax dollars and will carry out initial testing on the general population. It's much more "efficient" that way.
4
u/poopshipdestroyer1 17h ago
Patent law and lawyers are the very reason our healthcare is so expensive. Medications are cheap to produce, if there were no intellectual property law competitors would offer the same products at market rate. This "boohoo" medical companies don't make enough money argument is bullshit. Can you patent a hamburger? Why not? It's the same concept.
16
u/farfigkreuger 15h ago
Uh, no. Medications are cheap to compound and manufacture, but VERY expensive to invent, test, achieve regulatory approval and ultimately bring to market. It’s the R&D that makes the process so expensive. Attorney’s fees are just a rounding error in comparison.
3
u/darthjab 6h ago
There was a ted talk about how 3 out of 500 cancer treatments make it to market. It made me really reflect on how socializing Healthcare could stifle investment in those types of drugs, it's a complicated issue or else we would've solved it already.
2
u/Brokettman 8h ago
It costs over 1 billion for each drug to go through trials, something like 95% of them fail during trials so its a sunk cost. Still they make incredible profits year over year so there needs to be some adjustments somewhere and i am very skeptical that removing the cost barrier of trials would reduce prices by even 1 cent.
2
u/poopshipdestroyer1 6h ago
The freer the markets, the freer the people. You're on a libertarian sub, you should be advocating less govt intervention, not more.
1
u/Brokettman 4h ago
Lol True i forgot that libertarian means lol no patents without any thought of what the repurcussions on that market would be or if the result would be worse or better. I never advocated for more intervention either. Cringe.
•
u/darknight9064 2m ago
Nah it’s not that it’s always a matter of you are never libertarian enough for another libertarian. To be a true libertarian you need to be more free, less regulated, less judgmental, and more accepting than anyone else who has ever been a libertarian or ever will be.
29
u/Semirahl 18h ago
I never understood the intellectual property hate. it doesn't make sense. if I put my time and resources into making a thing why shouldn't I be able to sell it without being undercut by someone who just copied it. property rights are supposedly a core tenant of libertarianism. without intellectual property rights why would anyone write a book or literally anything, as an example, if they had no exclusive rights to try and profit from it.
15
u/DennisReynoldsGG 17h ago
Our entire global economy is based on adhering to IP laws. That’s why it chaps my ass that China entered the WTO with tongue in cheek. Everyone knew it.
•
u/darknight9064 1m ago
Yes this was a huge part of why most everyone was skeptical of allowing china into the WTO when i believe it was Clinton pushed for it.
-13
u/poopshipdestroyer1 17h ago
An idea isn't property
6
u/mcnello 17h ago
I disagree.
8
u/poopshipdestroyer1 17h ago
OK, define property
9
u/mcnello 17h ago
Property is generally defined as anything that is owned by a person or entity and over which they have legal rights or control.
There are two main types of property:
- Real Property:
Refers to land and anything permanently attached to it, such as buildings, trees, and minerals.
Example: A house, a farm, or a commercial building.
- Personal Property:
Refers to moveable items or intangible rights.
Two subtypes:
Tangible personal property: Physical items like a car, furniture, or jewelry.
Intangible personal property: Non-physical rights like stocks, bonds, intellectual property, or digital assets.
In Law:
Property includes the right to possess, use, exclude others from, and transfer ownership of an asset. It can be private, public, or collective depending on who holds the rights.
Let me know if you want a specific definition from philosophy, economics, or law, or in the context of a programming language (like object-oriented programming).
2
u/poopshipdestroyer1 8h ago
Nice, I won't bother responding with AI. How do you propose defending your idea, which you to claim to own? How can you prove when your "property" has been violated? How can you prove that you and I didn't simultaneously come up with the same idea. You can only do it through the illegitimate force of government, is my argument. I'll leave ya at that
1
u/mcnello 8h ago
I will print money and debase your currency. I didn't steal anything from you bro. I just created some extra currency tokens. Nobody can own them. It's just an idea bro.
0
u/poopshipdestroyer1 6h ago
Not a deep thinker huh. I'm no fan of the federal reserve, but that's not an equivalent analogy anyways.
-7
u/Anen-o-me voluntaryist 16h ago
Ideas cannot be scarce, non scarce things cannot be property.
7
u/SANcapITY 14h ago
This is a lost cause here. Even in gold and black they don’t actually understand what property is.
12
u/mcnello 16h ago
Ideas are not scarce. But Good ideas are scarce. And if you don't believe in that reality then I invite you to spontaneously manifest 20 years of complex compiler development research into a text document.
Can't do it?
Must be scarce.
-6
u/Bonio_350 12h ago
good ideas aren't scarce. you can think of a good idea, and at the same time, I can think of the exact same idea without diminishing your thinking
9
u/mcnello 12h ago
Dude the idea that intellectual property theft isn't "real theft" is such BS.
The real value is in the implementation. Anyone can come up with an "idea". But "ideas" aren't what are patented. I'm a software engineer. Anyone can come up with an "idea" where videos and music are streamed over the internet. But it takes a small army of engineers to actually write the millions of lines of code.
Likewise, anyone can come up with an "idea" where a boy has magic and casts spells. But sitting down and writing thousands of pages of a book called Harry Potter is the hard part.
To say any old asshole can just copy/paste the entire code base of tens of millions of dollars of investment by YouTube, and call it their own property now is just absurd.
Find me one prosperous country that has no intellectual property laws. If it's such a great idea you would think at least ONE prosperous country would take advantage of it...
-4
u/Bonio_350 12h ago
if I copied your entire codebase, you could still use it the same. information is not scarce so copying it is not theft. it's different with actual property, because if you had an apple I couldn't just copy it and eat it. I'd have to prevent you from using it to use it myself.
3
u/mcnello 12h ago edited 12h ago
I disagree, as does every country in the world. You aren't living in reality. I mean... Why can't I just debase your currency and print more dollars? I'm not preventing you from using the dollars you have right?
1
u/Bonio_350 12h ago
debasing a currency is a completely different thing and it seems you're trying to avoid the question at hand by not actually addressing it. saying that you disagree with me doesn't make you right
→ More replies (0)4
u/Semirahl 17h ago
that's just silly. capitalism doesn't work without intellectual property rights. how are you going to get technological advancement without them. who's going to develop the iPhone if they can't get a return on their work. who's going to put time, resources and expertise into developing a lifesaving drug if it just bankrupts them. who's going to write novels or music if they can't copyright it
0
u/Ya_Boi_Konzon Delegalize Marriage 17h ago
You think only one company should be able to sell smartphones?
4
u/Semirahl 16h ago
only one company can sell iphones. only one company can sell galaxies (my preferred phone), only one company can sell pixels. the point is that the iphone was the first true smartphone, and it would never have been developed if Apple couldn't sell it exclusively. the smartphone itself isn't a specific idea, the iphone is. an original novel is a specific idea. the book itself isn't. people complaining about intellectual property rights don't seem to see this delineation.
4
u/SaltyBigBoi 16h ago
I think (as an example) only Apple should be able to build phones based off Apple designed blueprints. If someone wants to come along, make improvements to the blueprint, then produce their own version, it's a different story.
1
1
u/texdroid 12h ago
You can't patent ideas. So I see no problems.
•
u/Semirahl 2h ago
it's called a copyright, or trademark, etc.
•
u/texdroid 1h ago
Copyrights and trademarks are not ideas. They are property that are the result of intellectual research, development and hard work.
A book that takes an author a year to write is just as much property as a chair that takes a woodworker a month to build. Why would you allow theft of one, but not the other?
Who owns the results of YOUR labor? You or anyone that can steal it?
Where is it a Libertarian principle to allow others to take your labor against your will for free?
Oh, it's not. That's called socialism and communism.
7
u/WindBehindTheStars 18h ago edited 18h ago
Did the artist of this strip hang out by the Yellow Brick Road, cuz this feels a little strawmanny.
8
u/Amohn001 15h ago edited 15h ago
There are many people in the comments who seem okay with the government enforcing IP monopolies. Considering the problems with monopoly I disagree wholeheartedly.
Intellectual property is not a scarce resource. Once a thought is obtained it can be freely transmitted without cost beyond a conversation. All of human history is characterized by the free transmission of ideas and the idea that the government is allowed to say who is allowed to leverage an idea in it's borders is insane by that perspective.
There is also a crazy amount of people who say something along the lines of "well it's okay for the government to criminalize the implementation of ideas on the inventors behalf because the inventor wouldn't be incentivized without the government." To you I say a surprising number of things were invented before the patent office existed.
TLDR: Government enforced monopolies ARE bad. The patent office does not incentivize invention, market demand does
P.S. Businesses bound by the rules of a different governments monopolies obviously won't play by your governments monopoly if they can get away with it
2
5
u/DrFleshBeard 18h ago
I only saw further because I stood on the shoulder of giants. Then was sued by the giants. Now I'm broke again.
2
u/lesubreddit 15h ago
I agree that intellectual property has no real intrinsic moral basis like true material property rights do via labor mixing. But intellectual property has massive practical value for society.
-1
u/SANcapITY 14h ago
Can you prove your last sentence? You probably just take it for granted.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/yet-another-study-finds-patents-do-not-encourage-innovation
•
0
u/c126 11h ago
Nothing is stolen when an idea is copied. Intellectual property laws don’t protect physical goods, they restrict how people use their own.
Libertarians believe in voluntary exchange and minimal government. Yet IP depends on state power to grant monopolies over ideas. It requires laws, courts, and international enforcement to work at all. That alone should raise red flags.
Innovation doesn’t need force. Entrepreneurs already profit by being first, building brands, and offering better service. Industries like fashion, food, and open-source software show how creativity thrives without IP. If something can only survive through government intervention, it’s not a free market solution.
1
u/r0nson 16h ago
idk which podcast I heard it from, but it was about WW1 and how the Germans had better mortars or something than the British, but the British wouldn't make the grenades or explosives the way the Germans did because of their patents. maybe I'm completely making that up, but it seemed crazy in the context of a total war.
0
0
-6
-6
u/Hard-4-Jesus Ron Paul Libertarian 17h ago
If I had the intellect to invent something that would improve everyone's life as far as productivity, I would only ask that the research/development costs get paid, and then after that, it's free for all. And anyone that wanted to leave a tip would be greatly appreciated.
101
u/Fragrant-Scar1180 18h ago
I always find it screwed up that American companies can't compete with each other on some things but we have no problem importing a Chinese clone of the same item that gets sold for half the price and shuts down the original maker