Free Civilization

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Free thinker

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Free thinker

I am a free thinker. A free thinker is an individual who destroys his own rules. A free thinker loves diversity and abhors monopoly (monopolistic systems).

A free thinker is an individual who thinks from multiple points of view. A free thinker lives in a given context. He makes no attempt to force other people to live as he thinks it's best, but he tries to improve his life and thus the lives of all people around him. A free thinker looks for the best compromise wherever he can find it. He makes no attempt to forcefully change the people from a specific place.

A free thinker knows that he must use human behavior to analyze the interactions among people. He knows that people like rules, he knows that people like to force their rules on others. He knows these are the rules of the masses, and he can't interact with a mass of people using his own rules.

However, a free thinker must never forget his own point of view. If he does, he will become undetermined, he will stop changing.

A free thinker may think from multiple points of view, but he lives only his point of view.

If you have one person, you have freedom. If you have two people, you have rules. If you have three people, you also have police. A free thinker knows that masses are convinced that they have found the right answer to a specific problem. He also knows that this is what leads to evil within the mass of people who interact, but can't destroy those rules because he is outnumbered and because these are the laws of Nature, the laws of the flock.

So, instead of wasting his time and energy fighting with the natural forces which make the human mind, a free thinker tries to destroy his rules and the rules of other people.

The only form of organization of a society which can prosper is the free society, a form of organization with few rules imposed on everybody. It is better to have no rules than have bad rules.

A free society is not a place without rules. To the contrary, it requires preserving the natural rules (which affect all biological organisms), but keeping human-made rules to minimum, the optimum of which is zero.

I am a free thinker. I have no political, economic or social philosophy because I have no need to control (or be controlled by) other people. I have no need to force my ideas on the society. Therefore, I have no need to explain what laws a society should have, I have no need to describe what political, economic or social systems should be implemented in a society. Clearly, "implementing" means that a few individuals would enforce the rules they create, thus acting against the principles of a free thinker.

Being a free thinker, I would rather spend my time building a free world (describing a free society, the way it would be), than wasting my time trying to reform criminal organizations which force their rules on everybody.

People who are not free thinkers would say that because criminals try to control other people, there is some need to control everybody, by honest individuals. No! There is no such need because criminals would simply follow their nature and would continue with their criminal actions. But, honest people would no longer be able to defend themselves against criminals because they would have to prove they were being attacked, which is extremely difficult to do.

Criminals must be dealt with when time comes, not by forcing honest people to follow the rules of a few. The costs of forcing rules on everybody are much higher then if there would be no rules.

A free society is a place where criminals exist, but there are no criminals who force some rules on the entire society, using as excuse the malformed desire to prevent the criminals with no rules to do their criminal actions. A free society deals with criminals by physically defending itself when time comes, not by forcing rules on all people.

Whatever case of crime you can think of that would be easier to deal with by forcing a rule on the entire society, does not constitute any kind of argument in favor of a monopolistic system of justice. The consequences of allowing such systems to exist have horrifying results on the prosperity of the society.

Whatever good reason you think motivates you to vote in favor of a law or in favor of a representative, you are not doing anyone any favors: you are merely giving politicians the power to rob and oppress you. The only thing you need is to destroy your desire to create the rules you (think you) want, and to destroy you desire to enforce rules throughout the entire society.

Keeping human laws

If laws are made by the society, as a mass of people, through voting, there must be a way to destroy laws, with relative ease. This is the most important part of the structure of a society. This principle must absolutely never be avoided. There is absolutely nothing more important than this. This is what allows a society to directly change itself as needed.

The society must be able to regulate itself. To do this, all is needed is to implement the no-confidence voting process, in order to let people decide which laws are bad.

People would be free to elect their representatives who would create laws for everybody, and then the society would destroy the laws it doesn't like. This way, the no-confidence voting automatically deals with all the complexity people can't handle.

More information

Here are some people whose works should be read: James McGill Buchanan, Milton Friedman and his son David Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Jefferson, Ludwig Mises, Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Adam Smith.

Books to read:

For a New Liberty (by Murray Rothbard). A good book for those people who need to have shaken their faith in the "goodness" of the state.

You can find websites with information about economy here.

Democracy

Democracy (just as communism and socialism) is bad for a prosperous society.

Democracy is a form of government of a society (= a political system), not an ideal life style. "Democracy" means "government by the majority", not "freedom".

Don't confuse democratic processes (such as democratic elections) with democracy as a form of government of an entire society (by forcing the rules of various groups over the rest of people).

The difference between democracy and democratic process is the key word from their definitions, which for democracy is "government / rule", whereas for democratic process is "majority".

Democracy mocks people by saying they need rules and need to be ruled. That is false. The only rules people need to follow are the rules of all biological beings.

The main reason why democracy is today considered the best form of government is because it allows everybody to have a certain influence on the way the society is governed. However, people don't need to be ruled, although their fears are exploited by politicians to gain power over the society. Also, the vote of no-confidence offers to anyone the possibility to influence the way the society is governed, but it does so by letting people show that they do not need rules.

"Democracy" means "rule of the majority, by the majority", that is, the majority creates rules for everybody. The no-confidence voting defies democracy by destroying rules. This way, the majority can't force its rules on everybody and it must either live without rules, or must compromise with all (significant) minorities, or create a legislative federation.

There are two main types of democracy:

Representative, where people elect politicians (with a qualified majority) to deal with public matters. This is evil because politicians can easily be bought / blackmailed (with votes or money) by various (small) groups of interests into forcing their rules on everybody.
Direct, where people deal with public matters directly, through a qualified majority. This is bad because the majority always forces its rules on everybody.

A simple example of representative democracy:

A candidate for the presidency (/ senate / prime minister position) of a democratic country promises to the electors that he will give cheap (or even free) medical insurance to those who can't afford it.
Millions of people vote for him, thus significantly decreasing the chances of another candidate (who doesn't make such promises) to win the elections.
This way, the people who believe the claims of their candidate, will force their opinion on the rest of people because their candidate will have to take money through taxes (from the rest of people) to finance his claims.

Basically, democracy is it's own enemy since the rules of a group affect the freedom of all the others. Democracy makes people submit (too much) to the rules of other people.

Democracy treats people only as a flock; in democracy, people are treated by the state as sheep. It fails to understand that the liberty of an individual stops where the liberty of another individual starts. Thus, it steals from the work of some people to give to others, all in the name of general welfare.

Democracy is a government system which creates rules that are imposed on everybody. Freedom means lack of rules. This is a conflict which can't be solved, but can be mitigated with no-confidence voting.

Representative democracy is like dynamite. If you let dynamite on the street, with no control, all hell breaks loose. If you keep dynamite in a safe storage place, it can be used for many good things.

Democracy doesn't work because it is a form of collective organization and it ignores natural laws. The group never learns from failures. Most importantly, democracy (combined with socialism) ignores the natural laws of selection of efficient systems: profit.

Profit is the core of evolutionary biology. The beings that can extract the most profit possible would survive, the others would die. The means through which the highest profit can be achieved is competition of diversity.

Profit and freedom are not achieved through either the presence or absence of rules, but gained through competition among systems which implement diverse solutions to a given problem.

Do you want to see how many people believe in democracy (in democratic countries)? Check how many people vote there. Usually, less than 50% of people who can vote, do so. And a part of these people vote just to vote the lesser evil, not because they believe their lives would be improved by their vote.

The people who don't vote may not know what democracy really is, but they certainly feel the evil which is being inflicted on them. They know that by supporting democracy (through voting), their lives would not be improved because the system itself (that is, the rules of various groups which are being forced on them) is wrong.

All democracies are doomed to end up converting economies into socialist ones because most voters have no clue about the way a prosperous economy works, and thus are more inclined to believe the lies of politicians (who also have no idea how a prosperous economy works).

Voluntary taxes

It would seem like a good idea if people would pay whatever taxes they think is fair. In such cases, it seems normal that poor people would pay very little (maybe nothing) and rich people would pay a lot.

The problem is that people who pay a lot of money would expect to be treated preferentially.

Let's say a very rich person (A) pays huge amounts of taxes. At some point, this person has a conflict with someone else (B). They go to court to settle the matter. The rich person loses the dispute and has to pay a lot of money.

At this point it would seem normal that our rich person is annoyed because the justice system said that A was wrong. This person believes the justice system was wrong. If A would believe that the justice system is right, it would have not went to court but would have said from the start that B is right. In consequence, the rich person would stop paying taxes.

Thus, we can see that voluntary taxes would act as a blackmail method, where rich people would say: if you want me to pay taxes than you must always say that I am right.

Certainly, voluntary taxes would be far better than forced taxes, but it's still not efficient if they are used to support a monopolistic system.

Anarchy

My free thinker nature can be easily assimilated with anarcho-capitalism. Although I normally say about myself that I am a free thinker, in some cases I feel the need to simply and clearly state my nature and in such cases I say I am an anarcho-capitalist.

You should understand that anarchy / anarchism is not what states and mass media tell you they are, chaos, but it means that there is no higher governing authority for people, that is, there is no state to tell people what to do (and not do). Of course, states (and submissive mass media) greatly distort the meaning of anarchism and make it synonym with chaos and civil war.

Let's say every person from this world has a personal spaceship which can be flown away from Earth. All people who do so can deny any kind of higher authority over their own life and spaceships. If anyone would try to control such a person, the spaceship could be simply moved farther from Earth, or even respond with fire power. This is anarchism and is a desirable form of living: under nobody's rules, except for those which naturally bind people (and all other biological beings).

People interact because they are confined in a given space and because they are social beings. Actually, the last factor would maintain interaction even when people will be able to fly away in their spaceships and would try to live alone. They would always organize themselves in groups of people which would start manifesting mass behavior.

A human's life is driven mainly by social factors, not by economic ones. Humans are not interested to maximize their economic efficiency, but to fulfill their needs / desires / instincts. Thus, even though a completely private society would work in reality, people will always appeal to some higher power to protect them from more or less real or imaginary threats.

Mass behavior dissolutes personal needs, it creates an average. In the case of humans, this average would invariably turn into a standard because humans can alter the environment, and thus the average, in an attempt to make it durable / stable / fixed. The only way to counteract this is by force, that is, to actively fight against those who gain to much power.

In a society, most people actively seek to transfer their responsibilities toward "leaders". It is false to believe that these people do not care about politics. They do care, but they do not want to take responsibility and do not want to be the ones making choices. If there is anything which can stop anarcho-capitalisms from working in a society, it's people – society itself.

People want control, they want to control other people, they want to submit to the control of "leaders". Since in a confined society most people would do this, and since there would always be people who think of themselves as "leaders", as the ones to "lead" society to perfection, such societies would never be(come) anarcho-capitalistic.

However, if people are capable to able to fly away from land, into cosmic space, social dissolution and the inability (of the state) to follow individuals to force them do something, occurs.

Anarchy would work in a world where people would be free to fly away from the society, but not in a confined society.

Enemies of freedom

For an individual, freedom is his ability to do whatever he wants. The freedom of an individual is not limited by the freedom of others, or, in other words: freedom does not extend only up to the point where another individual's freedom starts.

However, freedom does mean that any individual is free to impose limits on his own freedom so that his actions would not interfere with the freedom of other individuals. Of course, it is not freedom when an individual attempts to impose limits on another individual's freedom. In a society, freedom is the resultant of the actions of all individuals, and hence there is no such thing as absolute freedom.

Regardless of words and definitions, if you want to know who is an enemy of freedom (your freedom, in particular), listen to what people say. If they say they "have rights" and they can only fulfill those rights by controlling parts of your property (body, work, money, land, time) then they are enemies of your freedom.

They say things like:

Society / economy must be helped by a central authority because it can't do things on its own.
It is for the good of the society (to have a central authority).
You owe it to the society.
The poor have rights. [They do, but they don't have a right to the property of other people.]
There has to be social equity. [Social equity is not equal with theft of other people's property.]

Society doesn't need any protection either from itself or from the average people. People must protect themselves against criminals, using competitive security agencies and private justice organizations. Anyone trying to "civilize" everybody with their way of "civilization" is an enemy of Freedom.

But is there any good system for the way a society should be organized? Well, the whole problem is right in the question. Freedom, prosperity, right and wrong exist for each individual, and each individual knows what is best for himself. A system is something which forces all individuals to follow the same rules, the same definitions about right and wrong. In consequence, there is no such thing as a "good system". All systems are poison because they destroy diversity, the root of Life.

A system is merely a prison for a free mind!

Control

Control of other people's lives, the root of all evil, is promoted and used by the weak minds to achieve a so called quasi-stable global social status.

The most important thing which people must realize in order to become free thinkers is to see that control of other people's lives is the root of all evil in the world. Humans, in their attempt to control life, crush the freedom of the entire world.

When you draw the line and calculate the costs of life, you see that though control may look like the only choice in order to have a specific outcome of a situation, in time, control takes over more and more from your freedom until you are a prisoner, and cracks occur in the shell you created around you.

No human is capable to understand the results of his own actions, and using control over life is a sure way to increase the forces of destruction which always exist between the human illusions and the reality.

The only way to live a prosperous life is to control yourself from trying to control various aspects of life, particularly other people's lives.

If you believe somebody does something wrong in his own life, do not attempt to modify what that person does – every individual has his own choices to make. If you think the actions of that person would affect you then protect yourself, but don't do this by controlling that person, do it by controlling yourself: your thinking, your actions, your life.

Forget about your rules! Don't just create rules, but destroy them as well. Rules confine your freedom, so destroy them and you will see how few rules you will need to live well.

Personal responsibility

Most people are not willing to take responsibility for their problems. They always blame other people.

For example, if a thief steals from them, the thief is blamed. The victim never thinks that he made mistakes, like not taking proper safety measures.

Why does this happen? Because people don't like to admit that they make mistakes and they don't like to make preemptive decisions (which would require significant mental concentration). But they do want other people to do these things.

Every individual is responsible for both his own actions and his own protection.

Human interaction

There are three things that shape the human interaction: claim, respect, enforcement of claim.

Property and freedom are claims (of exclusive control over one's own body and mind, and over various material and immaterial things) and nothing else.

In a group, the relationships between individuals and their claims are shaped by the respect each individual shows for the claims of the others.

When respect is not shown voluntarily, enforcement of claim may occur in order to obtain respect through sheer physical force.

In fact, a claim of property is a passive act of enforcement of property. A claim is a way of marking the territory which is about to be defended.

A claim doesn't even have to be actively promoted to be an act of enforcement. For example, most people consider that life is the property of each individual, and don't kill other individuals. Aside the moral motivation people think they have, not killing other individuals has a biological motivation which forces people to expect not to be killed: the survival instinct. Basically, when a human's life is threaten, he would (normally) defend his life. So, people expect that nobody would try to kill them because they would defend their life. People have expectations, expectations which arise from biological motives.

A rock claims nothing and enforces nothing. I rock owns nothing, not even itself. A human is different because he can "mark" his territory by making various claims and by actively enforcing those claims.

Property does not exist as a god given right, but as an ability to acquire resources in order to increase the chances of survival of individuals. A claim of property is merely the tool people use to state their intentions.

People who try to define property as anything other than claim are looking for a system with an absolute reference where they could say "Look dude, I am not a criminal for disrespecting your claim, since your claim is not property, so stop calling me a criminal / thief!"

The human mind is looking for stability and it finds it in a system with an absolute reference. But in reality everything is relative to various systems of reference.

A system with an absolute reference is called moral, and the path to it is called conditioning. People want to have moral and they want it their way. But the truth is that people don't need an absolute reference, but only need to follow their nature: relativity (of things / thinking) -> uniqueness -> individuality - > diversity -> Life -> the opposite of chaos.

Example

I can say I own the Moon, and that's that. So is the Moon really my property? Sure, because I say so!

Okay, but do other property respect my claim? They certainly don't!

(Let's assume people can fly over there, in their private spaceships.)

What if I get in my spaceship and try to blast away anyone who would try to land on the Moon? Easy to explain: those people would also try to blast me away because they disregard my claims of property.

By this example I am simply trying to show that property is mere claim, and also that respect and enforcement occur when interacting with other people, thus shaping reality.

Privacy

The privacy of an individual is the property of that individual. Privacy can only be understood from the point of view of reasonable expectations.

For example, let's think to all methods which person A can use to see inside the house of person B.

To be able to say that B wants his privacy protected, B is expected to have installed reasonable protection measures against the technology which is reasonably available to other people. It is unreasonable to expect B to spend millions of dollars to protect his house against some hi-tech scanner device which "sees" inside a house. However, it is reasonable to expect B to put curtains on the house's windows.

There is no difference of effect in all the cases below, which are invasions of privacy, but only a difference of method:

A breaks into B's house.
A "beams" his atoms into B's house.
A bombards B's house, on the inside, with some particles which are reflected back to B and intercepted by a scanner.

However, if A looks into B's house, that is, A's eyes receives the sun's photons which are reflected on the objects from B's house, A does not invade B's privacy. This is because it is reasonable to expect B to put curtains on the house's windows, which would stop the sun's light from being reflected back outside.

It is also normal for people to take reasonable measures to protect their houses of break-ins by locking their doors and windows. Anyone who breaks such reasonable protection measures is trespassing.

Let's take another example. If I walk down the street naked, anyone can look at me or take pictures (without invading my property) because I expose my property to natural sensors; it is reasonable for me to assume such sensors exist. It is reasonable for me to expect other people can see my naked body, without any effort to invade my property.

But, if I walk down the street fully clothed, the sun's light doesn't allow anyone to see under my clothes (because they act as protection against the sun's natural photons). However, if someone uses some scanner which penetrates my clothes with some particles which are then reflected back, they are invading my property because an effort is made to break my reasonable protection measures – the clothes.

The skin does not emit photons; actually, the skin emits some photons, but not in the visual spectrum and with very low resolution relative to the visual aspect of the skin (= what people usually try to hide). The only way someone could see my skin (with visual-like resolution) is to have (for example) sun photons reflected on my skin. Clothes stop such photons from reaching my skin (and from being reflected).

If you leave the door of your house wide open, is anyone entering without your permission trespassing?

No, it isn't because people could think they are invited to look around. Perhaps you're selling some stuff you have and you're waiting for customers (or there is a museum inside).

The reason why most people would consider this to be trespassing is because they have reasonable expectations that houses are private (= restricted property).

As a similar example, if a farmer doesn't put a fence and signs around his property, tourists who walk through his land are not trespassing because there is no reasonable expectations for them to think the land is restricted property. The land may well be someone's property, but it's not necessarily restricted to tourists.

Property Q&A

Here are, mainly, my responses to other people, on various forums. The texts are processed to address general questions.

Thomas Jefferson (quote)

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Why is copyright law good, and patent law bad?

Copyright law is meant to stop anyone from duplicating creations. Creations which can easily be duplicated, like novels, are virtually impossible to be similarly written by two distinct people, at about the same time.

Patent law is meant to stop anyone (other than the so-called "inventor") from solving problems, just as the "inventor" of the idea did. If the "original inventor" would not publish his idea, there are high chances other people would reach the same idea because they have to give an answer to a specific problem, problem which has very strict conditions (and thus, has virtually a single solution).

Ideas are meant to be implemented, to use them to create something. There is no need to make public an idea. The only reason why ideas are patented is to force other people to pay to the "original inventor" instead of reaching them by themselves.

It's good for everyone when creations become freely available infrastructure on which other things can be built. That's called progress.

Perhaps, but a creator is under no obligation to give away its creations and nobody can't make creators to freely distribute their creations, though some people could steal them.

If you have a good idea, there's nothing wrong with charging people to share it with them.

No. This would give to that person monopoly over the idea. Nobody else (who may come up with the idea independently) can use the same idea. Nobody else can follow the same steps (or whatever steps may be necessary) to get to the same idea.

Why should intellectual property not be limited to ties of custom and interconnected business?

"Business" does not mean the ability of someone to create and the ability of someone to use the result of the creation without fair compensation. A business involves trade of benefit of use. If someone has benefits from the use of a creation then a trade occurs (work exchanged with money).

When people produce a creations, they attach to them certain terms of use – a contract. Potential users are under no obligation to enter into this contract. They can go to the competition. Their ability to duplicate, for example, commercial software is not competition but theft (except when someone re-creates its source-code). If someone uses the creation with disrespect to the terms of use, he becomes a criminal because he breaks a contract which he was under no obligation to enter in (as is in the case of patents).

Why should intellectual property not simply be rewarded with donations?

The free market is not a place where donations fly around. It is a place where business is done, a place where people trade goods for money.

People can duplicate digital works without limiting anyone else's access to the original work. Doesn't that show that digital works are not property?

The ability to duplicate digital works is not enough to destroy property. This shows the inability of producers of digital works to protect their works. The fact that they are unable to protect their works does not mean others can use it freely. For instance, a slave can't protect and use his work as it sees fit. This does not mean his work is not his property.

Example

Let's say someone has a device which can scan the inside of your house (or body, under clothes). The scanning is active, that is, the scanner bombards your house with some particles which are then reflected back to the scanner.

Would you not say this is an invasion of your property? If you say would no then the person who scans your property could simply enter in your house since there is no difference between his active scanning method (= the particles sent into your house) and the physical presence of the operator (= the particles which make the operator).

If there are an infinite number of apples around, nobody can say they own apples.

No. Let's replace the apples with the pebbles lying around (there is a virtually infinite number of pebbles around). If I pickup a pebble (which has no previous owner), I can claim it my property. It is in my possession and is my property. Each pebble is an object, a perfectly defined / limited object, not a concept (that is, something abstract).

If people take it away from me, I call them thief. They are, however, free to pickup their own pebble. They are not free to either take away my pebble or "clone" it, because I don't allow them to do that.

In the case of digital works, the author doesn't allow others to duplicate their "pebble". People are free to pickup their own "pebble", but no such pebble exists. Some people would say that the Internet is full of such pebbles. That is true, but these are copies which originate in the author's work. Since the author distributes copies of its work only with specific terms attached (the author forbids other people to duplicate the digital work), any copy of the work which is on the Internet is a breach of contract – theft.

Shouldn't creators just figure out how to sell their creations instead of forcing other people not to (re)sell or share those creations?

Of course I need a way to force people from reselling or sharing my creations. If an individual takes my car when I am not using it, I still call that theft and I take all precautions to make sure this does not happen. But if it does happen, I may feel inclined to blow the thief's head off for the simple reason he did not respect my property (regardless of the "economics" involved).

He, the thief, is the one who first showed no respect for my claims - my property. Therefore, I feel (and claim to be) entitled to defend my property by force.

Why do you support creations but not ideas to be regarded as property?

Being a sheep, disregarding the laws of Nature by saying one should not protect his claimed property by force, if the personification of evil.

Property is property because Nature designed people to survive, and people survive when they fight their way in life (not when they are sheep), when they fight for the resources they gather and for the creations they produce.

Life does not mean sharing one's property with everybody else, but means fighting to keep it for oneself and sharing it only with those entities and paths one considers worthy of drawing close to his understanding of efficient mechanisms that generate the highest amount of profit, be it material or immaterial.

The "right" solution emerges from the interaction of individuals. But interaction means both peace and war. Nature has no preference for either of them. Life is survival of the fittest, not of the strongest / weakest, smartest / dumbest, richest / poorest. The human definition of property is irrelevant.

If the definition of property requires me to pay to use the property, as claimed by its creator, I do not regard ideas as property (although I do give people credit for the ideas). In contrast, I regard creations as the property of their creators, and this means that I give them credit and I also pay what the author asks for usage; if I consider that the price is too high, I don't use the creation.

Why do I consider that ideas are not property? Because I would use ideas, without paying, regardless of the claims (and name calling) of their so called inventors. To give a logical reason: because the probability for someone to come up with the same idea is high, whereas the probability to write the same book (at about the same time) is practically zero. Therefore, I am not willing (in general) to pay for ideas made public.

I draw my line between property and non-property according to uniqueness. After all, people claim property according to the uniqueness of an object or creation (or even idea). If there would be an infinite supply of food, nobody would say "this is my food". But this uniqueness does not refer strictly to physical uniqueness, but also to the uniqueness of the context / mind which produced a creation. Uniqueness is the opposite of common. The smaller the probability to create the same product is, the more unique the creation is, and thus the stronger my feelings are to regard the product as property.

Can property be anything beyond claim?

Let's take a bear who controls an area which is very rich in food. Another bear comes on this land. The first bear starts making all sorts of sounds, saying he owns the land. This bear makes a claim. The second bear could walk away, thus respecting the claim of the first bear. But the second bear could also disregard the claims of the first bear, and go for the food. The first bear can now either ignore the intruder or could attack him - thus, enforcement.

So, what is property beyond this? Is there an absolute way to draw a line and say "this is what makes property"? I say no! You have claim, you have respect, and maybe you have enforcement. None of these things is an absolute landmark, but a law of Nature, a law which is relative to context. There are no other rules involved.

Say you come up with the greatest idea in the world, do a lot of expensive research, create a working prototype, and then someone reverse-engineers your product and sells it for a much lower cost (because they don't have to pay for the research). Isn't this enough reason to consider ideas as property?

The only problem is that the reality does not work like this.

Let's take the pharmaceutical industry. They do (a lot of) research on how to cure diseases. They patent the ideas they come up with during their research. Then, you have to buy these drugs at astronomical costs because nobody else can produce a similar drug (using their own research), since the method is patented.

On the other hand, if the first company would simply keep the method secret (and not use patents), anyone else could do research and come up with a similar drug. But you see, for patents to exist they must be published in plain sight (for everybody to see). This way, there would be competition, diversity and thus lower cost for consumers. This would also motivate companies to find cheap ways of creating drugs, in order to decrease the cost of their research (just in case some industrial espionage would make their method public).

Lastly, the truth is that research happens as a team effort, an effort of many companies and individuals, not just inside one company. How would you feel to give a patent on controlling the graviton to one company, when the greatest physicians of the world work on this from the beginning of physics?

What motivates people to respect the claims of other people, up to a point?

Cost! A fight between two individuals raises the costs of owning / stealing property. The laws of Life say that people have to minimize costs. Nature is dynamic, humans are rigid.

It is very difficult for people to renounce their own rules and understand that mere respect is all it is required for good interaction. No human law can replace that!

Freedom Q&A

Who enforces contracts in the absence of the state?

Let's say X rapes Y. What can Y do to punish X? In a society with an institutionalized justice system, Y has to use the justice system and prove the rape happened. This can hardly happen. So, where is the justice? There is no Justice! There is only a system which protects criminals from honest people, not the other way around. If there would be no institutionalized justice, Y could simply blow X's head off, without fear that would be punished by the "justice" system.

Honest people have no reason to hurt honest people, but criminals do hurt honest people. Putting institutions to judge who the criminal is, is only a way to stop the honest people from reacting to criminals.

Justice systems are born from the lack of understanding of human interaction, which is based on natural law: voluntary respect or, in its absence, physical enforcement. Respect (or fear of violent physical reaction) for one's claims is what limits violence. Institutionalized justice does not solve problems. Natural law does.

So, the answer to the question is: you! You enforce your contracts. In reality, you would first try to use the services of arbitrators (= people who are specialized in mediating conflicts) and, if unsuccessful, only then use force, probably by hiring someone.

Are states infringing on people's freedom by taxing them and forcing them to do other things?

One way to explain freedom would be to think what would happen a in completely private city. Let's assume a private city in the sky, fully enclosed. People live there for generations. At some point, X is born there but does not like the local laws and is very vocal about that (maybe throws some violence in there). So, X has the freedom to leave but he has no money to actually move in a different city (or back on Earth).

So, is this private city infringing on X's freedom? I say no! The real problem is a matter of context.

Of course, one can say a country does not belong to the state. Okay, but who owns a country? This is the tragedy of the commons: there is no owner.

In fact, the real problem is that people are trapped because they have no money to physically move elsewhere.