TGIF: Ownership and Ideas
Like many libertarians, I’ve learned a lot from Murray Rothbard on a wide variety of subjects. Of course, no one gets everything right, especially someone as intellectually ambitious, multidisciplinary, and prolific as Rothbard. Nevertheless, reading the work of the man who left such a mark on the modern libertarian movement is as profitable as it is pleasurable.
While rereading For a New Liberty (first published in 1973) recently, I confess I was puzzled, which is not the frame of mind Rothbard normally leaves me in. In deriving property rights, he used the example of a “sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials.”
Read TGIF
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Would you be able to write your argument in a way that doesn't use certain logical fallacies ("tu quoque," "equivocation," "ad hominem accusative," and "ad hominem circumstancial" for starters...) and doesn't make unprovable assertions that monopolist-authorized goods would make the same profits as independently produced goods?
ReplyDeleteWhich reader is supposed to suffer through a poorly-formatted screed of denunciations and insults and say: "Violating property rights to benefit monopolists is a great idea!" ?
I can't answer the formatting complaint, and as for the... oh wait, you weren't able to address anything else.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure you want violently typed logical falsehoods (many of which I named in my, er, non-address) to be your final answer as to why you believe violating property rights in the name of intellectual monopoly is a just practice?
ReplyDeleteIt is pathological projection to say "tu quoque" (my problem), when a rational person would say "self-contradiction" (your problem).
ReplyDeleteIf you have a question, ask it. If you have a response referencing the original, make it.
Tu quoque is Latin for "you, too." As in "you believe intellectual monopoly violates property rights; your writings have copyrights; hence, your statement is incorrect."
ReplyDeleteA pathological projection would be an uncovered cough or sneeze.
If you have reason to believe you have the intellectual property necessary to refute this particular essay of Richman's which claims that grants of intellectual of monopoly violate property rights or to acknowledge and excuse such violations, please do so.