KOL439 | The Rational Egoist (Michael Liebowitz): Debating the Moral Status of Intellectual Property: Part IIa

welcome to the rational egoist I’m your host Michael libowitz back with us today is Stefan canella he’s a patent attorney

and he’s also a prominent libertarian who’s been writing on issues of Liberty

for quite a long time Stefan welcome back to the show thanks so last time

Stefan was here we were talking about intellectual property and we were laying the foundations for the discussion um

we’ll begin today with we’ll do that a little bit to clear the foundations and then we’ll get into the IP stuff so

Stefan one thing two things and I I’ll get your take on both of them the the

first thing is you said that property rights are not the right to use but the

right to exclude and you also said that we have no right in things that are created only things that are discovered

or or homesteaded is that accurate well you have a right in things that are

created but the right doesn’t come from the fact of creation it comes from um

homesteading or contract okay um and and and you don’t have in general a right to

something that’s created you have a right to ownership of scarce resources

um which are things that there can be conflict over the way you determine who owns these resources is by um it’s by

homesteading or original appropriation and by Contra contract it so the Act of

Creation is not why you own a thing and

in fact the thing I think is proper to say the thing is not created nothing is created in terms of matter in the

universe even IR ran recognizes this um we just rearrange these things so when we talk about creation or production

which is more of an economic concept we have to be clear about what we mean I think that what we mean is we when we

produce things we produce wealth or we we produce things of value by

rearranging things that we already own so that’s why I try to keep those things uh separate and distinct okay so my

first question is why in your view is are property rights the right to

exclude and not the right to use and what would even be the difference so you can word it the normal

way but then you get tangled up uh and it’s less clear so you could say that owner owning a so owning a thing so

property rights are rights in resources over which there can be conflict so the

whole purpose of property rights is to assign an owner of the thing so that Outsiders know to avoid using those

things without the permission of the owner um so that’s what ownership rights are for but then the question is what’s

the nature of an ownership right um I I think it’s essentially a right to exclude and the and the way you can see

this is because owning a thing doesn’t give you the right to do anything you want with it now that is the common

objectivist or libertarian way of phrasing it you say that if you own your life or your body or other things you

can do whatever you want with these things as long as you don’t hurt other people um so they sort of build into

this right to use a limitation and the limitation is uh as long as you don’t

hurt other people um but that’s a little confusing in my view

because what’s really being limited by this prohibition against hurting other people is your actions because you know

you can harm someone with your actions alone even if you don’t use an owned

resource or if you use a resource that you don’t you don’t own like if I steal a gun or a knife from you and I use it

to shoot someone else the action that I’m performing is causing the uh

Invasion of the Body of someone else that they own contrary to their property right so

uh so owning a thing doesn’t mean you have to do whatever you want with it you can do whatever you want with it as long

as you’re not violating other people’s rights so then your permission is defined by other people’s property

rights which is ultimately what property rights are their rights to exclude so if someone else owns their body the reason

I can’t shoot them with with a gun or with a bullet from my gun is because

they own their body right so likewise my right to own

my so so their their right right to own their body is their their right to exclude to prevent you from using their

body without their permission they also have the right to allow you to use their body with their permission to give

permission to be shot or to be harmed right or to be like if if they give permission to a surgeon to to perform

surgery they’re consenting to the surgeon doing something with their body that the surgeon otherwise wouldn’t have

the right to do because the owner of that body has the right to exclude so that’s what I think um uh property

rights are it’s the right to exclude by the way this is this is the nature of patent rights

which we’ll get to shortly which is a type of IP right most people don’t understand this because it’s sort of technical jargon or Arcane but a patent

is the is not the right to to perform or practice an invention it’s the right to

stop other people from doing it so for example it’s the right to exclude um and

that’s because that’s what the nature of property rights are it’s the right to to prevent or to exclude people for example

if I obtain a patent from the government which I think is illegitimate as we’ll get to but let’s say the government

grants me a patent on a um on a three-legged stool okay like I’m the first guy that

invents the idea of a stool which is basically a stool would be a a seat a

seat member functionally attached to three leg members right for someone to

sit on so I would have a patent on that which means I would be able to prevent

people from making a stool from selling making or using or importing a stool now

let’s suppose someone else says hey if I add a back to this stool and maybe add four legs for more stability then this

stool becomes what I call a chair and I could get a patent on that which we would call it Improvement and the patent

would cover um a seating device having a seat four legs and a back member now

that could also be patented because it’s it’s different than the than the stool

however every element of the patent claims for the stool would be infringed by the by the chair because the stool

patent simply says a seat connected to three legs but a chair has a seat and it

has three legs so that means that the guy that invents the stool could get a patent on it but he couldn’t make a he

couldn’t make the chair I’m sorry the guy that gets a patent on the chair could not make the chair because that

would infringe the patent on the stool okay so so his right he could stop stop the stool maker from making an improved

stool with a with a with a back on it because he has a patent on that so the right for the stool patent owner to make

a stool would not mean he could improve his stool because that would be blocked by the other patent but the guy that

owns that patent couldn’t make the uh chair without infringing the stool patent so typically what they would do

is they would cross license with each other and they would both give each other permission to um so the stool

maker would the stool p owner would would would allow the chair maker to make his chair which would include

effectively a stool built into it and and usually vice versa but the point is

um if you say property rights are the right to use a resource then you’re stuck with saying well but but except

you can’t use it to hurt someone else’s property rights so then that looks like a limitation on property rights which

then people will seize on to say Well canella it you say that the problem with

IP rights is that it limits your ability to use your resource like your your

factory but all rights all property rights are limited because all property rights really are limits on other

people’s property rights so that’s the problem with that way of looking at it if you simply say property rights are

the right to exclude then I own a home or I own a factory and I don’t have the

right to use it in any way I want because I can’t use it to hurl rockets at your property or to or to take a gun

that I own and shoot you without your permission because your property rights prevent limit what actions I can perform

so if you simply look at property rights as the right to exclude people then the

fact that um the fact that your rights in your body prevents me from using my

gun the way I see fit it’s not a limitation on my property rights in my gun it’s just a limitation on my actions

um so that’s the reason I think we should look at it that way in the end it doesn’t matter too much because you could word it the typical libertarian

way and you could say that everyone has a property right in resources they they acquire justly and this gives them the

right to use it but then you have to add the caveat so long as they don’t use it to to invade the bordage of other

people’s property so let me just give you an an analogy that’s probably pretty

close I look at rights as basically this in ethics uh I don’t have the right to

initiate Force against somebody so I look at rights in a in a sense is in

what situation would I have the right to use force and it would be in defense so

to say I have a right to do something is similar to saying that I would have a right to use Force if somebody tried to

prevent me to do this I totally agree I think that’s ultimately what rights are rights are a statement about the

permissibility of the use of force when the recipient of that Force facially

objects to it right so it can either be put as I have the right to use speech I have the right

to go you know walk to the store whatever but it’s the flip side is it’s

it means that if somebody tries to stop me physically I have the right to retaliate and it seems like it’s the a

similar Dynamic is at play here where the traditional formulation of I have the right to do whatever I want as long

as I don’t violate the rights of others is the same same thing is saying I have the right to exclude others from doing

this I agree with all that uh but the way I’ve thought about it over the years um I I no longer believe that the right

to be free from the initiation of force is primary I think that’s more of a shorthand description of more

fundamental property rights um they imply each other so for example if you

say um you I have the right to my body to own my body I’m a self-

owner that is the same thing is saying uh it’s it unjust for you to

commit aggression because aggression means using my body without my permit without my permission but if if you’re

not permitted to use my body without permission that’s only because I own my body so there are different ways of saying the same thing ownership of my

body is the same thing as saying aggression is unjustified the problem is the word aggression if you just look at

it you know the way the word sounds and the meaning of it it really means physical fighting which implies physical

clashing between people’s body but the problem is we we expand the concept of

Rights um in our bodies which implies again aggression is not justified we

expand that concept of ownership of our bodies to other things that we own like like like real property and and movable

property like cars and food and homes and land um and when you say and this is

the pro so randians objectivists and Libertarians would say that well if you if you use someone’s someone’s home or

their or their car without their permission it’s a type of stealing or a type of trespass and then they call that

well that’s an that’s also an initiation of force or that’s aggression but it really doesn’t look like aggression

because it’s not aimed at someone’s body so the way I look at it is self- ownership is the Prototype body

ownership is the Prototype of ownership of other types of things and we do call

the invasion of self- ownership aggression but it’s sort of uh only by analogy or a stretch to say to extend

that that term that concept of aggression and say okay if I step on if I walk on someone’s lawn at midnight

when they’re not even awake and I to Reeve to retrieve uh you know my my my

football um I’m committing trespass against this person and we call that

aggression but what we really mean is it’s the unconsented to use of someone’s resources that they own so I think

that’s another reason to be careful about that word aggression um and again

I think that the only way to identify when something is aggression except in the in the in the simple case like me

hitting your body which where we assume each one owns their bodies right um for

anything else like if you’re if if I see two people fighting over a

wallet uh I don’t know who’s committing aggression because I don’t know who owns the wallet we need to know who owns the

thing to determine when there’s aggression so if it looks like one person is beating another person and

they’re committing aggression but what they’re really doing is using Justified Force to defend themselves or to

retrieve their stolen resource then it’s not aggression so we can only determine

whether an an apparent Act of aggression or an apparent Act of trespass or theft

we can only determine if it’s really theft or trespass once we determine who owns the thing in in dispute and we can

only determine that again by a very to the fundamental rights the fundamental rules of resource ownership which is

original appropriation and contract in a sense those are the only two rules of of property acquisition outside one’s own

body okay it’s it’s it’s original appropriation and contract so it sounds like you take the the rothbardian

perspective which I I disagree on some points I don’t want to debate about it because we got to get into other things

but I just want to get make clear is that rothbart held that all rights are property rights including your right to

your your body that that’s a a property right or self ownership that’s what that’s the position that you’re coming

from and I take that VI and I think by the way that’s compatible with aspects of Ran’s thought because on ran said

that we’re not ghosts we’re M material physical beings which is a recognition

that and and she also said that you know in G speech do you hear me there’s one

thing no one may do you may not use physical Force she used the word physical she recognized that

in the end and all Libertarians recognize this in the end all rights violations arise because of physical

conflict between people and the use of violence and violence can is a physical action that

can only be applied in the real world by the actions and motions of of an acting

human body against the against other physical things that can receive um

Force um so you could imagine some kind of right to your reputation or your

right to your soul but these are ghostly abstract things that don’t really exist

in a physical way so all rights are property rights because all rights can

be enforced and again the word in and this is compatible with objectivism enforceability means

physical Force so if you have the right to the Integrity of your home or your

body that means you have the right to use physical Force to repel an Invader

okay and Invader can only use physical Force to harm you if they just shout at you it’s just like je Jefferson in free

speech you know sticks and stones may break my bones but words cannot hurt me if someone just has an opinion about you

and says things they’re not invading the physical Integrity of your body this is why all property rights have to be um

All rights are property rights and all property rights are rights to control or

to exclude the use of scarce resources so yeah that is my view and I think it’s compatible with objective doesn’t by the

way so you’ve said you know multiple times you made the reference to man is

not a ghost that that certainly is from IR Randon you said that uh right is right to the physical Integrity of your

your property and the only rights violations are physical aggression physical

assaults that that sort of thing but to me that negates the you’re right that ran says

we are not ghosts but she also says we are not just merely physical bodies that we’re

integration there’s no mindbody dichotomy so the source of rights the

reason human beings ultimately have rights is because of our conceptual rational faculty because we have to

choose how to live we don’t come with a a pre-programmed Instinct on how to

survive we have to choose we have to think and that’s a function of our minds and I mean to to demonstrate that is

fairly simple I mean there’s a reason that crows don’t have rights or

chimpanzees don’t have rights and I mean I know the animals rights people may oh yes they do but they certainly don’t

have rights to property in the sense that human beings do and the the the reason is because the base of Rights the

foundation of Rights is the human consciousness it’s how we it’s it’s the

fact that we have to think we have to choose in order to survive I don’t strong disagree with that I do think

you’re sort of and of course this is compatible with li objectivism you’re blending together ethics and politics um

from an ethical point of view or a moral point of view as ran pointed out and I agree with her on this U the the purpose

of morals or ethics is to give uh acting human beings who have a complex

Consciousness and we have values um to give us a code a guide to

action to to know what is wrong and right to do that’s got nothing to do with with rights and interpersonal

things on on a first level because even cruso alone on his Island would have

some barebones morality attached to his actions if he wanted to live right if he wanted to live as a moral person and

live a good life within the constraint constraints of living without society and on its Island you know you could

still say the virtues like Thrift and oh absolutely I all apply to him and you could even say if he commits suicide not

maybe not suicide is being immoral because as Rand said a that’s a premoral choice although I would disagree with

her on that but um but yeah if he’s lazy and and he has a horrible month because

he didn’t save up you know catch enough fish that’s you could say it’s immoral because it’s not what he ought to be

doing to further his own life and to flourish within that context but when Society comes about and there’s other

people then the the domain of Ethics becomes even richer and there’s interpersonal ethics yeah again not even

rights related just whether it’s moral or moral or moral to treat other people certain ways to Value them to view them

in terms of Justice all this and then a subset of all that type of morality

would be rights and rights are like so I would say that that uh uh morals are are

or optional in the sense that um they’re up to the person to decide whether to

adopt or not you could say someone’s immoral they don’t but they have the they have the they have the choice to

choose to be lazy and to even be rude to other people but what they don’t have the right to do is to violate other

people’s rights those are the things that are must not shoulds okay so that’s how I view rights within that framework

but still I think that’s compatible with what I said earlier rights are property rights okay so just a minute or so ago

you said rights have nothing to do with morality well what I what what I what I

meant was um what I meant was uh yeah I wouldn’t say have nothing to do with it you could you can

view you are permitted it is arguable that there is a moral aspect to rights

but I do think they’re logically that they’re separate and here’s the reason why um I I said earlier in shorthand I

said that rights are a subset of morals I actually think that’s incorrect um most Libertarians would say

that everything that’s a rights violation is immoral but not everything that’s immoral is a rights violation

right so they view they view rights violations as a proper subset of morality yeah um but that implies that

rights are a subset of morality and that implies that every time you violate someone’s rights you’re you’re committing something immoral I don’t

think that that’s been established because now I do think that in most cases in almost every case violating a

right is also immoral but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case and the reason

is because you can imagine cases where you would you ought to violate

someone’s rights like if you had have to break into a cabin in the woods um which would violate someone’s

property rights you have to do that to save your your your child’s life uh you

could you could see a selfish person saying listen I I value my child’s life

more than the strangers property rights and so I’m going to do it and suffer the consequences and take the crime so I

don’t think that it’s necessarily the case now I do think there’s a connection I do think that morality is a guide to conduct and as part of that code of

conduct we need to know how to act with each other in terms of force and we need to know which laws and

which rights are Justified according to rational argumentation yeah well the

problem I have is you said earlier that I’m mixing politics and ethics and then you said that rights have nothing to do

with morality you kind of clarified that and said there’s a loose connection but the very concept of Rights is an ethical

political concept it’s defined as a just claim to something or a moral claim to

something well I don’t know I mean so so that’s that’s without morality there’s no such thing as rights I mean that’s

what rights are unless you’re coming up with a new idea of Rights in divorcing them from that but then you’re using a

word that’s traditionally meant one thing right different way these terms

have been used lots of ways and they’re I I simply I simply want to distinguish the concept of of morality from the

concept of of justice and rights um they they could be related I think they are related but there are different concepts

so morality is broader certainly it’s like Furniture you know all all all chairs

are Furniture but there’s furniture that aren’t chairs and morality covers more than just it is broader but again as I

said I’m I’m not persuaded that that rights are a subset of morality but

they’re an intersecting set um and that’s because I’m not sure that in

every case that it’s there’s a rights violation that the rights violation the

the rights would be acting immorally I’m not sure about that but morality takes place in a context right and and like

you said earlier that ran says that suicide is a preoral choice but that’s not actually what she says what she

actually says is that there’s some conditions under which it would be completely appropriate for somebody to commit suicide and there’s some

situations in which it wouldn’t context matters no I’m not so sure about that I mean on Rand I’m I’m talking about a

kind of an esoteric Point Rand Rand had to like I think Rand

instinctively and intuitively like you and I probably would say that a normal healthy person and a

normal context ought not commit suicide they ought to they ought to live according to their you know according to

their full potential in their life and that would not include committing suicide but she had to admit see because

Ran’s ethics are ultimately hypothetical and I think this is in it’s May you’ve

said hypothetical before but they’re not hypothetical it’s conditional and there’s a difference distinction but you

know the thing is and I I apologize because I’ve kind of let us maybe a little astray and I know you want to get to the IP stuff I don’t want to just

argue about objectivist ethics I just wanted to make the point that that that’s that’s not exactly what she said

and anybody that’s watching you can you know do you read opar or Google Rand no no I and I don’t think it’s I I just I

just think that Rand says that the source of morality is man’s choice to live right

yes and the Cho but the choice Live Well can it’s deeper than that though it’s not just his choice to live it’s the

fact that we have to make choices the very fact that we don’t come pre-programmed or with an automatic

guidance on how to live necessitates that we discover and use or morality totally agree but the point is when she

said it’s morality flows from the choice to live

at to to live as a man um proper to his nature um um this implies and I believe

she recognizes this this implies that you could you couldn’t have a moral criticism of someone’s choice not to

live because you have to already have made the choice to live which is what the

reason I say hypothetical is is all of Ran’s um you could call it conditional but all of Ran’s U moral structures are

based upon this fundamental choice to live which itself has to be premoral or a I can’t I think she said preoral she

says it’s a preoral choice she does and she also I mean it’s not Rand it’s Leonard peof in the endorsed course on

objectivism talks about suicide and and elaborates on it but I want to okay sort of get back to this rights thing because

outside of morality the only rights you have according to the way the word has been defined since at least Samuel

Johnson I are if the government is creating positive rights or or or civil

rights but that’s not how you’re using the term so outside of morality you don’t have rights there’s there’s

no it’s not just that they’re somehow intersecting or connecting rights are

literally the social implementation or the political implementation of moral

it’s how human beings need to live in society I think that’s that’s it’s fine

to look at it that way um I don’t strongly object to that okay so I want

to I I want to move on a little bit to the the value creation things because

you’ve said that value two things one is you don’t have a a right to the things

that you’ve created and you don’t have a right to value and that’s I think at the very core of your critique of

intellectual property so can you explain exactly what you mean by that right and

then I’ll if you want to chime in and give me what where you think sure what your perspective is um so um first of

all the randians used use the word value in a sort of idiosyncratic way they’ll say that you know the purpose of life or

one of the purposes in life is to you know have productive activity using our rationality according to our values

according to our nature to produce or create values like

they use they use the word values in the plural and like it’s a noun like there’s a thing that you’re creating that’s a

value but you know the austrians would say well value is

subjective in the sense not subjective in the sense of arbitrary like Rand criticized it with Kant but subjective

in the sense of being valued by the valuer um and value is not a thing that you that you can possess or own it’s

it’s more of an act of of valuing like demonstrated preference so as mises

would look at it when we act in the world and again this is compatible with with rational action according to

objectivism when we act in the world we find ourselves in a world of reality and scarcity and we have certain values and

we seek to pursue those values by using scarce re means of action to achieve those values we pursue a given end and

when we do that we demonstrate that we value the thing that we’re choosing that we’re pursuing and we demonstrate that

we value the intermediate means because they help us achieve the end so we value things so it’s a verb it’s not like a

noun we don’t create values we value things and when we create what we’re doing is we’re we’re we’re having

successful Human Action to achieve an outcome that we value or that we prefer

and sometimes that output is not just a state of affairs like one output of my action

might be just to to to achieve a state of affairs and the State of Affairs would be the end of my action like I

might want to make my girlfriend happy or I might want to see a movie that I’ve never seen or I might want to go to

Antarctica and see a sunset from there something like that I don’t acquire ownership of something

when I do those things I have a successful action um but I don’t acquire ownership of anything it’s a productive

successful action but I don’t do anything quite often though one subset of of action is the is the acquisition

or or or transformation of scarce resources so if I prefer to have a

hamburger or if I prefer to have a car one way to achieve that end would be to

purchase it from someone like to pay money money or to perform a service someone gives me title to that car or to

that hamburger now I have that so the end of my action was to acquire the ownership and possession of this thing

which I’ve done another thing we could do is we could transform or produce by

taking resources that are un untransformed and transforming them into

a better configuration rearranging as even IR ran recognizes we take existing

matter that we own or that someone else owns and we rearrange it with our effort

our mentality our creativity our labor into uh into another shape which gives

us a more useful thing that’s how we create wealth and what you could call a

value you say you’re creating values but what you’re really doing is you’re you’re making an existing thing more

useful to you or to someone else that’s how wealth and value um wealth emerges

from productive activity of human beings but what they’re doing is they’re using and manipulating existing resources to

make them into a different shape and then the only question is who owns these

things that were created or that were rearranged and property rights answers that question because property rights

already specifies by contract and by original appropriation who owns these scarce

resources this is why for example Henry Ford when he owns a factory making Model

T cars he he employs workers and they are in a sense helping

to cooperate to produce the cars because they’re using their effort their labor to transform the the raw steel and the

Rubber and everything that comes down the assembly line and produce new cars but they don’t own the

cars the Ford corporation owns the cars right because of contract between the people in fact this is part of the

problem with marxian ISM right and the idea that if the if if for makes a

profit it can only be because the Surplus labor value of the workers is being stolen from them or exploited

because they own their labor because marxians also buy into this labor theory of value which is similar to the labor

theory of property which is at the root of intellectual property thinking this idea that people own their own their

bodies and therefore they own their actions or their labor as some kind of substance which exudes from their bodies

and is mixed with these things and give the gives the transformed resource its

value and therefore there’s some kind of connection between owning your body and then owning your labor and owning the

resulting created value or thing so it’s all confused you simply need to say

everyone owns their body and they own resources that they acquired by contract or from the St state of nature and then

however they rearrange them using their labor the person who owns the outcome

the the resulting product depends upon the contract so if it’s if it’s Henry Forge workers they don’t own it because

they didn’t own the input factors if I take some wood some some logs from a

field that I acquire and I therefore Homestead them and I own these logs and I use my lab to build a log cabin I own

the log cabin but not because I created it I own the Log Cabin because I already owned the field and the logs now I have

a log cabin because my effort rearrange these logs into a more useful configuration called a house or a cabin

does that does that sort of make do you understand where I’m coming from why does that make sense I understand

completely where you’re coming from and I think you’re 100% wrong and I’ll tell you why the first thing is that let me

just start at the at the end where you said and I’ll give you my conclusion to what you what you said there and then I want to go back you said that you own

The Log Cabin because you own the resources I would say it’s both I’d say you own

The Log Cabin qua Log Cabin because you own the resources that went into it and

because you’ve created it that’s what I would say there now as far as value goes

part of this confusion and I I’ve actually written about this in my book part of the confusion comes from

different senses in which the term value is used it comes from Ran’s what I think is a bad definition of value so but let

me just start with misus so misus talks talks about how value is subjective meaning that there’s no intrinsic value

in any object or anything in life it’s all a matter basically of personal

opinion but if misus is right about that that’s why misus held there can be no

objective morality and he also held there can be no rights because without

morality you can’t have rights it’s why he said that you can only judge things from the outcomes that you want so he

advocated capitalism he would say if you want Prosperity if you want the greatest happiness for the greatest number this

is what you do but he didn’t put pass a moral judgment on that no I agree he he was he was a consequentialist I I view

his structure of his argument is similar to rans they’re both hypothetical in the sense of if you want this you should do

this okay now there’s a different there’s so when it comes to economics meaning prices

profits those things are the result of subjective choices they have nothing to

do with the right or wrongness of the decisions the the the the price of a given product my microphone has to do

with the value that the various participants in the market place on that microphone buyers and sellers so

economic value in that sense is subjective in that it’s the result of subjective decisions now when you use

value as a a verb like you said it’s true there’s a diff there’s a distinction between what I value and

what actually has value what has value is in the objective sense the problem

with Rand is Rand defined value is that which you seek to gain or keep yeah I think that’s a serious mistake because

it implies that value is subjective whatever I happen to gain or keep or or

or you know seek to gain or keep is a value but that’s definitely not the case because she said life is the standard

what that means is that I can value the wrong thing in other words I can value something that doesn’t have actual value

as measured against what you agreed my well-being my long-term

wellbeing I for instance can value heroin that doesn’t mean heroin has value and I totally agree with that and

I think value but value defined in the objective sense is any object or quality

desirable as a means or ends in itself that’s a that’s a different sense I I I

agree but and I don’t agree with you about so I think you’re wrong about mises I think you’re you’re inflating so

I think mises is perfectly correct to say that as a descriptive matter um

value as an economic phenomena is subjective but that does not imply the subjectivity the ethical subjectivity

that ran criticizes rightly um and it doesn’t imply it’s not says so Stefan

yeah says so I mean it’s it’s not we’re talking about mis’s view no actually I

mean if if morality is a code of values to guide human behavior in value vales

are all subjective then morality necessarily is subjective mises says as much I don’t remember I think he says it

in Human Action I don’t have it in front of but what his position is I don’t I mean we’d have to look at MIS I don’t

think mis’s that’s not integral to mis’s views on economics that was his political views I think they’re they’re

shaky they’re roughly Common Sense they’re roughly you know they’re

hypothetical you could pick apart his ethics he and he never did write a lot about ethics uh but his I think his his

economic view is simply look it’s it’s simply a fact I mean even Rand made this mistake to a degree if you think it’s a

mistake when she defined when she does Define value is something that you act

and she add the word act to gain and or keep agre very similar to that’s very similar to the economic notion of

demonstrative preference I don’t disagree and that’s why I’ve critiqued her definition I’ve done it both on this

podcast I’ve done it in writing and and I’ve done it when I’ve been interviewed elsewhere but that doesn’t negate the Crux of Theory right that’s just a poor

definition within a much larger system yeah and you and I probably see somewhat eye to eye on some of this but I don’t

really think it is relevant so how do how does that get you to okay let me ask you one hypothetical

see if we can distinguish here so I work for a company building log cabins yes

this log C and I I go to you know two houses a day I go to house one house two

and I I I work with 10 other guys and we we we get paid a salary and we take

these Log Cabin we take these logs and we build log cabins now we are producing the log cabins with our labor and our

effort why don’t we own those why would you say is the simple reason we don’t own the log cabins that we produce

because we didn’t own the initial resources exactly no but you have to have that’s why I’m saying in the terms in the cabin and I gave you the example

is it’s both it’s the fact that I own the resources and created it if you’ve

been farmed out to create something for somebody else with their resources you agreed under contract to do that right

that’s a different scenario but you would agree do it with your own resources fine but you would agree if I have a human being operating in the

world and I I have title to this tract of land and I own the trees on it I

already own those things correct yeah okay now if I build a log cabin I would

agree I’ve created something of value I I would agree you could even say I’ve created a value you can say I’ve I’ve

increased my wealth yes um now but the reason I own the resulting

house is completely explained by the fact that I already owned everything that went into it you don’t need to add

the second thing I own it because I own the the the lumber and I own what I

create you already own own it that’s that’s what I

understand you own you own you own these this matter that’s on your land and however it’s arranged you own it and

whatever you want to call it you own it that’s true sure but the problem here is that

as we as we discussed earlier if human consciousness is the source of rights which you agreed it was the nature of I

say Consciousness but well well the rational faculty the fact you have to choose that’s the human consciousness I

don’t think it’s a source of rights I’d say it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s just it’s the reason why we can justify rights but

okay so now if I take my my matter I’m I’m on my land and I take everything and

I build a cabin yes I’ve I’ve added by the by the creative rational faculty

that I have I’ve added to the value that was previously there in just raw

resources you’ve added what I call Wealth that’s correct you created wealth so you would not say that I don’t have a

right to that additional value I do I do you don’t no one has a right to Value okay well here I have a

hypothetical for you if I built this Log Cabin I take my raw resources and I

rearrange them and I build a log cabin so the value from of the raw resources on the market let’s say is $5,000 or or

hold on or the value to you like now it’s more useful to you it’s a more useful thing it it it’s useful to me but

there’s also a market value of the the product of there could there could be the logs right so now I rearrange them

into a cabin that has a market value say of $200,000 right okay if somebody were to

knock down my cabin yes and leave all the raw resources are perfectly intact

just like they were before right yes you could you wouldn’t just say well I don’t

know what you would say but I wouldn’t that all they’ve done is trespass my property and that’s why it’s a rights violation they would owe me not you

would say that they only owe you the value of the raw resources there’s two there’s two things you’re saying here I would say that yeah the only thing they

did was commit trespass against your property they use it without your permission that is true that’s what do

they owe you now for the additional value that you added by means of your creation of course but not because you

own the value well then so how why would they own you owe you anything if not

because prop because the reason that we we want there to be property rights and

the reason we object to property rights being invaded the reason we oppose aggression is because it has an effect

because we’re again we’re not ghosts right so if for example if you could if

you could destroy my log cabin and with a blink of an eye I could conjure it

back up again in other words if we lived in a world of no scarcity um then we

would even have we wouldn’t care if someone did it because they wouldn’t be doing anything the only reason that we care about an AC of aggression is

because it has an effect and the effect is that it prevents the owner from using his resource as he sees fit so if I want

my I don’t know let’s take a better example let’s say I’m a virgin virgin a

virgin teenage girl hold that one thought right there the the virgin teen because I want to address what you what

you just said about the the cabin all right