On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> That is certainly true. One example of this is the strange case of
> Friedrich Hayek. In 1949 in a vituperative criticism of intellectuals,
> who Hayek maintained are without “that experience of the working of the
> economic system which the administration of property gives” and thus
> without “direct responsibility for practical affairs,” he lamented that
> “the growth of this class [of despicable people] has been artificially
> stimulated by the law of copyright.” (see: Hayek, “The Intellectuals and
> Socialism,” The University of Chicago Law Review, XVI (1949) , 420.) On
> the other hand, years later he would declare that “encyclopedias,
> dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be
> produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.” (Hayek,
> ed. W. W. Bartley III, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988),
> 36-37.) By that logic things like Wikipedia, MIT OpenCourseWare,
> healthfinder.gov, pubmed.gov, should not flourish.
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math
>
>
>> > It is absolute freedom and protections for haves and competition
>> and
>> > market discipline for have-nots, stupid. Intellectual property
>> rights
>> > are good because they protect the former from the encroachments by
>> the
>> > latter. By the same logic - social welfare is bad and against
>> free
>> > market, but bank bailouts and corporate subsidies are good and
>> > perfectly compatible with free market.
>> >
>> > Pointing logical contradictions in what these people say is a
>> waste of
>> > time. A better way is to chop off the heads that hold these ideas
>> -
>> > as good old revolutionaries did. All crowned heads deserve a
>> > guillotine.
>> >
>>
>> Woj, I am not sure I agree with the above. AFAIK, for Adam Smith and
>> Enlightenment liberals the free market and capitalism were a means
>> to an end that included general welfare and common good. They were
>> convinced from their “understanding” of “human nature” that a free
>> market was the way to get there, but they also called for explicit
>> attention to moral goals/outcomes. Modern
>> conservatives/libertarians, from what I can tell, proceed rather
>> from a goal of purely individual rights point of view. The goal is
>> the preservation of an individual’s rights, which is to say, his
>> ability to just about do anything as long as it does not directly and
>> demonstrably harm another individual. Free market and capitalism as
>> a means, to them, are expressions of this goal and make sense only
>> insofar as they preserve/enhance individual liberties and prevent
>> expropriation of his/her effort. The way I see it, for a Smithian or
>> old-school capitalist or free-marketeer IP rights are problematic
>> because they make the market inefficient. They face this and other
>> paradoxes and invent ad hoc fixes (e.g: trust busting) rather than
>> examine their assumptions. For the modern conservative/libertarian,
>> OTOH, the goal of the free market is not about the “spread of ideas”
>> or “competition”, but the safeguarding of individual rights in the
>> marketplace. The market remains “free” as long as it does not
>> trample the rights of the individual to participate in his own terms
>> (including the choice of non-participation). There is no conflict
>> since general welfare is *not* a goal (that’s under the purview of
>> religion and charity).
>>
>> At least that’s how I see it,
>>
>> —ravi
>>
>>
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com