There are two problems here. 1. Rand simply made an honest mistake. She understandably wants to oppose (physical) aggression and thus support (physical) property rights; and I would say this insight and consistent way of seeing the symmetry in her “non-aggression principle” view…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 25, 2025
My tweet:
There are two problems here. 1. Rand simply made an honest mistake. She understandably wants to oppose (physical) aggression and thus support (physical) property rights; and I would say this insight and consistent way of seeing the symmetry in her “non-aggression principle” view of matters was the beginning of the modern libertarian movement. But perhaps because of her reverence for the American system and Constitution and the fact that she was a writer and also emphasized the importance of the mind and reason, and her relative lack of sophistication in detailed matters of law and property rights theorizing and her uncharacteristic lapse into metaphor and non-rigorous, flowery argument and description of these matters, she also was determined to justify IP–legal protection for “products of the mind” blah blah blah. But she chose something–IP rights–flatly incompatible with the other property rights and NAP she also supported. So her entire normative edifice is schizophrenic, built on unstable foundations. Something has to give. Unfortunately when push comes to shove she chooses IP over real property, despite her caution that men are not ghosts; she treats us as ghosts, in effect, in her revernce for IP and her ridiculous and frankly ignorant assertion that “Patents are the heart and core of property rights.” and: “Intellectual property is the most important field of law.” She chose our amorphous, “spiritual” nature, our “soul,” over our bodies and real life and real conflicts. Sad. We become ghosts, she chose IP over real property rights, she became a socialist, calling for an anti-life and anti-human and anti-rights system, something that will turn us all into ghosts. Because of her error, she chose death.
2. Her followers (I was one of them) learn so much from her that they get sucked into her system and then they are stuck defending her even when she’s wrong. Partly b/c Rand promoted this “it’s all or nothing” cultish nonsense. Liebowitz, in trying to defend Rand’s pro-property rights views and her IP views, is stuck trying to defend the undefendable. It’s not his fault he can’t do this, that he can’t justify the unjustifiable, but he does have free will and could just admit, like some Randians do, that she just got this one wrong.
It is obscene to undermine the glorious operation of the market in producing wealth and abundance by imposing artificial scarcity on human knowledge and learning …. Learning, emulation, and information are good. It is good that information can be reproduced, retained, spread, and taught and learned and communicated so easily. Granted, we cannot say that it is bad that the world of physical resources is one of scarcity — this is the way reality is, after all — but it is certainly a challenge, and it makes life a struggle. It is suicidal and foolish to try to hamper one of our most important tools — learning, emulation, knowledge — by imposing scarcity on it. Intellectual property is theft. Intellectual property is statism. Intellectual property is death. Give us intellectual freedom instead!
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