Today was the classes introduction to property rights, and how that leads into intellectual property. I’ll explain my moral and logical foundation of property rights (which adheres to what was presented) and how that leads to my thoughts on IP, which diverges from what was presented.

Any idea of property must start with personhood, the self-evident idea of unimpeachable self-ownership. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” proves this is self-evident. Every time I think I prove that I am (and therefore “own”) myself. Every time someone argues that they do not own themselves or that self-ownership is not a given, they are inherently contradicting their existence; by using their mouths and voices to share their thoughts, evidently from themselves, they admit ownership. You cannot argue against the idea without agreeing with it.

From this starting point, we place mankind in the world, each individual owning their minds, body, and labor. I own, or take responsibility for, my actions (or labor). The world, absent humanity, is unowned, it is untouched. The world is moved from its natural state to being property when, to quote John Locke, a person mixes their labor with it. That thing has gone from its natural state to being impacted, to being molded, by that individuals creativity and labor. When I plant and tend to a tree, when I cut it down, when I build a fence, when I clear a brush etc I am bringing what was once natural into a new state of being; that of something owned. And logically it must be owned by the first person; anything else would be arbitrary. And individual ownership over individual things is the only idea of ownership that comforts with humanity’s natural need to survive (as opposed to everyone owning an equal percentage of everything e.g. I am 1/7,000,000,000% owner of a farm in Bangladesh, which would lead to extinction for lack of agreement).

In the real world its fairly easy to decide when something goes from its natural state to being owned. I can fence off a field and claim it; I cannot fence around someone else and forbid them from going to unowned land. I cannot climb over a mountain range and claim the entire valley below or to an entire island I happen to set foot on. I cannot just see a thing and claim it, I must work it, bend it to my needs with my labor.

This property, now owned, is as rightfully mine as my own body. It’s all property, and its all an extension of that first, immutable right. All rights are property rights. As the owner of something, I’m free to sell it, lease it, defend it, destroy it, gift it, or leave it as inheritance. The receiver of whatever voluntary transaction I agree to now has just as much right to ownership as that first owner who brought it from its natural state. Any involuntary transaction, e.g. theft, is a crime as it violates the natural right of ownership. It violates the nature of man. That is the definition of morality; recognizing property as the sole natural right, and acknowledging that the initiation of violence (murder, theft, rape, fraud) is inherently and always immoral and evil. This can be summarized as the non-aggression principle (NAP).

From this establishment of property rights, we go down the path of “intellectual property,” the proposition that just as someone can own a physical thing, they can own an idea or information. I disagree with this interpretation. The first law of economics is the acceptance that resources are scarce. This scarcity requires the use of strict property enforcement for utilitarian reasons, excluding the moral basis I’ve just laid out. On the other hand, ideas, words, etc, are ethereal. They do not exist in the physical word and scarcity does not apply to them. The same idea can be shared with every person on earth, and that does not diminish the idea in the mind of the original thinker. Since there is no scarcity, there doesn’t need to be property. It’s a kind of socialism of the mind. For example, let’s say you design a new kind of bicycle and I see you riding it. I like it, and I go home to my garage and over the week remake your bicycle; an exact replica. You then see me riding it, and have me arrested. You claim I stole your bike. But I didn’t. You still own the original bicycle. I have not touched your physical property. No harm has been done to you by the fact that your idea has been used by another. If your property has been harmed, there has been no crime. If I, say, take Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, and I reprint it with my name over it and the claim I wrote it, then certainly I am acting dishonestly. I should be rejected by polite society and thrown out of academic circles. I may be a “bad” person. But I contend that I committed no crime since I did not harm Carr’s physical property, only words that are manufacturable ad infinitum.

I do not believe in intellectual property; I think its inconsistent with the way information travels, its unnecessary, and it lacks the strict moral foundation that physical property finds in human nature.