 to the cloud. Yeah, let's try to talk for maybe an hour at the most. Okay, because my battery on my headphones might run out after that. And I'll just let you lead it. I think I'll probably discuss where okay, this is Stefan Kinsella, by the way, this is going to be the Kinsella on Liberty podcast, and I'm doing not really a debate, but a discussion about IP with, and I think I got any voice of reason. I guess you're going to be anonymous. And I think you're an objectivist, leaning libertarian type person. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Thanks for having me on, Stefan. And by your accent, I assume you're not in the US. Well, I actually am in the US. I'm not too far from you. I live in Austin, Texas. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So look forward to meeting you in person one of these days. Next time you're in Austin, take me a note and we can grab some coffee or something. Okay. Well, let me, if you can interject if you like, but so you and I were just, this is over a month ago now. So honestly, I forgotten, but you and I were kind of spatting over IP, intellectual property on some Twitter or other thread somewhere. And so we decided to just talk about it. I think we come at it from different angles. And I wanted a chance to try to see where we disagree, see if there's common ground, see if I can understand where you're coming from and maybe explain my position better, which is misinterpreted all the time by objectivist type people. Does that sound roughly like what you wanted to do today? Yeah, I think it would be a good opportunity to share some ideas. We actually have a lot of things in common. We do disagree on the topic of intellectual property, but I think in general, we are four rights and property rights and certainly for capitalism and things like that. So there's a lot of common ground, but this is an area where we don't agree and let's explore that and let's see. My recommendation, if you don't mind, I think we can just get to fundamentals and try to discuss it at that level. I'm not a lawyer. I will say that up front. So I'm not here to debate the finer points of law. Certainly I'm not here to talk about, for example, whether one can or should get a patent on crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bags or something like that. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to make a moral case for intellectual property. And I've heard you say, Stefan, I think this echoes Ayn Rand's view that the moral is the practical. Absolutely. If we can establish a moral case, then we can talk about practical things. So that's, I think, a better place to start. I agree. I don't know if you remember the famous exchange between Reagan and one of his opponents where Reagan says, I won't hold my opponent's youth and an experience over him. So I hope you won't hold my being a lawyer over me against me. It's definitely not, it's definitely not to your discredit that you're not a lawyer. And you don't need to be a lawyer to understand or have an opinion on these things. And as for the details of peanut butter sandwiches and all that, yeah, the problem is when I point out examples, crazy examples like that, then all my opponents always say, well, I agree with you on that. I'm not in favor of that. So all they can do is add in an ad hoc way, keep telling me what they don't agree with. So every concrete example I give of an obvious outrage that comes from intellectual property law, they agree with me on, but then they say, but that's not what I'm in favor of. And then I'm left saying, well, then what the hell are you in favor of? So the only way to discuss it is to have a discussion on principles and fundamentals. So I agree with you. So let's talk about what morals are or what's right and wrong, and then what rights are and what our principles are and what we share in common. I mean, are you an objectivist or are you a libertarian? Are you an anarchist? Where are you on those issues? Let me just ask you that before we get started. Yeah, that's a fair question. And I think it's good to go into that before we get into details of my position. So let me begin by saying that I'm a fan of Austrian economics. The fact that I disagree with you on intellectual property, I still, by the way, respect the fact that you're grappling with a key issue here. And like you, I too was influenced by Iron Rand's books as a youngster. Rand actually helped me form an intellectual basis from which I could grasp the concepts of capitalism. Me too, by the way. Me too. And by the way, your name, Voice of Reason, if people don't know, that is the name of an Iron Rand book. Yes, it is. Thank you for mentioning that. And the image that you might be seeing on the screen is actually from the cover of one of the editions. It's the classic New York City Twin Towers. Twin Towers with the lights going off, which as you may recall is the end point of Atlas Shrug when the lights go to New York City. So that's kind of where I made the image as well. I think we're on the same page so far. So keep going. Great. So for me, it was kind of natural that I found my way to Austrian economics. I learned from reading Manga and von Bawerk and von Mises and others. So I think we share a lot in common. What about Rothbard and Hoppe? Just curious. I have some disagreements with, so Hoppe, I view as a philosopher, a philosopher, and he approaches ethics in a way you're familiar with. Obviously, you've spoken many times on argumentation ethics. I don't have to tell you about it. I believe that there is a good intent there to try and get to normative principles. But it starts with some, I think there's a sort of a, when you start philosophizing midway without getting to fundamentals because you have, let's say, a Kantian straight jacket. So I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. Yep. No, I know where you're going. That's the Randian critique is that you need a comprehensive philosophy to ground everything else in. And I think to an extent that's of course true. Doesn't have to be as comprehensive as the Randians. You don't have to know about aesthetics, for example, to have a rights theory. But yeah, you have to have a sound overall worldview. You have to have a sound epistemology, a sound metaphysics, even a sound ethics like individualism, egoism, that kind of stuff. However, I think Hoppe and the realist Kantians and Misesians basically have that by default or by common sense, even though the terminology is different. Like I think that Hoppe, this is getting far field, but I believe that there's a strain of Kantianism on the European continent that it's more realistic and compatible with Rand's own worldview than the American idealistic interpretation, which is what she was critiquing. But anyway, that's it. That's yeah, we can get into that. And incidentally, I'm perfectly happy to have other conversations with you on ethics in particular. So just to get back to to more of an introduction, if you will. So Austrian economics answered many of my questions in economics. But having been exposed to Objectivism, I felt that there were some problems at the philosophical root of Austrian economics, which I view as the root being essentially Kantian. So to me, it felt like I was entering this amazing, impressive building and then suddenly realizing that it needs a better foundation. That was my take when I read the amazing work. So that's, to me, IP represents a case in point, particularly since the leaders in Austrian thought hold such divergent views, the views of von Mises and Rothbard and Hoppe and others diverge considerably. So this is when one must be at some level a philosophical detective, as I like to call it. So that's all reasonable and fine so far. I agree with you on that. Great. So that's just one more thing. Because I want to stress that we have a lot in common here. I also recognize that, you know, when Carl Manger and in the 19th century, the founder of Austrian economics was doing his major work, Kantian philosophy dominated the era and also in early 20th century, von Mises was making his pioneering contribution. So one can respect and admire the founders and the leading thought of people in Austrian economics. In fact, I admire the fact that they could accomplish all these great things in spite of having a philosophy that was, you know, it was kind of a smorgasbord if you think about it. I agree. That's why we'll take the epistemology, which I question, we'll ditch the duty ethics or deontology, we'll ditch that, we'll form our own. So they did what they had to do in making great economics. Well, this is why I think that these guys that you think are Kantians, I think they implicitly or by default have an essentially correct and realistic view. I think it's in a sense not as hard as we think it is. I mean, everyone has to live in the world. Even though we compartmentalize and we pretend, ultimately, most people are realists and practical and pragmatic. And this forces us to, I don't know, I think that's one reason. So like there's intuitions, there's common sense that keeps us from going too far. Even with this transgender stuff and all this modern crap, people only take it so far. You might say that reality's not real, but most people don't walk out of a high-rise building, assuming they won't die. They really just don't, even though, so people, when they're forced to choose. But anyway, that's an interesting point. So I'm with you so far on that. So just to, so the point is also that Rand had the benefit of first obviously knowing about Kantian philosophy, knowing the problems there, and then also reading the works of Mises and others, also recognizing that in a sense, only those of us who lived in the 20th century or even the 19th century could appreciate that the man's use of reason actually leads to good things. So it was difficult to reach these kind of inductive conclusions at the time, predating and like certainly in the Lockean era, it was difficult for anyone to say something like, oh yeah, there'll be prosperity of this type. So there's an inductive process that you benefit from having seen and having studied history. And Rand then puts the pieces of that together. And I think there's a, so to me it's always been Mises and Rand. It's never been, oh, you have to make a false choice. You either are all in for Mises or all in for Rand. Oh, by the way, I totally agree with that. And by the way, I ran to her credit, and uncharacteristically for her in a sense, because she actually made a lot of allowances for Mises's, say, deviations that she would view them. Like she obviously saw through his Kantian terminology or whatever, like she didn't freak out about his so-called subjectivism, which I think actually she's right to not do that, because his subjectivism is compatible. His subjectivism is just the concept of value, which is actually compatible with her concept of value being something that a person acts to gain or keep, which is the exact same thing as demonstrated preference, which is the root of Mises' subjective preference idea. So he's not a subjectivist in the sense that Randians use it in a pejorative to mean ethical relativism or something like that. Or maybe he was, but that wasn't what he was talking about in economics. So I think Rand actually appreciated Mises. I mean, she recommended him in her book, and she criticized Hayek to her credit, too. So I think Rand actually saw the good in Mises, and I agree with you. Rand was essential for me in building sort of a systematic framework way of approaching all this. Yes, and just to also touch on what you said, the ethical relativism, I would recommend looking at the article that Rothbard wrote on Mises' ethical relativism. He actually used the word that Mises was tragically wrong in his ethics. So I would just say, and I'm a big fan of Mises. So this is not too, I mean, how do you make such incredible economics when you're living in an era which is dominated by bad philosophy and you're accepting some parts of it? So this is not by any means a criticism. It's just a means of saying that there's a correction that is needed. Rothbard was certainly more Aristotelian than Kantian, but he, and he went far enough to describe Mises' ethical relativism as tragically wrong or tragically flawed, I think is the word he used. But he didn't come, he didn't apply what what he could have done was take a value-based approach and actually fix the fundamentals. Now that's, there's a lot of historical reasons why that was, but that's not necessary to say. But my point is actually I'm here to make that moral case. I'm here to discuss rights which I would point out are a term from political philosophy, not economics. So we have to, you know, we have to examine the definitions that economists take for granted. I totally agree. And by the way, we need to, and we'll do this as we get along, but we need to have a careful definition of what we mean by intellectual property and we can get to that. And by the way, Mises, to his credit, he never claimed to be a big ethical philosopher as far as I know. So, you know, he wasn't, but you can't fault him because he didn't pretend to be at least. That's fair. But what that tells us is that either you have to divorce ethics from economics, which is what he did. He essentially said that values-free economics means that you don't really have to worry about the ethical component of it. And that was one way. So in my mind, Mises had a choice. He could either do what I would call disintegration, which is take Kantian ethics and try to somehow integrate it with his great economics, which would never work. So he would end up disintegrating his economics if he tried to do that. Since he couldn't do that, he just said, let's create a silo. Let's separate. Maybe. Maybe. I just think that just wasn't his focus. I mean, I think maybe it's trying too hard to do this. I mean, to read too much into it. Economics is worth-frying, is value-free in the sense that the nature of what economics is. And even Reisman talks about this. Reisman has an idiosyncratic view of it, like it's the study of how wealth is produced or something. But even that, it's descriptive. That's not... But the point is economics is an analytical internet. It analyzes the consequences of human action. So in that sense, it's value-free, but it's like Hoppe might observe. It doesn't assume that people don't have values. They have values. So it's just a study of the implications of people acting based upon their values. But in other words, recognizing the different scientific disciplines or distinct is not to separate them, as you said. It's just to recognize that they're distinct. I mean, astronomy is different than mathematics, and physics is different than biology, and ethics is different than aesthetics. It doesn't mean that they're not linked or related, right? But they're just distinct fields of knowledge. But that's the point. The point... You actually said it very well. The point is that concepts from ethics should not be so separated. So for example, ethics deals with values. And if you say that economics cannot deal with that, that is like saying atomic theory works in physics, but it doesn't work in chemistry. Right. Yeah, but the other choice, you don't have to apply it if you want to specialize in economics. Yeah. I agree, but I think it's a bit of a straw man because economics doesn't say that it can't deal with it. It simply says that economics is the science that deals with the logical and practical implications of the fact that people have choice and they act. And we analyze what that means, supply and demand, cost and profit and loss and opportunity costs and these kinds of things. And then other phenomena like interest rates and trade and minimum wage and unemployment and all this kind of stuff. So that's what economics deals with. It doesn't mean that it's not relevant. I mean, I don't think you can be a good libertarian, for example, if you don't know something as a factual matter about history, about human nature, sociology, psychology, ethics, aesthetics, I mean, maybe not aesthetics, but epistemology, philosophy, all these things are relevant. I mean, if you don't have language, you can't even talk. So all these things bear on each other. Nothing is not interconnected in the universe. But that doesn't mean that recognizing that one domain is distinct from another is to so-called separate them. It's just to recognize that they're distinct. I mean, to have categories, to have words, to have concepts, to have language is to distinguish things and to discriminate in the sense, right? There's nothing wrong with that, per se. I like the way you put that. So reality is interconnected. Therefore, our knowledge of it should also be integrated. Completely agree. Completely agree. And in that sense, if someone makes the comment that you can discuss, you should make something values-free because to not introduce values would somehow cause a disintegration. It was probably the right thing to do in the Kantian framework because if you try to integrate it with deontology, you'd be in big trouble. But the point is if we have a better system that allows us to integrate. So I would even argue that praxeology is a layer, call it a layer of action that Mises had to create because he could not bring Kantian values into economics. He had to create a sort of a separation layer called praxeology as a starting point. So separating values from action was needed because of the Kantian straight jacket. Maybe. And I think this gives us far of field, but that's interesting. Maybe. But there's nothing wrong with saying here's how supply and demand works. And that is not a moral evaluation. That is just like the logic of what it means to act. Like there's supply, there's demand, there's opportunity cost. If you impose a minimum wage, you will tend to increase unemployment. That's not evaluative. You can link it in with it. The only reason you're interested is because you have some value of exploring knowledge or learning things or furthering human welfare or whatever, and they're all connected. That's true. In fact, my view is philosophically to exist means to have an effect on something else. But I think that's what it means. That's why I think when people say, oh, there's alternate, alternate universes that are parallel universes that are next to us, but they don't affect us. I think that means they literally don't exist because they have no effect on us, even in principle. But that's philosophical. And by the way, I think my case against IP does not rest upon this entire Austrian praxeological Kantian or neo-Kantian framework whatsoever. It's buttressed by it, but that's incidental. I think the case against IP comes from a clear recognition of our pro-property rights, pro-individual rights principles in understanding what property rights are. Just simply recognizing there's a contradiction there. There's an incompatibility. So that's my perspective on it. But go ahead. I think that's enough background, probably. Why don't you take it the way you want to take it? I'll follow your lead. Fair enough. But I just want to say that when we are talking, just to finish the thought on the Kantian, what I call the straight jacket, and you're free to disagree with that, to me, when you create these separations and then you introduce concepts like the mangers, he had a mental structure of wants. So that is in a way bringing in, since he couldn't make the connection to values, he creates a structure of wants. Similarly, Mises creates a structure, a Kantian structure of action, and that's where praxeology comes along. And then Hoppe creates a structure of essentially argumentation and discourse. So each one of these things, you either have the Kantian system in your thinking and that drives you in a certain direction. It might even limit what you can do. So I may just say one more thing. So for example, if you're not in the inductive mode of observing and then abstracting, then you also put another straight jacket on yourself where only new information can only come from introspection. So now you have things like, if there's a performative contradiction, yeah, now you've got new information. But other than that, all your starting points have to come from there. So it impacts every aspect of what we do. So go ahead. Let me say something. I don't know how this this may be lost on most people listening unless they're deep into Randy and stuff. I agree with so much of what you're saying, although people wouldn't think I do. Except you're talking from a Randy in point of view so much about induction and all those stuff. And part of it rests upon, I think, an unfair caricature or straw manning of the other side. To the extent Rand was correct in portraying what the Kantians believe, she was right to mock it. David Kelly has this famous line when Kant says the senses should conform to our reality, conform to what we experience and all this. Yeah, that's obviously silly, but I think he meant something subtly different. And that's Kant's fault that he was so murky and even Hopper recognizes this. But I think that reality is what reality is. So I'm a Randian in that sense. And I believe that if there's another species on another planet, they would have different concepts, different history, a different mode of communication, but ultimately they're described in the same reality. And it is true that a different conceptual and linguistic framework could lead you astray. But if you keep reality as your touchstone, you can make any system basically work. It's like the different guys looking at the elephant from different angles, you know, the tail, the feet, the trunk. They think they see different things, but they're all observing different parts of reality, which is also part of my pro-Randian, the moral is the practical view, like, you know, it's not surprising to me that consequentialism, as some people call it, dovetails with deontological truths. I don't think that Hopper is this, and these guys are this caricature of like, oh, they're trying to deduce everything a priori. In fact, I think Hopper's argumentation effect is perfectly compatible with and complements the Randian, the good part of Rand's approach for rights. Because like, even Ein Rand herself had this acertoric hypothetical approach to ethics. Like, if you choose to live, then this is what follows from it, right? Even she didn't try to say, you go from is to ought. You go from the fact of man's nature to what he should do. She went from the fact that he has values to what those values imply. And that's what Hopper does in his argumentation ethics. But that gives us far feels. Yeah, and we can talk about maybe ethics another time if you're open to it. I'd love to, you know, hash that out with you as well, because I think we would, I would push back slightly in the sense that I don't think that Hopper starts, so the problem is it doesn't get to the fundamentals. If you are unable to look at facts of life as a starting point, and then induce from there, then you're constraining yourself to operating at a level that is removed from that. And that's actually where many errors are possible. So when you're picking up methodology, then your methodological approach should be let's find the method that minimizes our chances of error. Error is still possible. Humans are fallible. But let's find the way that at least puts our senses, give us information. Let's put that ahead of abstraction. Let's not put abstraction. By the way, I agree with all that. And I am more Aristotelian Randian in this whole approach. By the way, I think David Kelly is one of the great geniuses in all this, although I disagree with him on the free will part. But I think that the essential thing is whether you're correct or not, not the terminology. So we have to keep our eye on that. I agree. But it's also important to get to fundamentals. So it is, but what's interesting is you keep focusing on Hopper's argumentation ethics. That's not epistemological at all. That's just like his argument for rights, which I, okay, we could just, that's another topic. But I think it's actually compatible with probably your view and Rand's view, although she wouldn't admit it. But the real contribution of Hopper would be his, I don't know if you're familiar with this or read it, but his economic science and the Austrian method, his epistemology. So I think that is, you might disagree with the terminology, and you might think it's overly Kantian, but it is essentially realistic. He's attempting to combine the realm that we experienced, the perceptual realm, right, with the action realm. So the teleological realm, the causal realm, he's trying to unite those into a realistic framework. Maybe he failed, maybe he's seated, maybe he's overstating his case, but it's not an dishonest or an evil attempt to try to make us think that we don't live in reality and we don't really know what's going on. It's very realist-centered. It's very grounded in pragmatics and in the things Rand emphasizes, but just with different terminology. Oh, there's nothing evil about it. Don't get me wrong, Hopper is a brilliant man. I mean, he's, the point is, he has his, and his, I guess, in until his 30s, he was a Kantian Marxist. No, no, no. I don't think it was that late, but yeah, until his late 20s, maybe. So, his background is from Kant and I would say he did not explore a perfect, a better alternative to Kant that was available in that era, and that's my only criticism. No, no, no. And I don't, so the reason I brought up evil is because Randians make this extremely hyperbolic claim that Kant is the source of all evil in the world and blah, blah, blah. And even that claim is exaggerated, but it's based upon this caricature or this American idealistic, skeptical, moral relativist, not moral relativist, but epistemological relativist interpretation of Kant, which, as even Hopper concedes, is partly Kant's fault because he was so murky and unclear in his writing. So Hopper says, I don't agree that Kant meant this, but I can understand why some people think so because he was so vague. Okay. And I agree with you that like Hopper is a little bit too dismissive of Rand's contributions, partly because he was a Rothbard follower and Rothbard had a falling out rank because she was, they were totally psychos and cultists and she was, you know, like all this personal stuff. But even Hopper acknowledges that like, you know, Rand didn't have personal knowledge of Kant. She wasn't a deep Kant scholar, but she had some points about her criticism of Kant's, the idealistic interpretation of Kant. But anyway, this is interesting to me and you, I'm sure, but we're getting way far afield for what we wanted to talk about, which by the way, so you still never answered the question. Are you an anarchist and are you a libertarian? And do you believe in, like, what's your view of property rights? Why don't you talk about that? Then we can get into the next steps. Sure. I am not an anarchist. I am an objectivist in the sense that I, and this is all the way from metaphysics, epistemology, the nature of man, ethics, politics, economics, even aesthetics. To me, there's a system that is available. And if there was a better one, honestly, I would be for it. So I'm not in it to, I'm not a card carrying, you know, supporter of anybody. But what I'm looking for is the best way to explain the world that I live in, which means a lot to me. So for example, if Hopper had examined the iron rands approach, because he was, you know, coming of age in the 70s, when certainly it was available to him. So let's, to me, the people like Rand and Mises are, you know, they did amazing contributions, but they've been gone for like four decades. So to be hung up on the personalities makes no sense at all. The better thing for us to do in the 21st century, focus on the ideas. And let's not worry about whether Rothbard and Rand had a falling out. It's totally with you. I totally agree. And by the way, you might not know this, but I consider myself to be an objectivist in the sense of I agree with at least the four main tenets. I don't even say I disagree with the aesthetics with the fifth, but I'm not like it. I'm not obsessed with aesthetics, and I don't pretend to be an expert. But like on metaphysics, on epistemology, on ethics, and on economics and politics, I agree with the general way she stated it. I agree with capitalism or individual rights. I agree with individual self interest or egoism. I agree with reality and realism. I agree with, you know, the basic core stuff. I think she misapplied it in some ways and she was too grandiose. But I agree with all that, by the way. And I think they all feedback on each other and they all interplay with each other. However, I'm not too dismissive of other conceptual frameworks, linguistic frameworks, philosophical frameworks that also contribute and express these core ideas in different ways, although less precisely sometimes and with more contradictions. But yeah, essentially I'm a Randian at my core, I think. I think she was wrong about, and anarchy is, we can forget the anarchy thing. I think she just was wrong there, but that's a different, like so, but on IP, I think her fundamental failure was in her self contradictory rights theorizing. She was right on half of it and wrong on half of it, and that led to conflict and that leads to her conflating different domains and supporting intellectual property. That's what I think her essential mistake is. But I agree with the core, like realism, individualism, reality is reality, you know, logic, rationality, reason, capitalism, all that. So I think I'm with you on the core. Great, and maybe this is a good time to get into more specifics. And you know, you mentioned in some of your podcasts, which by the way, I enjoy, where you've described your journey through objectivism and you mentioned in some places that you got into IP law because of objectivism and then you perhaps found out other things about it and changed your mind about it, which is perfectly fine. That's not quite right, but okay, go ahead. That's not quite right, but that's fine. Well, hopefully that when we talk in this conversation and welcome any follow-up discussions as well, maybe I can give you the moral and the practical back so that you can enjoy the practice of IP law rather than do it while thinking it is immoral. Well, I'm basically retired now, so it's too late. Okay. No, I do a little bit. But no, no, I actually enjoyed my practice because I was good at it. And when you're good at a skill, it's pleasurable. But I just recognize what my role was. My role was to aid people to navigate a legal system. And it's like if you're a defense attorney and you're defending someone from a drug crime, in a free society, your job wouldn't exist. But given that there is a drug war, you need defense attorneys. So you're doing a good job given that it exists. So can you take pleasure? Not sure. But then you're regretting the fact that your job even has to exist. The same thing with a tax attorney, like I can help corporations try to minimize the tax burden. And I can be good at that. And I can take pleasure in that. And I'm contributing value given the tax system. But the tax system is the immoral thing that drives the existence of this career. Or like if you're an oncologist, your doctor trying to cure cancer. Well, if we can achieve a world without cancer, you oncologists would not be needed anymore. But given that there's cancer, your job is necessary. That's how I ended up doing my job as a patent attorney. And I was good at it in those confines. So I was able to compartmentalize and think of, okay, ethically should or politically should this field exist or should these laws exist with what's a good career to practice? And yeah, for me, it was a good career. And I was good at it. And I enjoyed that part of it. I enjoyed the technological parts. I enjoyed interacting with creative people and with inventors and learning about technology and seeing how it interplays with capitalist private entrepreneurial companies and all that. So and by the way, I wanted to mention earlier, this is again, yet another side, you and I keep having tangents, but I will concede that there are some weak arguments for the abolition of IP, like information wants to be free and this kind of stuff. Although there's a germ of truth and some of that. But there are terrible arguments criticizing people like me, like you will have libertarians or objectivists say, Oh, well, you're a communist because you think ideas should be commonly owned. I mean, that's just that's just bad arguing because it presupposes property rights. I mean, we have to get to the core of definitions, principles, rights, property, that kind of stuff to even get to this issue. You can't just say you're a commie. I mean, in my view, intellectual property is evil because it's socialistic. It is communistic in the sense that it's an institutionalized way of interfering with and taking private property rights. So then the question really is what are private property rights? How do we justify them? And what are their contents, right? That's ultimately the question, I think. And by the way, I would never call you a communist. Where I disagree with you is that the way to defend property rights is not to torpedo intellectual property rights. So I'm going to make that case. But my point is, since you support property rights in tangible things, but not in inventions and books and whatnot, in my mind, there's no difference between the two. And if you attack one, you're actually playing into the hands of the left who are happy to take both down. And that's not the reason why I support it. To me, that either is a moral case or not. But in thinking that you're defending property rights by attacking intellectual property rights, you're actually playing into the hands of the leftist. That doesn't make you a leftist, but you're playing into their hands. Well, one problem with that comment is that the left doesn't oppose intellectual property rights. And communist states have patent and copyright laws. So it's not like it's a commie thing to oppose IP rights. Well, without going into the weeds there, but even the Soviet Russia that had a patent system, it was never the individual that owned it. It was a week. It was never about the individual. But maybe that's going into areas where we can say the same thing about, you know, owning a farm. I mean, it's like, yeah, that's how their property system worked, but their property rights included patent rights. They weren't opposed to that at all because, and I believe ultimately, because the intellectual property mistake stems from the Marxist labor theory of value, which I think Rand inadvertently bought into because of the locky and the the the related locky and mistake of the labor theory of property. So it's like both sides focus. I mean, look, I am Rand was good at exposing dichotomies and false false choices. And I think she bought into one of them, which was, you know, like they all bought into this idea of labor as being this essential concept and category that has moral implications. And I think it's led to communism and mass murder and, you know, all kinds of horrors. True, but there's an error in that. And I just want to clarify that. We all know that rights, both intellectual and tangible, started off on a really bad way with monopolies from the crown and things like that. So the origins are very murky. But in more modern times, modern, including the locky and 1690s and what have you, the people who are the natural rights philosophers of the locky and type, they were focused on on labor. And they never really justified the source or the nature of property. To them, it was a very intrinsic thing, like either it's from God, or it's something inherent in human beings and all of that. I agree. I don't disagree. Yep. I don't disagree with that. So Rand figured that out. And she actually she is not on the on the on the labor theory of value. I think it's it's this is where there's a lot of commonality between Rand and lock, but she parts company with them in that in that labor theory of value. So to to say that she she is part of that tradition is correct. But for her, it's about value creation. And it was not. And it may or may I just complete this. Go ahead. Go ahead. Then then the next phase was the the benthamite. You're actually from from Kant was sort of coming into his own right after in the 18 late 1700s. And then Bentham comes along and he creates this this new religion, if you will, of the greatest good for the greatest number, the utilitarian mindset. And he's the one who actually brings scarcity as the as the source of value and therefore the source of property. So you have either scarcity or labor or value. And then of course, Marx says, well, it's labor that is scarce. And so he's he's sort of blending the benthamite view with with the Lockean view. And then he's going off on his horrible labor theory of value. So that's interesting. I would disagree with with that with part of what you said. But but like I don't think that you can attribute recognizing the fundamental nature of reality being that we are human actors with physical bodies, which I ran herself recognized when she distinguishes that she says, we're not ghosts, you know, we have we have actual physical, tangible human bodies. We live in the real world. We're not ghosts. Recognizing that we employ scarce means, which is an Austrian Mises concept, which is true is undeniably true. There's nothing there's nothing like anti intellectual or materialistic about this recognition that we employ scarce means that has certain implications. This is what economic analysis is about. Implications of acting with scarce means. So we do live in this kind of world even ran wouldn't disagree with that, I believe. Yes, but that's not mystical. That's not anti intellectual. That's not monist. It's just it's just is undeniably true that we live in a world of scarcity except except that it is superficial in the sense that it so since you quoted ran ran for ran man is a unity of mind and body. I agree with that completely, by the way. And Mises wouldn't disagree either because we have will we have choice. We are actors, not behaviors. But go ahead. Well, will is is a is an approximation. But let's let's say so mind and body. And therefore that is the so when you when you start with that, then you recognize that the root of all property is intellectual, whether it's a farm. Okay, this is where we let's let's stop right there because when you say the root will define what you mean by property. Fair enough. But what I'm going to show in the in the next few minutes, hopefully is that when you it's a mistake to land ran into the into the labor theory of value that that no, I said, but it but it's it's the labor theory of property. So lock had the labor theory of property that led eventually in my view to the cousin and related view of labor theory of value. And by the way, ran some Randians that support IP. I'm not blaming you for this, but some people they will they will repeat things that are very labor theory of value related, not property, like they'll say, Well, if you work hard at something, you deserve a profit. Well, that is, that is communist, that is socialist. You do not deserve anything. No one deserves a profit for working hard. Right, even in physics, work is motion through a distance. It's not just pushing against the wall. And if you embark on an endeavor and you work hard at it, it may it might fail. That's the there's always the possibility of failure. No one deserves a profit because a profit is the excess money you have left over after people pay you for services or goods that you sell or perform. And that means that they have to pay you their property, but they own that. So to have a property right in a profit would mean a slavery claim, a right of ownership over other people. It means you have a right to an income. It's like saying I put money into Social Security, so I have a right to a payment. No, you don't because that requires the government to tax workers right to pay me my Social Security payments. And even if the government calls that a property right, it doesn't matter. So my point is that, you know, you can't when you say people deserve to be paid for their work, that is actually completely false. And that is hearkening back to based upon the labor theory of value, which is Marxian and false. But that is not the point that I'm making at all. That's fine. But but some of your some of your compatriots do do that sometimes. Well, I would say that that we need to get to the fundamentals. And so if man is a unity of mind and body, then the man is dealing with with material values in the real world. So it comes down to no, no, no, no. So here's what he did. Hold on. He deals with material objects. You should let me finish the point because I got go ahead. Otherwise, you know, you took it in the direction of profit, which is not anything that I said. So the fact that man is unity of mind and body, then it comes down to you have to get to what is the root of property. That's what we started talking about. You mentioned you mentioned scarcity. And that is a cornerstone of of the of your criticism. If you start with scarcity, then you're right. If it's all about scarcity, then intellectual property that is it falls into a different category. It's not scarce. So all of that goes into a different category. But that's not my case at all. In my mind, scarcity is the is a superficial sort of it's actually an invalid concept, which I will I will get to in just a minute. But that's to me, when you start with that, you get yourself in a lot of trouble because you haven't gone to the root. So if scarcity is your root, and I can say that there's something more fundamental than that that you're missing. And because of that, you have taken the wrong approach towards IP. That's my position. And that's what I'm I'm hoping to show in a few minutes. Right. Give me a second. I'll let you continue a second. I'm going to want to pause this for three minutes to go take a bathroom break. Are you okay with that? Yes. But I got distracted, actually what I was what I was objecting to, and not to disrupt your chain of logic was your use of the of this Randy, this Randy concept of values with a plural values, like treating it as a noun. That's where I think I fundamentally disagree. And we can talk about that and I'll let you continue. But let me pause just for three minutes to go have a bathroom break and I'll come right back. Are you okay with that? Absolutely. Okay, give me just a second. I'm going to hit pause here. So yeah, this works. I just turned on the recording again on my me to resume. Okay, we're back. I'm back with my with my cold brew. All right. All right, go ahead. Okay, so maybe this would be a good time to to get into and if you don't mind. And if this format is okay with you, I'll go for about 15 minutes. And then maybe you can have, you know, whatever you'd like to do, we don't have to be formal about it. But because the case I'm about to make is probably not that familiar to your audience. It would be if I can present it in sort of one, go ahead. I'm grabbing a no pass so I can take notes. But go ahead. So we talked a little bit about the fundamentals epistemology and things like that. And we won't go into that. The goal here is to look for what is a good place to start. So when we think about property, what is the concept of property based on is a good place to start? I know Stefan, your position is is more about scarcity and conflict prevention. And and these are not incorrect in the sense that that it and it's easier to to grasp it at that level. So it's quite easy to understand why many people would do that. It's somewhat intuition based. And that's what is the appeal of it, that it that many people can grasp it right away. But in my mind, it doesn't get to the fundamentals. And since we are talking about the moral case, if we don't get to the fundamentals, we can make some big mistakes. So to begin, property is a moral concept, not an economic concept. And it is actually to be more precise, it's an it's a normative concept. Totally agree, by the way, but keep going. Totally agree. So and and and Rand actually is as far as I know, the only person who digs it digs into it at that level, looking for for that is and she's applying her methods here, you know, the methods of observe and then abstract. And so you'll see the method at work, even though I'm not going to go into the details of of that. But it's very for someone who immersed in philosophy, you'll get a good sense of how she gets to these to these root descriptions. So she she starts with what facts of reality give rise to the need for values. She doesn't just start by who should benefit from someone's actions or what problem are we trying to solve. To her, that would be incorrect. It would be like, you're not observing the world looking into the facts of the world and then trying to reach your conclusions from that. So she starts off with observing facts in the world like, Hey, there's living things and there's inanimate things. And living things face the conditionality of life inanimate things don't. So living things are then seen to they pursue things that are needed to sustain their lives. So and pursue means slightly different things depending on the context. So for a plant, the values are things like water and sunlight, perhaps for an animal, the values are slightly higher level. And for humans, of course, they're even higher level than than animals. But the point the basic point is that there are some things without which human beings stop living, they basically go from being living to inanimate, if those things are unfulfilled. And that's what she calls values. She defines them as a value is that which one acts to gain or to keep. That's she gets that from this inductive process of looking at living things across the board. And so this is as fundamental as it gets because plants have values, animals have values, humans have values. This is not starting philosophizing at some level of economics, but it's getting down to existence type of things, observing existence. And since many of the people in your audience are Austrians, I'm going to get into a Crusoe example because that's a very familiar one to most people in this audience. So imagine Crusoe on the island. He faces the conditionality of life. So I'm trying to concretize what I just said that was multi-radical. Crusoe faces the conditionality of life. He needs certain things. You know, he needs to catch fish, perhaps he needs a, he needs coconuts. He needs to start a fire so he can cook the fish because he realizes that, hey, eating raw fish is not particularly good, whatever it is. But he must first use his mind to identify them as values. So there's a cognitive part of it. And then he has to produce them. And even in producing them, he has to identify, there's a cognitive part of knowing what the means are, of how he has to, what actions he has to take. So this cognition involved through the whole process. But here's the key part. And that is, in some bigger sense, there might be a certain limited number of, or finite number of fish in the lagoon. But the values that Crusoe is looking for, those are the ones that are scarce. It's the cut fish. It's the plucked coconut. So think of this in terms of materials is actually an error. The scarcity is that of values that man has to produce. Now, I'm going to add one more layer to this. Let's say Friday comes along. But here's the twist. Friday is an indestructible, immortal robot, which Stefan, you may recognize, is an iron-rand method that he used to make certain points in her objectivist. Yeah. And I think it's flawed, like the evenly rotating economy is flawed, because there cannot be an indestructible robot. You could know that he was indestructible. But yeah, I'm definitely familiar with all this. I'm using it only to make a point. I'm not suggesting that men are indestructible robots. I know. But that's why we use the evenly rotating economies to make a point, to isolate something. But for Friday being this indestructible person is he doesn't face the conditionality of life that Crusoe does. So the same materials exist for him, but there are no values in his life, because he doesn't need anything. So this is a way to illustrate a simple point. Nothing more, nothing less. I've written on this. I disagree with that example, by the way. I know that's what she's trying to illustrate. I think the example fails. She is using that for some other purposes. I brought this into the Crusoe example to make a different point, which is it illustrates that that if Crusoe's life was not conditional, then there would be no such thing as values. You would not have to think, you would not have to create a cognitively identify them, and then figure out how to produce them. And that is the main point in this. And there are other, so this is, if we get to the point where we understand that if life wasn't conditional, there'd be no values. So you start to realize that there's something odd about the scarcity of materials. It hasn't gotten to the point of man's interaction with that, to make them into values. And those are the things that are scarce. So if we talk about scarcity without getting to values, we're actually missing the point. And we're making a fundamental approximation, which we might think is good, but we're missing something a little more fundamental. And that can lead us to some significant errors. There are other examples of this, which we can talk about. Oil that was in Pennsylvania, it was there for centuries, just bubbling out of the ground or whatever it was. It was a material, but it wasn't a value. Or as a economist would say, it wasn't a good yet. It was even a bad, maybe. But yeah, this concept is not that new to Rand, but I'm trying to make a point, a logical change that perhaps your audience will see is. Right, go ahead, go ahead. By the way, I'm familiar with all this and I agree with most of it, except for some of the terms. You could define scarcity the way you're using it in values, but go ahead, keep going. All right. So the oil example is interesting because there too, it might even have been finite in some sense of how many million barrels of oil there are or something like that. But it is not a value until man using his cognitive faculty makes it a value. And that's a big part. So there's an intellectual component to that. And then it has to be converted into something. It has to be used in something. So all that, that entire chain. So the focus on materials is superficial. That's the point. So scarcity of materials even means, if you say means without means to what end, the end is what matters. And that's where the values come in. So that's true. But we're not ghosts. You recognize that and Rand even said that we're not ghosts. We're not material things actually do matter. And I'm going to talk mainly about material things. You'll notice my examples are material, but the, and I'll make this point a little more cohesively in a couple of minutes. So I'm with you on that. We are not ghosts. Man is a unity of mind and body. I think that the focus on body alone is actually superficial, which I would suggest the Rothbardians tend to do, focusing a little more on the body and to the exclusion of the mind. And in doing so, they miss some critical process. But let's carry on. So the value is not the scarce material it is the value that it represents to the rational mind of the person who produces it in their life for their life. So I'll, from there, I want to get into property because that's what we're really after our discussion is setting the stage for, for what is the root of property. But the key takeaway from that, the examples given, and we can have other examples as well, which I'll be happy to bring up later on. But man must first conceive of the values that are necessary to maintain his life. He doesn't find them in nature. So there's a cognitive part of identifying the values. Then there's additional mental processes where he must identify the means by which these values are created or obtained. And then he must act. So the physical part is built in. So I'm not ignoring this is not the man is a ghost idea. There's, there's all of these processes, but to ignore the intellectual, the cognitive, the conceptual is, is to, is to be superficial. So the unity of mind and body, it means that that the creation of values are what sustains his life. It's not just the body. So Rand has a very interesting quote, which I'll be, I'll take a minute to read. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual. Everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort, again, mind and effort, mind and body. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival. So this is kind of the bigger picture that, that captures both cognitive and the action part of it. So the big conclusion, the radical conclusion that Rand reached in this process is all property is fundamentally intellectual property. So, so that's the, the, the main aspect of this is that you, you, it's not as though there's this property that does not have some component of conceptualizing, there may be less or more. And I'll read you one, one, one more quote from Rand, which is very relevant. It's actually from, from his 1964 essay on patents and copyrights, which I'm sure you've read says every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort, of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, and this is what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge, is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values. I end quote. So property rights actually secure the values, the material values that are born of the human mind. That's the, the root of property. And I haven't got to property rights yet. So we just talked about where property begins. And that's the, the, the, if you'll give me a couple more minutes, I want to connect them to property rights. Go ahead. Take your time. Thank you. And then we'll talk about intellectual property. That's, those are my two other. And by the way, I am intimately familiar with all this, of course, and I understand it. And there's a root of grain of truth in it. But there's, there's probably lots of people that are listening or that have listened to Austrian and libertarian stuff. They've never, they've never read a lot. They don't even understand the mandate approach. Like, I think you need to understand the mandate approach and appreciate it and to see, well, in my view, where she goes astray. But this is probably helpful to set the framework for where you're coming from. So go ahead. Thank you. And I think that's, so if people haven't heard this, then, then at least they'll understand that the approach here builds from fundamentals. It is, it is probably more convenient, you know, to think in terms of scarcity, because those are easier concepts, rather than thinking in terms of value and, and the cognitive component and the physical component. But superficial does not mean that it's correct. It might, it means that you might be missing something important, and you might reach wrong, wrong conclusions. It is easily, it's possible to reach a wrong conclusion. Totally agree with that. Okay. Although, although I would, what I would say is probably what's going on is that a deeper understanding of all these interconnections can help you clarify hone in deep in your understanding. If nothing else, like there, like there's no downside to it. But go ahead. Yes. And also, because people like you are thought leaders in this, in this area, you're certainly familiar with this and you're, you're able to delve at this level into the detail of it. So yes, it may be easier to explain scarcity, but you, you're able to go to the, to the root of the prop of the, of the description. That means we should be able to get it right and then explain it to others. That's all I'm saying here. And I think, I think Ryan does that. And this is where maybe you and I disagree. So let's, if you, I've got two more main points to make. I'm going to get into property rights and then how it applies to IP. So we'll start with a, I'll throw in a couple of definitions because otherwise if I don't define my terms, then I'm not doing my job in this discussion. So let me, let me talk about that. So actually one step before I define rights. So there's nothing inherent. Rights are not inherent in humans. There's no intrinsic thing that we can point to, oh, there's a right. Or there's a, there's a right out there in nature that I can, that I can point to. They're not objects in the world. They're a, they're a conceptual thing. So Rand's definition is that rights are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. So the point there is that there's a sphere of action. And in this sphere, you, you cannot be coerced. And we are, we are formulating this as a principle. So a right to property is that I have a liberty to use this property to the benefit of my life. And it's a, it's a area that you're, you're calling a sphere of action. That's what a right is. But it's important to know there's nothing, there's nothing intrinsic about a right. That's, that's a, that's a key point. And let's also say, what is exactly this property? I talked about values. I'm going to talk about property now. Property is, this is the simplest definition that I can think of, any material value that is created and used by someone. So that's, that's as basic as it gets. So Crusoe, for example, on the island, he has property. Once, if he catches a fish, it's, it's his property. Now, the concept of property rights. By the way, by the way, I totally disagree, but you can keep going. Okay. And you haven't defined what you keep adding the word material to value. Earlier, you said value is like a subjective thing. Like it's something you act to gain or gain and or keep, but now you're adding material, even though you rejected materiality and physicality. And I don't agree that Crusoe has any property rights whatsoever, if he's living on an island. I haven't said that. I haven't said he has any property rights. The concept of property exists even without a social context. Remember, rights, rights are moral principles. That's what, that's what I'm disagreeing with. But, but so go ahead. I'm not saying that Crusoe has property rights when he's by himself. What's, what's property if it's not a right then? The point is the, the material value that is created and used by someone is property. Yeah, but what does material add to your, you keep saying value? Why, why do you say material in front of it? There are things in the world. It's that simple. The things in the world that, that you have it, I have it, Crusoe has it. So you, so you, so you do have a physicalist view of some, some things. Oh yes. Everything I'm talking about is, is, is a material value in the, in the world. It's not, it's not some ideation. So, you know, I'm not talking about, and I'll get to that when I, when I get to property, intellectual property. This is not some, some, there's a mental component, but it's, there's a material value in the world. And we're only talking about that. Okay, so just clarification. So like the novel Atlas wrote the pattern of that novel that defines what that novel is. Is that a material value or not? I'll get to that in a bit. Okay, okay, go ahead. There is a material value there, but I haven't got to that yet. And I think we'll get out of sequence in the description there. Go ahead. I'm derailing. Go ahead. No, you're not, but I'm just saying that it will, it will be confusing to anyone who is listening to this if we, if we get off topic and miss certain key, key aspects of it. So we talked about property as, as any material value that is created and used by someone. So Crusoe has some, a concept of property perhaps, but not property rights. Because as I said, rights are exist in a social, in a social context. So when Friday shows up, that's when the social context might exist if they are, if they are thinking along those lines, and they, they might be able to conceptualize the concept of, of property rights. But that's a key part of it. So property represents, this will sort of get to this, your question about the material aspect of it. Property represents the values that are conceived and then created in the material world by individuals. So you conceive the value and then you create it. So land, for example, by itself, fallow land is not property until you do something to it. You convert it into a value. So the, the value represented in the use of the land, not the land itself, because otherwise, in fact, this will apply to some of your concepts about homesteading and so on. It's the, it's the use of the material that what we are talking about. That's why it's important to know that. And then once again, the type of the value gives it, gives it context. So for example, a wild animal, when does a wild animal become value? Well, you can't just point to a deer out there and say, hey, that's mine. You, you have to lay your hands on it, perhaps. So there's a, there's a concept of it becomes a value. So there's a, each, each material that you think about becomes a value when you have converted it into a material value. Until then, it's just a, it's just a thing. And then you, or a material, which you have to convert it into a value. So the, the source of all property actually is value creating productivity. It's not, it's not labor. It's not scarcity, but value producing, value creating productivity that Crusoe or you or I have to do in order to turn a material into, into a value. And that's why we're talking about, about the material aspect of it. So now we get to property rights. But we define property. And so the definition of property rights is, is sort of similar. It, it, it borrows from it. It says the right to acquire, use, and dispose of those material values. It's that's, it's that simple. There's nothing more, nothing less. So we said a property is a material, any material value that is created and used by someone. And a property right is the right to acquire, use, and dispose of those material values. So that's, that's about the most fundamental level of understanding property and property rights. So what property rights do is they secure under the law a domain of freedom for an individual to create the values and then use them to, to live their life. That's, that's it. It's, it's that simple in, in, in conceptual terms and that fundamental. So, and then as I mentioned, since property itself is contextual, like a certain type of context applies to land, a different context applies to animals, a different context applies to a stream of water. So property rights are also contextual. And if you understand the context of the value, then the property rights will follow that. And this is a key, key part of, of what comes next, which is we're going to apply it to intellectual property. And then I'll be glad to hand it back to you. So I'm not going to talk about the intellectual property. So we know that the very use of the word intellectual and property, we're kind of doing the, the genus differential thing, where the genus is property and the differential is intellectual. So there is, there is something special about it. It's not, it's, it's a kind of property. And that's what we're trying to, to define by this, by the term intellectual property. But I'll begin by saying that intellectual property rights are not about protecting ideas. We use this in the loose, you know, colloquial context of, oh yeah, we're protecting ideas. But actually that's not the case. It's about the right of exclusive control of material values in the real world. The ideas may have led to that. As I said, all, all values come from some cognitive process, but we're not protecting the idea. If I said we were, then just by reading a patent, you'd be infringing on it because, you know, your mind is engaged with that. And if that is, is illegal, well, that there goes the whole, the whole match. Well, just a brief interjection. I mean, some of your compatriots will say that there are rights to ideas. I don't. And I, and Rand never says that. So I would say that there are many incorrect interpretations. And I would say if you follow the right method and the right interpretation, you'll arrive at, at what I think is the, is the right approach. So fair enough, fair enough. Okay. So as I said, it's about the right of exclusive control of material values in the real world. But there is, there is a key difference between the nature of values secured by intellectual property rights and the value secured by property rights in tangible goods like land or an automobile. So there's a context. Remember, we talked about a different context. So now I'm going to get to the, to why that there's a different context. And that's why there are differences in intellectual property rights and tangible property. You know, you'll, you'll bring up the case of why are there time limits, et cetera. And, but there, there are, they follow the same genus, which is property, but there are differences. I would, I would be acknowledged. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll bring up the fact that I mean, you need to define what you mean by property and intellectual property in the first place. I mean, Yes. And I'm, and I'm about, I've, I've defined property. I've defined property rights. I'm about to define intellectual properties. So broadly speaking, again, this is coming from the, the two different, two different types of material values. It's, it's best understood by example, but while I'm, while I'm going through the example, keep in mind that value is that which one acts to gain or and keep. So keep, keep both those things in mind as the gaining and the keeping that are involved in, in value. So I will, but so far I noticed that, like you keep saying material value, but I've asked you to define material value. And I still am not sure what I'm, but material value is things in the world. And I'm going to show you in a few minutes, actually by example, how intellectual property is also about controlling material values. And it's not about ideas. That's my, I mean, I'm going to ultimately ask you to defend what type of law you just, you think is defensible, like, like not just these general terms, which is fine, but like, how does this boil down to you defending a particular type of law that is enforced by physical force, right? Copyright, trademark, trade secret, whatever. Like you have to, you have to translate this into what your, what policy opposing or favoring. It's a fair question. If you don't mind, ask me that in, in about three minutes or two minutes. So because I have to get to a certain point of what, what material values are in terms of intellectual property. And since you've asked that question, I really want to address that before we get into the topic of, you know, enforcement and law and things like that. So I'm going to show this by, by an example. So let's say that a mutual friend of ours, let's say his name is John Gault, he invents a car that runs on heavy water or distilled water or something. Okay. Let's say he calls it an H2O car. So by inventing the H2O car, he has used mental and physical effort to create a material value in the real world, which is the value that of, of reproducing the car is a material value. It is, it is not an idea. It is the, the value of reproducing the car itself is a material value. Rand calls this dynamic value because each time, each time a car is created, new value is created. It's not a static value. It's a dynamic value in the sense that, but it is a material value. Yeah, that's the argument against IP, but go ahead. I mean, yeah, that's the, that's the idea that people can copy ideas that are useful and use them in their own actions. Yeah. I agree with you so far, but that's an argument against IP. I'll, I'll let you make that case. But yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. So the value in the material value in IP is actually the reproduction part of it. It's the reproducing is the material value. These are things in the world that come into being because the originator, the inventor, John Gault, in this case put in the mental and physical effort to, to make this available. And he then is, because he's the first guy to have done it, he's basically, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you know he's the first guy? You just assumed that. This is, this is an example I said he invents. I said, John Gault has invented an H2O car. So that's Well, hold on. Not to be nitpicky, but that doesn't mean he's the first. Well, let's I know let's say he is the first I mean this to me It's a distraction to say is he the first or is he not I'm making In the example that John Galt has invented this thing which has not existed until he invented it It is a fact that these such inventions exist. So I'm not going too far afield by saying Let's start with the assumption that he has invented it It's not I mean there could there could have been a guy ten years ago on another continent who came up with it But then it faded away. I mean he's not necessarily the first That's all I'm saying is if you're gonna hint something on the fact that he's first. How do you know that? Well, why is that relevant? Why is it relevant that he's first? Why is it relevant that the first homesteader has the value? So the point there is if you apply it to that it's it's the same It's the same conceptual approach that that the first However, you define it first to file first to invent those are those are again terms that come from legal philosophy not even political philosophy and they are aspects that we will have to get to in the inductive process of Figuring all that out. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. I'm saying when we're talking about a philosophical argument, let's focus on the fact that Things do get invented there can be someone however you define it is the first and he he invents the H2O car So well, well, hold on a second. I mean Not to derail you but I mean you can see that Innovation is a cumulative process. I assume incremental Everyone builds upon previous concepts, right? Absolutely usually when a new invention comes about like the light bulb or something like that It it comes when its time has come it doesn't come because there was an Edison Like in other words, there are many people trying to do the airplane or the light bulb or whatever at the same time and They will eventually it will come about because the technology has come to the point where this will happen And it could not have happened without a precursor inventions So everything is everything is incremental and cumulative and if it does and if if it relies on previous Inventions don't everything everything rely no, but this is my point. It's impossible not to rely upon previous inventions Fair enough and nothing come nothing comes Ex-neal right from nothing everything comes from a context and we will get you your quest Your question is basically leading us into the discussion of why should there be time limits and we'll get to that No, my question is not time limits. Where's the rest of the real property rights at all and coming up with a new recipe or way of Organizing the matter that you have a new under your disposal this that you But go ahead. So the fact is that John Galt has invented this H2O car and Before that now the antecedent events Whatever they are. Let's say let's say he has to use knowledge from from before and no he but but but but he does have to I think you can see that right absolutely There's no way he's gonna wake up as a baby and do this He has to build upon knowledge. I'm not suggesting that but prior to John Galt There was no H2O car and now there is well, there was an H2O car Step minus one right whatever that was I mean there was something before and everything incremental and that too if it was a material value that existed in the world Then John Galt would would probably license it from them So those are I think details that we need to get into but the we're talking about a concept here where an inventor What is the value that he has that wait a minute? So wait, wait, wait, but but notice what you just said He's gonna license it from them. So like you're envisioning the society where this guy's got to Just to exist in the world and to imbibe the Technological concepts that have existed for millennia. He's got to run around Negotiating licenses first. Seriously not at all. Not at all. He might he might learn from a physics teacher, for example Well, is that violating someone's goddamn IP rights? I mean come on not necessary. We'll get to that Is he you these are all important but derivative points and if you're trying to get to the concept of It went when someone invents something is there a material value that did not exist before and Whether he owns all of it or some of it We can talk about that and how much of that is owed to previous we can assign all of that That's what this discussion can be about but ultimately there is a material value that that the H2O car represents and It's it's sort of like like a farmer turning fallow land into into a farm It's sort of analogous to that now well It's analogous, but analogies don't make arguments because I'm not I'm just I'm trying to cement the idea and I try to connect it to something that is familiar to people so that they can say oh This is not some something that's weird and radical. It is at least at least conceptually familiar to us Well, hold on hold on say but that's all fine, but let's be clear This is not something you have you you don't have an uphill burden here You don't have to prove to people. Hey, I'm trying to introduce this crazy idea like you do. We live in a world in Embedded in this idea. I mean they already accept what you're talking about So well, but the point is that you're opposing even the fact that an invention Can can exist and I'm saying an invention so I'm starting my example with an invention So if you don't mind, let me just go through this and then we can we can get into other things You know, feel free to ask whatever you want to ask about it. So What I'm saying is that there is this is a dynamic value that John Galt has has in that the value is represented by the by the Material value because he can reproduce it. It's actually that reproduction of that Which is a value that is protected that that is considered intellectual property now The let's say now. Let's come contrast this with the other kind of property that is more familiar to people So let's say Let's say a Marxist someone like let's say Bernie Sanders comes along and buys one of John Galt's H2o cars. Okay. Now That's a property that people actually Understand so let's say he buys a car the entire material value is present at the time that the car was created and then he bought it So this is why it's called. It's a static value So there's a two different kinds of of value things that we Things that that you buy from someone like which we all think are covered by property rights Those are static values. So Bernie did not create the H2o car, but here's what he needs to do He needs to act to keep it to maintain it So he has to you know change the flux capacitor every so often or whatever he has to do in order to maintain it So there's a kind of a burden on Bernie Sanders to do that now Bernie Sanders being who he is will probably advocate for You know high taxes and basically tax himself out of existence But that's a separate point. That's part of maintaining your property is to also not not attack the concept of property rights So but as long as that's going on he gets to keep his his his property So the point is that they're two different kinds of of property and the context are different So intellectual property is actually that the the material value in is is the pattern is just a piece of paper It's nothing more than than a piece of paper but what it what it secures is the material value of of reproducing the mousetrap or the H2o car Okay, that's fine. There's nothing. There's not an idea. It's not some some thing okay, so so The material value of reproducing something what that means is you have the legal right to stop someone from making a Use of their own property without permission. That's what you mean And we'll get down to that Because ultimately you're talking about Yes, so so we're getting to the to the root of it, which is if it is a material property of material value then So you can disagree with that but if it is a material value then Yeah, you have the burden of proof is to show why is it why is it so different from Disagree the burden of proof is not to show why it's different the burden of proof is to show Why your use of force is justified? That's the ultimate burden of proof Because we're talking all to me about what laws are justified, correct? Wouldn't you agree with that? I'm getting to the moral concept Laws are based upon morals, right? So the quest the ultimate question is which laws and legal system do you think is justified? No, that's the ultimate question here, which is why it Redounds to a question about material values because laws only affect Material things and you know why because laws are only Enforced by physical force applied by government goons and courts against physical property So it's always a question about who owns which material resource even though you want to say it's not it's a You want to change the definition to run to your values and blah blah blah? It's all the the legal question is always a question of which law is justified So that's our dispute here It's which law like if you're if you're saying I'm wrong and saying IP law should be abolished You're saying there should be an IP law. So you're saying there should be a law But what I'm saying is that I IP is moral and so if it's moral then we can talk So that's what I'm here to talk about today. We can talk about Let me back up a second because I think we're getting a little bit. I've given you enough on this stuff. I think I mean You could say it's immoral to You know watch pornography all day long, but I assume as a randian you wouldn't say that there should be a law Outlawing pornography correct I'm not at all talking about Outlawing things like that. Give me a second. Just give me give me a little leeway here your honor I mean you would say that You know Being indolent or there's lots of things that you shouldn't do Morally that we all can agree to you shouldn't be dishonest shouldn't be lazy You shouldn't be indolent. You shouldn't be a cad But You shouldn't do drug. Maybe shouldn't be a cocaine addict, right? But I assume you're against the drug war. Yes, you don't think that the government has the right to make it illegal to Take to buy cocaine or marijuana, right? I completely agree with you I think that there is no okay justification for that So the moral and the legal are not the same realm of analysis No, but here but the point is is not that we're talking about is something is a material value Okay Well What you mean by material value, what does it mean something is a material value? It's a thing in the world. Maybe the right to get profit, which is a game less I'm not making that point. So please don't put words in my mouth. I'm not talking about profit I'm saying specifically that john god has created A material value, which is he hasn't he hasn't created a material value He's he has come up with a way to organize his material matter that better serves him And he can maybe sell instances of it, but he hasn't created a material value That's just a conceptual way of formatting it that let you smuggle in the material value is in that The the reproducing Part of it So when when you talk in some of your lectures that the internet is a giant copying machine or something like that therefore So I'm actually Going exactly to to that point is that okay the material value that john god has Because it didn't exist before it before he invented this So he he did something a combination of mental and physical actions And as a result as a result of that There is this this Thing that he he is able to reproduce and he's now able to To make as many copies of that as he wants to make wait wait hold on hold on Hold on everyone else is able to make copies too That's that's exactly the point is that who should because it's if it's a material value Then if the wait wait if what's a material value the the the reproduction of that is the material right the reproduction right Well, we are talking first about the value from from the value because as I said earlier There's a hierarchy here. You start with the value which establishes the context from there you get to Is it's a property if it's a material value that has been created by man For his use in his life Then it's a material value. I mean, but you haven't defined what so what does property mean for you? I just defined it in in the in a few minutes ago, but I'll happily Restated so property is any material value that's created and used by someone Yeah, but property you told me earlier property is a normative concept, right? So like it's what the law should protect with the use of physical Forest correct. This is physical material force. We're still talking moral morality here. The normative is morality Well, if you're if you're telling me that it's immoral for me to copy someone Okay, if someone comes up with like like let's give a concrete example There's a taxi cab monopoly which sucks and this guy Comes up with uber So uber now is a new way of doing ride sharing which undermines the taxi cab monopoly So if you're saying it's immoral for me to take that I that that concept That material value whatever you want to call it and do lift as a competitor If you think it's immoral to compete I disagree with you, but even if it's immoral to compete It shouldn't be illegal So the specifics of of we can get into some cases I I don't want I don't know the complexities of what is protected Uh, so so there's a whole aspect of legal philosophy that should look at the at what is moral And then induce from that. What is what is what is protectable? What should be secured? Okay, that's fine. But but but you keep evading the the final point is ultimately what we agree is So so let's let's see what we agree on. Do you agree? That there can be I mean, there's all these reasons you gave which by the way, I largely agree with Intellectual combined with physical everything Unity of the mind and spirit I can own a home. I can own a car. I can own a factory. I can own my body You agree with all that I assume you think that the law should protect property rights in physical property that people acquire by Homesteading or by contract. Do you agree with that or not? So I agree that and I would I would actually add to what you said and say Even even those even those concepts of property Are have an intellectual a significant intellectual part of it. And so I don't disagree by the way I never said they didn't I'm just saying what we agree with what we what we agree on Do you agree with that so I do own a home? I I I totally agree with that I I I would say I would even look at it from a more fundamental level And under once you understand that there's an intact intellectual component in that as well Same with the the intellectual component that that about reproducing it is also an intellectual It's more intellectual and less physical, but it's still about the things in the world It's it's about how many of these things can I make so it's not by any means different It's it's it's it's conceptually. It's in the continuum where it's got more intellectual Okay, or less intellectual like that's what I'm that's the point. I'm making that that's fine, but So even a bag of corn that you harvest there's an intellectual Component that went into all of that the thinking is fine. Yes, of course, of course So if you accept that we're not we're not robots. I mean, we're not animals But yeah, we we don't act without intellect. Of course, we know this So to discount the mind when you you say we're not discounting it. We're just counting the part that matters I mean, no, no, but I'm saying that you cannot just say a man owns his his body because a man owns his body and his mind No, no, I disagree with that you don't own your mind How do you how why do you say you own your mind? Well, you see you haven't defined the term owners. I mean, what do you mean by ownership and property rights? We're getting we're getting off Topical this is this is the this is the topic is what the law should cover And the law is a physical thing The law is what you You first get your morality and your ethics right and then you say now We have a we already have a shared morality and ethics. We already agree on these things But I'm trying to get to the critical point of difference But you just said you own your mind. I'm asking you. What does that even mean as a statement? That will take us in a tangent. Well, I'm asking it's not a tangent. This is the root of your ip delusions Well, I will say you do you own your mind you own the products of your mind and all of that How can you wait? Wait? Okay. So but how can you own your mind much less the product? What does it mean to own your mind? Tell me what that means? This is I think the root of our disagreement. It's it's it's not actually but but we can we can discover that In my view it is. I mean, I we I disagree with you. So I mean, how can you say what are the What I think you think we own our minds. I don't think we own our minds The point of disagreement here is actually that you think that that The inventors um In inventors material value that includes the Please let me finish it includes the The making copies the the copies of that not making them necessary, but the the the value represented in the reproduction You're saying that is not something that is material value and I'm saying no no the problem is I don't I don't think this concept of material value makes any sense in the first place. That's the problem But that's because that's because you you hold a scarcity view of of property and I'm saying no no it's because I think I ran misidentified like Value is not a noun. Okay. It's an act. It's a verb You vow you demonstrate that you value something by acting to gain and or keep it. Okay But something is not a value. This is the fundamental problem. I ran was She she she she cross pollinated different categories. She's correct that yeah, we have to have an intellectual component to action To succeed you have to have a mind. You have to have ideas You have to have knowledge. You have to have creativity But then and then you have to and then you have to produce material values because don't you don't you don't you don't You don't produce mister. That's that's the problem. You don't produce values Values are not produced what you produce is you transform even I ran recognize this She said that you take input factors which are material things and you rearrange them You make them into a more valuable configuration. That's not a new thing in the world. This is ontology squared I mean, this is like going crazy with ontology You're not producing things that you own This is like just a loose You can't just combine these categories so willy nilly me You tell me you disagree with me Like I say I want to abolish patent copyright law Okay, so apparently you disagree with me Yes, does that mean that you favor patent copyright law and that is what all IP rights are or they're more that we should have I favor I I favor securing all material values and I recognize intellectual property As a material value and that's actually where our the fundamental disagreement is so you think we should extend IP law To fashion rights and perfume rights and things are not yet covered. I mean, is there is there no end to your I mean you understand this would kill the human if we had The spooner iron ran infinite copyright idea The human race would would literally die. You understand that There's there's no infinite copyright. So I would oh, well, well, I totally disagree with you Even though you're a more reasonable randian There are some randians who believe in infinite perpetual copyright and they're Lysander Spooner J. Neil Shulman Alexander Galambos all these other in the guys that take iron rand's idea seriously Believe in infinite perpetual copyright terms. Well, lysander Spooner. We would we would literally die Lysander Spooner predates iron rand and anyway The point is if you read the read rand 64 essay on patents and copyright. It's a five page essay So it's not a very big essay Three and a half pages of that are about Term limits on My point is by point is if you believe it's a natural property, right Then you either have to believe it lasts forever or it lasts for a temporary term now I cannot believe you as an intelligent human being having read that think that she has a good argument for defining and circumscribing What this temporary term should be all she has is muttered phrases about oh, well You shouldn't be able to live forever upon your ancestors effort. I mean, it's just bullshit It's like nothing principled whatsoever She recognizes that if she favored a perpetual copyright term it would kill the human race So she opposes that but she doesn't want to go to zero. So she's somewhere in between That's all she knows there is no principle You missed you missed a key part of that essay, which I know you read because you referenced it in other things So this is why I made the point about Static values and dynamic values. So and there's a there's a The difference between the car that bernie sanders bought from john gall That's a that's a static value all the value in that for god's sake So so your argument is that if bernie sanders buys a car There's a difference between that and and what? Please let me I didn't I didn't complete making my point But the difference between static value and dynamic value, which is mentioned in that essay It's only a couple of paragraphs But it's a very critical point that I think it's really worth thinking about and you know, you're you're a brilliant person So you you you think about this you you'll get this too that that There's there two different types of values and each establish its own context the car The car is a is a all of the all of its value Is represented at the the time it is created? Hold on hold on card We we both agree nothing has intrinsic value, right? So you can't say all of this all of its value. Nothing has a value Nothing has a value. So let's say bernie sanders values transportation And he buys he buys a car and he says so all he does what hold on a gain there He doesn't value the car just for transportation. Whatever it is He might have 10,000 different reasons why he buys the car But all of those exist at the time that nothing they don't exist No, the the the value represented To bernie sanders again value always requires a value or this is there is no value You're thinking you're you're an intrinsic space. No, no, not at all. There is there is no value The value the value is a conceptual thing which bernie sanders has he says he explains why he does something That's all it's the austrian concept of subjective value preference It demonstrated preference people value something therefore they act As ramble say to gain and or keep it, but it does it is not of value This is the problem with you have to you have to let me finish My my my point there and I don't know you you've been going on along. I could I can interject a little bit, right? No, no, please please interject But when you ask something then at least let me finish the train of thought and then go ahead go ahead go ahead so the and I I don't buy into this the Austrian concept of value in that sense, but the the value that bernie sanders the value or Has has some notion that of what he And all of that exists at the because he's getting all that in one shot. There's no there's no And and that value all he all he has to do is maintain it. He doesn't have to create that Well, I think you're dynamic. They're not static. So no, no, but maintain what? There's no value. It doesn't exist. He has to change the oil. He has to do whatever he has to he has to do Oh, yeah, he has to agree. He has to maintain the object. He owns. I agree. Exactly. This will apply to a house It would apply those are tangible things. So those are those are static values, but it's not a value. It's a car But it is it is The value of transportation or he wants to use the taxicab whatever it's not of value This is the problem with rand. You think of it as a noun again I mean, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to win you over by semantics But do you understand what I'm saying because you keep saying it's it's of value like you're using it as a noun It is not of value. It is a thing It's a material object in the world that he has a property right in Yes, it's not of value. He might value it, but it is not of value You keep saying it's of value because you want to Reverse engineer a property right on to on top of it, but it's not of value The the point is that it is so I think you're you're missing The the the inductive process I walked through but that that's okay It's your it's your prerogative to do that. I'm what I'm saying is that The there are two types of things going on here because we we started this about Why is there a time limit and now we got a little bit off topic? What I'm saying is that no actually actually I didn't I don't think You ask the question about about that. That's your dilemma actually because you You favor something that's in between impossible and impossible. You know in your view Infinity is possible Well, because you think there has to be something in between two impossible opposites So that's not where I'm that's not where I'm coming from My my point is that as a matter where you're coming from you actually have to favor a finite term limit And you have to come up with an arbitrary number, which is not objective Right when you're talking about when you're talking about the moral Uh principle here, then it does matter. So if you don't get this right then the the law is meaningless We have to get this why don't you tell me what you're in favor? I mean you still haven't told me so like I oppose patently copyright law. I think there are many problems with each law Okay, the terms the finiteness the the definitions the domains the scope Uh, the constitutionality whatever Now you you basically oppose that in some general form you you favor ip law You still haven't told all you can say is you favor property rights and material values, which I don't know that means So what is the what is the statute? I assume you would You probably don't want to agree to this but you probably would agree We should abolish the patent act and the copyright act and replace it with an objectivist ip statute that more rationally embodies The material values that we have property rights in so my question is what the fuck is that So what what are you proposing? I'm what are you the favor of I'm I'm here to first Address a different question. Is it moral or is it not if it is if it is if it is immoral if ip is immoral Then I would join you in abolishing everything But I I believe that ip is moral and then we get to legal philosophy We induce all of these we can look at we can look at laws We can look at statutes we can induce is this law working in the context that it was applied But but I ran in that essay she actually endorsed the patent act and the copyright act So I'm asking you do you endorse it? Do you agree with her or not? I ran is not a lawyer and neither am I Well, but she should have kept her mouth shut, but she didn't so do you agree with her or not the point is not About a particular minute fact of law It's not my new the patent and copyright laws are extremely influential and they cause devastating damage which you support because I don't know why you support it. They're horrible. They're not liberal laws. These are not property rights So the point is if something is moral Then you have to figure out how to How to encode it or whatever the word is into into law and if you can you can make mistakes along the way But you need and those need to be fixed The point first to decide if is it moral if it's if it's immoral, I mean, I mean, hold on a second Would you say like, okay? Pornography is immoral therefore we need to find a way to make it illegal I'm not saying I'm not saying pornography is immoral Well, what about the what about abusing yourself with drugs being a drug addict? Do you think that's immoral? Uh, I would say that that that it's uh, people have the right to do what they what they want I would say that they are that's a that's a legal thing. I I think it's immoral to destroy your life for no reason Okay, by being an addict to cocaine It's immoral to like be obsessed with pornography and to like be uh to be rude to your grandmother Okay, all these things are immoral but Does that mean we need to turn our tasks to finding a way to make it illegal? But if something is moral you should defend it That's the point you should defend it and if it if it requires yeah, so so here's my point if intellectual property is Also is as much about material values as tangible property Then it's deserving of the same It needs to be secured to the same extent as physical property and that's my my point is actually Which which I didn't quite get to it was sort of my the last thing I wanted to say is really this and you know then you can You can so if the root of all property is intellectual Then all rights at secure material values must be protected and so If you the case on my point is that the case for ip rights are morally sound In fact, it is the same material value oriented case for all property rights. The left has been attacking both With the effect but they have but they have the libertarian attack on ip rights Supposedly to protect property rights plays into into their hands. That's sort of my my summation No, I got it But the problem is that the left hasn't been attacking ip rights The left is actually worse on ip rights in a way than the right Kamla harris wanted to take the she said we will take your patents Um, no, that's that that's that that's actually not true Tell tell me what you're thinking of The during the during her presidential campaign, which didn't go very far although she is now a vice president She was asked about Drugs and pharmaceuticals right right right and she said that she would Quote unquote take their patents. Well, what she meant was So the state the federal government grants these patent monopolies and part of that statute Includes the right for the federal government to withdraw them Or to grant a temporary withdrawal called or a partial withdrawal called a compulsory monopoly A compulsory license. Sorry. So in other words when the state gives you the ability to Use a court a court right to stop your competitors The state can step in and manipulate that. This is fascism. It's pure fascism So the state the difference is that the state is not giving you anything no more than it The state secures your right. It does not give you listen. This is the randy and view of things But i'm telling you your reality, but calling it randy and doesn't make it wrong because So your right to your i'm not i'm not trying to say it's it's wrong because it's randy what i'm saying is your conception of this is Not correct the the state Without the federal government patent act there would be no patent rights. You understand that Similarly similarly with without the state's attracting your your rights to your that's why I asked you if you're an anarchist earlier So you're not an anarchist. So you won't understand this but no, that's it's not similar But that's that's beside the point my point is let's have a separate discussion about the the role of government if you like But we we can't but my point is that the the patent act that i ran favored and that you seem to favor Specifically says that the state grants these monopoly privileges But the state can withhold them in certain cases And that is not A taking of property rights like i ran portrayed now the shrug because she was you know I'm not criticizing her for this. She was ignorant of the way the patent law worked, but when the state Grants a compulsory license that is not a taking it's simply not a taking of property rights is simply the state Slightly withdrawing a monopoly privilege that they granted previously. That's all it is. It's not It's not a taking of property rights But you keep you keep using the word this this granting of monopolies of the fact is that's what it is but The we don't we can get into a lot of detail Hold on. Hold on. You you have to you have to understand and agree that there can be no patent law Without a statute you understand that I would say that that that it has there's a securing Of the property right all property rights. They only exist when they're secured There's no there's no there's no property right intrinsic It only comes into existence when it is secured. This applies to tangible property. It applies to intellectual property So you can we can go into the history and say they were monopoly grants No, it's not just history. It's the american system. The american system changed It's not the american. It's the entire world. It's like this is the nature of these things If you understand the way law develops the way natural law works the way our process works You understand some things can only come about by artificial State legislation, okay By the way, I've argued with some randians on this and they concede this point like Murray frank. I'm rand's lawyer So here I will can I'll tell you what I will concede that a government A rights protecting government is a value in my life That's fine, but that doesn't mean they they need to have legislation to make Oh, but the point is you can still have you can still have law Emerge organically by natural common law principles, right? The problem is that when when you begin with with scarcity Then you you have this concept that that you could have a right without The secure the securing of that right and I think that's that's an error that comes from A superficial view of property the the view I presented actually gets to the root of it and Because rights don't exist. This is exactly you said I was being intrinsic. It's not at all the the fact remains that if If if the right right only exists when it is secured We can talk about what's the best way to secure it That's where the the laws come in and the enforcement and all that but unless The unless there's something securing the the material values to individuals. There is no such thing as a right So I think the anarchist libertarians They they want to have their rights But because they they don't think government is is bad in a way. This is sort of like a a proxy war They don't like government But they want the rights and they think that they can have one without the other And my point is that you you really can't do that So if there's no securing of a right, it doesn't exist because there's no such There's no intrinsicist view of right. Yeah. Yeah, but like you said, that's another that's another debate I mean, let me let me try one more thing before we I think we probably have to close now. We can have a part two or three if you want. I don't mind Um, you've been very, uh You've been very, uh Surprisingly, uh Reasonable given your background. Okay. Thank you. I don't mean to be do a backhanded compliment. I mean you understand I deal with lots of pro IP and objectives types who are completely unfair Are you familiar with the with the case that I made uh in in sort of the the more The more the fundamentality of it. I mean, I know you are you're familiar with iron rand But I I think that this is a part of the of the case that is missed by a lot of people again It's it's it takes a little Detailed digging to to arrive at what that material value is it's it's it's different But because because everything is contextual you have to understand each one existing in its context in which case Both the limitations on it and the the sphere that it secures Are different And that but that's true of all all rights. I guess I'm not sure What's your question? Am I familiar with what with with the with the case that I I presented You mean just now or like other somewhere else? Well through the the better part of this morning. Oh, yeah Yeah, believe me. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I'm not to I'm not trying to insult you But I nothing you said is new to me. I mean, I've heard all this and I I appreciate 70 75 percent of it. I mean, it's just it's like you keep dancing around the issue like the You keep saying oh, well, we have to do philosophy first. That's all fine But ultimately if you disagree with me on what the law is and ultimately we have to have a political component to our views May I suggest that that there are probably People who are trained in the law and Objectivism and I'll be happy to introduce you to to a couple of people that that you No, no, that's not the issue. That's not that's not what I mean, but I'm not a lawyer So I don't I don't if I if I start talking about I'm trying not to drop I'm not trying to drop the legal authority because I this is actually what your side does more more than mine By the way, um, I'm not doing that at all And I haven't done it. I haven't no you No, no, you don't do it. I'm a I'm actually a patent lawyer I I could I could like bamboozle you with legal bullshit that you would never know I'm simply saying I'm simply saying that if you're if you think I'm wrong and saying we should abolish patent copyright You must think there should be an IP law But you seem there is but when you keep it This is why I brought it in the very beginning when you keep it general and you say, okay I think that there should be a role for the law to support the intellectual products of the mind because they're material values that we produce Blah blah blah. We need them to survive blah blah blah. That's all fine as general matter But when he comes down to concrete details like okay, so what what legal right system are you proposing? and if you say well I don't know about I'm not a legal specialist It's like well, then I don't know what we're disagreeing about and by the way every time I could mention 100 different examples of things I'm confident that you and your compatriots would agree with like Okay, the law should not prohibit this In this this example of the application of copyright law is outrageous You probably would agree with me on everything there So all that means is every time from a position of knowledge I I point out something to you that's like an example of why these unjust laws Result in unjust consequences. You say I agree but but but but that's not what I favor So finally, I've got to say well, then what do you favor you say? Well, I'm not a specialist of like well, then I don't know we're just a bit So well because because Go ahead. This topic is is a moral case for IP Low and I IP rights, and I believe I made the moral case now No, well, so that's where we have to so when we're talking about Law is not only moral. I mean law you have to get to actually what where you think that the use of force By the institution of society whether it's a state or private whatever like the legal force Of the institution where that can be legitimately and justifiably used that's the question and iron rand herself was good on this She says Do you hear me you cannot start the use of force against someone who hasn't used force Iron rand herself said We don't create things from nothing. We only rearrange matter. I can say to you the quotes I said this no, I I've heard that and actually I think you you misuse that because you you you're conflating Value creation with creating matter There's no exactly No, but the law only applies to the latter. So I agree with rand if you want to say we create values Not not so at all because material values are really what A farm is a material value. Okay, but you still haven't defined material value You keep saying values and I disagree with your use of that as a noun I spent some time Detailing that What's the difference between a material value and a non material value? Tell me what the difference is What is word material add? Material is a thing in the world. So that's that's And that's the thing the property rights apply to correct. Yes, and and I'm sure those are the scarce those are the scarce means of action, correct No, I don't I don't I don't start from scarcity, but I'm saying that I'm not starting from anywhere I'm just I'm just saying I'm saying that material values are scarce. Yes But the they have Scarcity is is in my mind just an invalid If I have if I have a shovel, is that a material value or is it a shovel? Which one is it? It is it is a shovel is a material value to someone who's trying to dig dig a hole Okay, if I have an iphone, is that a material value? Yes, it is. Okay. So you're using the word material value to refer to scarce resources that people value I'm saying that material values are scarce because human Cognition itself is scarce, but and it takes all of that What do you mean by the The assertion human cognition is scarce because I completely disagree with that because scarcity to me Is a completely political economic concept, which means that There is a resource which we can employ the means of action Over which there can be physical material violent conflict. That's what I mean by scarcity It's the economic concept of rivalrousness. So I don't know what you mean by scarcity applies to human cognition or something like that What does that mean? I just think that that Scarcity is an improperly integrated way of look. There's nothing normative So you're making actually an assumption that scarcity is sort of a normative baseline No, I never said it's normative. Well, but I ran herself said because property is property is a normative ethical concept In fact, you just complete the the point I wasn't able to make before In the law, we're trying to we're trying to be trying to make ethical things into our bring them into our politics That's what politics is an application Is an attempt to apply ethics to a social context So when but you have to get the right baseline if scarcity is is normative in your sense Then Hold on. I never said scarcity is normative But by the way, just as a background for you, I personally adhere to the philosophical views of the neo randians Resmution and den oil. I don't know if you read them, but in their view The the idea behind law is what what they would call metanormative in other words norms The norms the ethical norms that apply to law and what law should exist are metanorms in the sense that We're trying to identify the principles That justify the laws So for example, if I say I have a property right. I don't know in my car It it doesn't mean that it's moral for me to use it to You know not let my mother-in-law Use it to go to the hospital or something like that like that could be immoral So there is a distinction between personal morals or put it this way If I Violate someone's property rights. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's immoral personally What it means is that It's it's it's it's moral for us as a society to have a law that justifies and enforces a certain legal principle I think that that that is unnecessarily Collectivist in nature. It's better to start from a more fundamental premise. So that's why I say it's it's not as though They do start from it. I mean I mean you say you haven't you haven't read it apparently I mean no, I know they start from they start from Randy and Aristotelian fundamentals. They start from whatever I'm simply saying the the analysis of like would you say that It's always immoral To violate a right. I'm asking you that a question as a question Is it always immoral to I mean? Yes, like do you think of rights as a subset? Do you think of of rights as a subset of morals? I think right a property subset rights come from ethics and And if we define them correctly then For example the right to life if you interfere with that Then it is immoral and fortunately in our society illegal as well okay, so so But I'm sure we could both envision scenarios where You need to violate someone's rights and to fail to do so would actually be immoral Like if you're trapped in the woods and your baby's starving and you can break into an an empty cabin and steal a can of beans To save your baby's life You could say that should be illegal and it's a violation of property rights, but it's not immoral to do so You know, I would actually point you to an interesting essay the ethics of emergencies at Randall No, I I agree. I agree that people overuse this emergency thing But I'm simply saying that the domain of political ethics is distinct from the domain of ethics um, just like for example You know, if you're You know cruel to your grandmother for no reason that's immoral But it's not a rights violation like the deal is everything that's immoral is not illegal All I'm saying is everything that's illegal is not necessarily immoral either I'm saying they overlap, but they're not proper subsets of each other I I think we are getting a little bit off topic here because we are we are that's how that's how I roll Well, and I appreciate this if we I'd love to actually, you know, meet you in person and have a much longer Discussion whenever you you'd like to do that. But the the point I was trying to get to is that With scarcity so so there is a kernel of truth You know, there's a fact in the world as as as Rand would say There are tangible things in the world that can't be used You know differently at the same time, you know, no man can plow Two men can't plow the same furrow and all that that's that so but this doesn't tell you anything about whether scarcity itself This idea of rivalrous exclusive use of something whether that should be a normative baseline For defining what counts as property that it doesn't it doesn't set that stage at all So it sounds like it does and it's very easy to to accept if you don't want to think at the level of Of values, so that's why it's very popular And and it's it's especially if you want to be an economist, but you don't want to think about Ethics, then you can just make it all about Oh scarcity because that's that's the way they would like to frame it But it it this is this is why this is why the problem arises with scarcity while it's real The connect making it a normative ideal You know, that that's the problem Sorry, was I muted? I can't hear you Stefan. I can't hear you. Nope. Can't hear you yet Nope, I can see you're saying something but there's no audio Nope, I think I can can you say something now? Uh, it's very poor audio quality. It's almost Nope, sorry Okay, let's pause recording Okay microphone. I told you my microphone is going to run out of power That just means you're having an interesting conversation that I know I had this jabra and it's like 13 hours, but I I didn't I didn't charge it. So it had two hours left and we ran out. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. I forgot. I forgot where we were Go ahead. So we were I was saying that scarcity is is Real that there's a there's a kernel of truth There's a it's a fact in the world So evading it doesn't get us anywhere, but there are tangible things in the world that you know can't be used You know at the same time by different people all that but not not only that this is the core of iron rands Assertions about how you can't start the the initiation of physical violence I mean, that's a recognition of the fact that physical violence Against physical objects like people bodies and other things makes a difference I mean, it's the view is not from scarcity the view is Rand's view about not using force is because it it negates or opposes or impedes reason It doesn't matter what it's from. Oh, oh, it matters. It matters. Great. You so scarcity If you if you have if you're trying to say the scarcity is a normative concept, I'm not saying that I never said that But that's what that's what I'm saying is I'm saying iron rands non-aggression principle what she basically endorsed non-initiation of force principle Yeah modified into non-aggression. Yeah. Yeah. So basically is it it implies the recognition of rivalrous resources and the fact of The importance and the necessity of physical violence and when it's justified when it's not, I mean No, but that's that's a that's a derivative concept. That's fine. But It's unavoidable. It doesn't matter whether it's derivatives. It's unavoidable when we're talking fundamentals It does matter So if you if you want to discuss the nap versus the non-initiation of force principle from which it was derived I think I don't know but ultimately it comes down to Okay force is the is the opposite of reason you if you decided that you if you're going to use force That means reason is not an option anymore. You can't oppose force with reason and she has a whole A discussion about that. So so we have to be careful if we want to talk about I agree with all that Okay, well, I think we should close this but let me just say one one one thing and you can you conclude however you want. Um I think ultimately I can't you can't just say As a vague general abstract matter Okay, we believe in rights and rights or rights or rights and material values that your intellect creates and that includes Intellectual property rights, but I'm not a legal expert. So I don't know what I'm in favor of I mean, look, we're we're you're libertarian to some extent in the political realm. So you favor Property rights in physical resources being enforced by a physical legal system in the world I mean, we all do. This is what we agree on. I think yeah, so you can't just say I mean we don't have anything to disagree about unless you tell me What you favor or what you don't agree with so I I actually believe that people like you You don't want to defend the patent and copyright system because you know, it's it's completely Statist and bullshit and full of exceptions or whatever So you don't really want to defend it But you don't want to agree with me that it should be abolished because you're afraid to so so you're in between right so No, no, but but you can't the point is you don't defend every bad Law, I agree. I agree tangible property either. I agree. I'm simply I'm simply saying I don't know what we disagree or agree on unless you tell me And that's not so like so like so so I can give you two. I can give you two things Do you agree with me or not that the patent system and the copyright system should be abolished? That's one way to look at it and the second question is If I disagree with that Well, but the other thing would be okay. No, you have this hypothetical ip augmented legal system in mind Which you would favor instead and tell me what it is and I'll tell you what's wrong with it But I don't know what we're disagreeing on unless you specify what legal system we're talking about We are I think we are disagreeing on them on the morality of ip and and if we disagree on that No, we're not we're not we're not because I don't know what that means I'm only disagreeing with a legal system that takes property rights away from property owners That's all I disagree with and what I'm saying what I'm saying is that that intellectual property represents Of a form of property. I don't care what it represents. I'm asking But but but but then but then if you if you're if you're not if you're not Supporting that if you if you're saying that you're not sick You don't want it to be secured then you're saying you want tangible property to be secured But intellectual property to not be secured. That's what you're saying. So here's what I'm saying So are you saying that or not? Are you saying are you saying that both should be secured or are you saying that only physical tangible property should be secured? Well, it's not that it's not that simple, but I was yeah if you forced me I would say the latter Yes, but but the reason is because I'm not forcing you. I'm just asking you to say But then this is our fundamental disagreement I I think I've made a case Where both are forms of property No, you haven't because you haven't defined what property is. Oh, I've defined it several times in today I I can we can go back and roll roll tape on it. Okay. Let me put it this way I think what I try to do is I try to find what we agree on I think you agree with me that people own their bodies. Would you agree with that? All right, I agree and I think we own our life actually Rand's Thing was that she actually had a better formulation. This body thing is is a I know But I'm trying to find something we agree on so like we agree that we own our bodies and you agree that you own like if you have a house and land and a car And money and gold you own those things. Would you agree with I agree with Now would you and so therefore for those reasons or partly for those reasons You oppose laws that intrude on those rights like taxes or the drug war or conscription Like you oppose conscription, correct? I I do Because it takes your body from you even though you didn't consent to do something It it does even more than that. It actually it takes your life from you Okay, that's you can metaphorically talk about the harms of it But but I'm saying take the broad take the broadest view that you can otherwise you miss certain things all of these things are are essentially Doing something to a person's life to say body is to me to me. This is this is Look literature is fine, but I'm not into literature but if you want to use literature to To emotive emotively describe the harms that come from Whatever you don't like that's fine. I mean you could say that if you enslave someone You're stealing their time, but this is not rationally Logically literally accurate. You're not stealing time because people don't own time You can describe the harms of slavery by saying you're taking their life from them And your life only exists in time blah blah blah, but this is not metaphorically literally accurate The problem slavery is you're committing aggression against someone's body. It's not because you're stealing their time Well, I would say that you when you So this is actually we can have a whole separate discussion on On nap versus nifp So I would say that that you're Actually doing a lot more than just so force is not just physical They're all kinds of force force is literally just physical. That's what force means No in physics in the in the context of morality what we're talking about I mean morality too force is the Is the manipulation by physical force of material objects that other people have rights to without their consent What else can it be? So coercion if you want to use that word, that's the threat of force That's what i'm saying all of those things are basically Opposed to a man's free use of his reason and that's the most fundamental way to look at those That's just a way of describing the consequence that when we're talking about morality stefan These are things that matter the conceptual I don't I don't disagree with that. They they do matter But what if like if you say a guy rapes a girl, okay, you could describe it in 17,000 different ways He took her autonomy. He insulted her He Ruined her future potential. I mean you could you could describe it all kinds of ways, but the ultimate insult is that he used her resource without her permission her body But that's what the law governs at the root of it. He said I'm going I'm using I'm I'm basically saying your reason Your your reason that allows you to make choices. I'm taking that away from you. No, that's not the root of it So that is a that is a moral root of it. All everything else is a consequence That's fine, but you're you're trying to go into the motivations for a crime like when I am Sort of motivation it's what it's what the rapist actually does is the rapist said in in this transaction Your reason is not applicable Well from the point of view of the victim What the rapist does is he uses her body without her permission? That is true, but but but so that's all that matters for the law for the law Well, but when you're talking morality, which is what we're talking today, then I think morality I don't know what it means to talk about morality with IP Are you saying that it's immoral for me to compete with someone by copying their product? like if Like hold on when I felt when apple came out with the iphone like it was a revolutionary idea to like Remember before that you had dumb phones and you had the blackberry and then apple said let's have a touchpad Which is a little computer blah blah blah and that turned into the smartphone industry, correct? Yeah, and over time Android and other companies started competing with apple by making similar devices now I guess you could come up with an analysis that it was immoral for Motorola and android or whatever to compete with apple And maybe it was I don't think it was immoral because i'm not a moral expert But it certainly shouldn't be illegal because competition should be illegal So that's my fundamental problem with with you people on this issue to be honest Like it should are you saying that should be illegal because apple came up with the first rounded corners touchscreen Tiny smartphone computer device and other people made something similar and competed with them Are you saying that that is wrong that should be illegal? Did it violate apples rights? That's the fundamental question Let's let's abstract it because I don't know the case And I I don't know which this is the problem. You won't defend anything. Everything. No, but I hold on hold on I'll tell you what I will defend I will defend that that if a patent owner What a patent owner actually has has secured for apple had a patent on the rounded corners touchscreen smartphone Okay, let's take step the reason why by these examples will will derail it Is because I don't know the case and so I don't know if the patent was good bad indifferent I'm yeah, but but let's say let's say it was good. Let's say it was a good patent So let's say you have a good do you think you think there could be a good patent on the first use of a of a of a touch screen smartphone, I mean This is Stefan. This is this is like saying do you defend the one click thing from amazon? I don't I don't I think many of those mistakes This is what I said in the very beginning every time I point to an example you guys Back out and you won't defend it. I'm not backing out I'm saying that that there is a there is a material value in in the reproduction of something which Has met the standard now what that standard is is the job of legal philosophers and lawyers like you Okay, well, that's me. That's me and my conclusion is no so The other guys by the way, all the other guys are self-serving. So that's fine Well, I don't know who you who you're talking about what I'm what I'm saying all my fellow patent lawyers Guess they're in favor of the patent system. Hey, it's like my my my niece who's a public school teacher in Louisiana Do you think she's against the public school system? No, guess why I don't know but I that that that's not a An argument that's particularly persuasive that just because someone is Either for or against their interest. I don't know that that doesn't really matter You're you're against IP and somehow that's I so I think there's we're getting off track there. I I think there's a We were actually getting to a very fundamental point which got sidetracked, which was about Which I sidetracked go ahead and say you know, I'm good at that. Go ahead. It's about scarcity. So I was I was Making a larger point, you know, in fact scarcity Comes out of this perfect competition view of economics and which actually evades a lot of things like Values innovation, etc. And you might also know that scarcity was used by marxists to actually attack the free market and property rights Basically, they said oh, there's a scarcity of goods and it's it's wrong for capitalists to hoard them You know stealing labor from workers So taking what we are doing what what people who are opposing IP are doing and on the scarcity premise By the way scarcity doesn't come from this perfect competition model. No, no What I'm saying is that that argument made by marks instead of challenging the basis of their argument You're accepting scarcity oriented property and then you're trying to show them that hey Only markets can do it and only for physical. Okay, so so the basis of marxism is this labor exploitation idea The idea that the value of a product comes from the labor people put into it And therefore when the where their employer makes a profit, they must be stealing the surplus value of their labor And we both disagree with with that mindset. I think so. However, that logic is part of the locking idea that When you own when you labor on something like intellectually to create something that's valuable If you call it a material value you have this right to reproduce it or exploit it Which which is just another way of saying I have a right to use legal force to stop people from competing with me I'm I mean, ultimately I'm not against competition. I'm not against the free market. I'm not against People learning and copying each other if people choose to make information public In any way that other people can learn from that and compete with them on that basis There's there's no violation of rights When that happens even though you would like people to be able to economically exploit this mythical right to reproduce something without competition That requires a legal monopoly which violates property rights. That's my whole point. It's very simple And it's it's it's it's rooted in by the way, lots of randians agree with me. You understand this This is not like some people move my way from your side because they realize, okay Randianism our property rights principles can't sustain this anti this pro IP view I think there's I'll point out a fundamental error in what at least what I think is a fundamental error. So You know, there is a there is a again a kernel of truth patterns Are like monopolies in terms of their effect because there's an exclusion approach, right? But what what you're doing is by by you're saying that Wanting to do something Let's say you want to compete with the mousetrap inventor, right? You're wanting to do something per se creates a right No, but that's what you're saying. No, no, I I know I know we're going and I'm not saying that because I want to do it It's fine. What I'm saying is it's an example your example is somebody wants to to copy That one thing and they want to they want to use their physical resources to do it No, no, no, you bear with me bear with me. Let me just finish the point You're conflating also possession with property And then you're saying that the desire to the desire to To do something like to copy makes it a right. No, no, none of that is given None of that is I I agree with you that that doesn't imply that but that's not what I'm saying What I'm what I'm doing is that that's the heart of the root your argument against the monopoly I'm appealing to what I think we agree with already which is that Is that property rights are meant to protect the security of your ability to use a resource that you've required legitimately somehow and And that if you use the resource in a way that doesn't disturb other people's use of their resources Then you haven't done anything that justifies force being used against you That's the core of the non-aggression principle or whatever. However, ran called it there again. You're conflating You're conflating possession with property. So you if you own the the wood and the metal to make a mousetrap It doesn't automatically give you the right to build John galt's mousetrap. Here's the here's where we disagree then that you just identified the core of the disagreement I don't need a right to do whatever the fuck. I want with my property I can manipulate my resources and however I want As long as I don't invade the borders of others property. So this is your mistake You think we have to operate by permission. I don't think so I don't need I don't need a right to do anything I only can I only can be stopped if i'm violating someone's rights We operate in my view of the world the libertarian view of the world. We operate by right Not by permission. We're not living in a totalitarian world We have to run around Getting fucking permission from everyone getting rights to do things if I own resources wood copper metal whatever I don't need john galt's permission to do whatever I want with it. That's your mistake So if you own if you own a gun and and the bullets in the gun and you decide to shoot somebody Put put put your bullet into that person's body. Yeah Well, but by your by the word what you just stated no no listen. I was very careful what I said so In that case, it's not my ownership of the gun that is limited. It's my action My action is invading his property rights and the reason I can't shoot the gun in his direction is because The ejection of that bullet will go into his property and use his resources by his permission That's what I don't have the right to do but my point is when I fabricate when I Manipulate the resources that I own in my own factory in a certain configuration Unless that trespasses against the borders of john galt's fact factory of products He doesn't have a right to stop me What you're doing there again is it's a it's a begging the question No, you're begging. I think you're begging the question. I know what you're saying but Well, what you're what you're saying is that that right the the right to that reproducing the mousetrap No, I don't have a right to reproduce. I have the right to do anything I want don't you understand I don't have to identify 17 thousand different fucking rights with my property My right is to do whatever I want unless you can stop it. That's all you you do So this is what I'm saying. You're conflating possession. You possess the word and no, I'm not conflating anything It doesn't it doesn't so we're in an area where you're either No, no, no, hold on. You're either infringing on the mousetrap inventors, right or not And I'm saying there's no first thing is infringing. That's question begging Yeah, but that's what you're doing and I'm saying I I have approached it from the point that they're both material values So I'm not question begging. I've made a case for it What you're saying is you're saying that you cannot use the That possession gives you Infinite ability to do something and I just showed you a case but it doesn't it's the other way around It's the other way around. I'm saying that ownership gives you the right to stop people From using your property without their permission That's all that and and the mousetrap owner owns the right to the reproduction of the that that is his material value so so that so that's what hold on that that that's the core question so The guy that owns wood and steel and he Fashions it to make a mousetrap. Let's say a new mousetrap. Okay Now he I think you and I would both agree. He owns the wood and the steel that he fashioned it into, right? Yes, but he doesn't he doesn't own every use of it the the possession of the wood and the metal doesn't give him infinite Uh, no, no, no, but no you yourself agreed if there is some other right Then he is is restricted in what he can do with that and that's all I'm saying Yeah, but you're saying no, he's not restricted and is right. He's restricted in his actions What you're saying is that if if I own wood and metal and I fashion it into a new shape That gives me more than the right to keep people from using my wood my metal as as they want It gives me the right to keep them from using their wood metal in a similar way So you're saying that this inultra property right arises from my Arrangement of the patterns of these materials So In other words by me using my stuff in a creative new way I gain a property right and other people's resources because I can no no you you gain you gain the right to reproduce That you understand it's not reproducing. That's not how patent law. By the way patent law has nothing to do with reproducing That's copyright law. I'm not trying to get into the weeds with you But patent law says that I can't independently come up with the same idea for my mousetrap Because you came up with it first Even if I didn't learn it for you. It's not reproducing. It's just using my stuff in a certain way That's all patent law says is that the owner of a patent can stop people from using their resources in a certain way And by the way, he doesn't even have to have his own And that's that's the point the ownership of those materials Does not Automatically you you have to make the case that if you own the material that like the bullet in the gun example Which which you you agree in in that case. So the same thing applies And I've made the case. No, no, no. It's also a material value So you have to you either if you have to disagree with that you have to say it's not a material value Which is what I think you're saying that may be where the fundamental Let me let me try to clarify one thing and then we can maybe I'll let you close out Um, when I say you own a bullet in a gun To me ownership doesn't mean the right to use it any way you want But you just said that that he has the right to use the wood and the metal any way he wants Yes, and that's that's an implication. So so Ownership simply means the right to exclude people from using your stuff without your permission. That's all it means So given that but there are there are limits to it that that no There actually are no limits to it. But there are there are limits to every kind of property and and no I disagree. I disagree. This is this is the fun. There are no limits. You're part. There are limits This is why I said earlier. There are limits to actions not the property. So if Let me let me just say this you don't have to agree but Ownership of a gun means that I can prevent other people from using it. That's all it means okay It's it's sort of like the The the free speech idea which we sometimes say like if I have free speech it doesn't mean I can go on your property Say what I want it means I can it means that if I speak on my property I'm not violating your property rights. But what you're saying is that that There is a sphere of action That is actually this metaphorical. I never use that at concept because but that's what you're that's what you're saying Because we are having no i'm not saying it what i'm saying is that ownership. No, listen I know what i'm saying. I'll tell you what i'm saying. You don't need to say stay for me I'm saying that if I own property rights, okay, which means I own my body and I own other resources which I have property rights in Which gives me Specifically legally speaking the right to exclude other people from using those resources without my permission then that that usually And input by implication gives me the ability To use them by and large in what you might call a sphere of action without permission And that's the point is the same that the mouse trap owner So you you have to if he has a the the rights with the material value of reproduction No, he doesn't he doesn't own it. You can only that's the question begging to say you own a reproduction right I made I made the case that it's a material value And if it's a material value, then there is a context in which there is there are rights associated with that That's where we disagree when those come. Yeah, when when those come into conflict with the guy who owns the the wood and the metal then The the there's a and they do and they do come I'm glad you acknowledge they come into conflict Which means that IP rights conflict with is just like wealth just like if you inflate money You reduce the purchasing power over the fields money. Just like if you have positive welfare rights, they don't come for free They come at the expense of negative rights And your IP rights come into conflict of tangible property rights. So that's fine. Did you know that rights come There are material values And each one has a sphere where it is where we just control the user I'm saying that john god has his sphere And the owner of the of the metal and the wood has their sphere and now it's a matter of saying if both are valid We have to figure out At what point does this this matter, but but they're not both valid because they're incompatible and so They're both material they're both material values Well, I I will take iron rand and I will agree with her that you don't own An existent object that you rearrange you only own the things you rearrange and I will agree with iron rand The initiation of physical force against physical property is wrong And she also says that you own the values and she was that's why she was incoherent and And I think I disagree. I think I think you're cherry picking. You're taking parts of rand. You agree with but the I am because she's but I agree. I am I agree with you. I am cherry picking because iron rand had an incompatible Incoherent philosophy. That's why she was an anarchist and a menarchist at the same time And that's why she was against Ip She was never an anarchist. Oh if you read alish rug galtz galtz is anarchist and you know it come on Nope, uh, I don't where's it? Where's the government in galtz galtz? There was a judge Okay, well judges anarchists are not against law dude. There you go. So so the point is no, no, it's not there I go. It's there you go to say to say that it was this anarchy being recommended or advocated Is is it's a mistake? I mean, I don't see any other way around but anyway, uh, I think it's been a great discussion and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. It was fun. You put up with my bullshit and my uh, my bellicosity So you have a strong temperament. I think that uh, you've been you've been fair. Um, I appreciate the The candid sharing of ideas, you know, we don't have to agree on everything. I think we can still have Discussions in the future as I said if you want to really engage on topics that are closer to your heart Which which laws and stuff I'll be happy to to Introduce you to a couple of people who are very much better at it than I am. I'm not the expert there Uh, I but I do I do believe I've made my case that There is a moral case for intellectual property You may disagree and and people in your audience can certainly I hope they will at least I hope they've at least heard a different perspective And if they if they want to engage with the ideas, they know where to go. Uh, I've also put my Facebook page up on the thing. Hopefully it's it's readable. I don't know if it is or not Also my discuss handle if anybody wants to see what I've been up to and by all means I would encourage anyone to to reach out and this whole thing about the anonymity part Stefan It's it's only because I have a professional life. I do I do things outside of this. I I'm an entrepreneur I do lots of other things and I deal with people in that context that has nothing to do with with political philosophy and so on I think your car alarm just went off now. I'm outside. It's sort of no I totally appreciate that and you notice I didn't pick on you about that I wanted I wanted to if anyone's wondering about it. I just wanted to set the stage there that it's It's not that I I would I would be happy to meet with you and and have a open Discussion it's just that because I do a lot of other things where politics and philosophy don't enter the picture I deal with employees and Suppliers and customers and we don't I'm the old school type. We don't get into politics We don't get into religion. We we kind of do business and that's where we create values for each other I understand it. All right, my brother. I enjoyed it and let's let's chat later. Thanks a lot Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye