On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 10:09 PM, rekres <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:54 AM, David Scheidt <[email protected]> wrote: >> Nothing political in my post. That intellectual property is a >> distortion of the free market is merely a fact. > > It seems to me that you are stating an opinion and claiming it is a > fact. I'd be interested in hearing the proof of your assertion, but > perhaps it'd be better to take it off-list... > > -- > Chris J. Whitcomb
wikipedia quote ==== A free market is a market that is free of government intervention and regulation, besides the minimal function of maintaining the legal system and protecting property rights[1], and is also free of private force and fraud. In a free market, property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, buyers and sellers do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other's property without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud, nor is the coerced by a third party (such as by government via transfer payments).[2] In addition, in a free market, force is not used to prevent competition among buyers or among sellers (called free competition). Therefore, force is not a determinant of price, but rather price is the effect of buying and selling decisions en masse as described by the law of supply and demand. ==== Thus I would say Chris is correct. This is about property rights. The really question here and in real life is, what is property and who has the right to own it? Is it land? Is it my personal DNA? Is it a bond? Is it a system of steps like a computer program? Is it an idea? Is it a pattern of magnetic dots on a disk? Is it a plants DNA because you found it first even if it were on someone else's land or country (The GMO VS Hawaiian Natives taro is interesting here)? Should some of these be community property, tribal or even "all human's property". Who owns the mood? Who owns the moon? Who owns the poles? Who has what rights in the deep sea? Does one country have the right to pollute the air (water) if it blows to some other country? These are questions of our times. Our game worlds get to explore all this! -- Douglas E Knapp Why do we live? _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
