I had an interesting exchange with Chris Phoenix of CRN recently.

The context was one that democratic transhumanists seem to be discussing a lot lately, but one that is nowhere near breaching popular consideration in public, or Congress: The idea that since technology is expected to make the means of supporting human life incredibly inexpensive, we ought to consider creating some form of national or global entitlement to the means of living.

Chris was making a very subtle distinction between two ideas: charity or welfare is different from natural resources. While the former retains its basis within property laws, the latter is simply there for the taking, common to all people. It took me a bit to catch his point.

When you take a handout, the social context is one where you are accepting a gift of a scarce resource from it's owner. The resource remains scarce the whole time. A single thing simply shifts from one's property to the property of another. If we're talking about things like intellectual property, for which you are being gifted a license or permission to implement or use something, the fundamental fact that the giver retains his position of "ownership" remains unchanged.

Continued...

More importantly, what we see happen in these situations is the tragedy of addiction and dependency. To belabor the old saw: Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime. Give a man a fish, and he'll be back tomorrow for another. Just make sure the first one is always free. Capitalists are keen to criticize communism for its tendency to foster a helpless dependency in its constituents; but they are more than happy to leverage the same effect so long as it enriches them in a market context.

Compare this, then, with natural resources like water and air, and, in bygone eras, gold and wood. It was common knowledge where such resources could be had if you wanted them; all that was necessary was to extend some effort to harvest it. Natural resources are "un-owned". There is no social status quo to maintain, no gratitude or obligation created by the acquisition, no rights to respect or exercise, nor any contractual obligations to agree to.

Much like the minerals and forests of old, knowledge and information was once just such a natural resource. No one owned it; it was there for the taking. Today however, the powerful in industrial societies have decided that enclosing the intellectual commons would better enrich them, and they are quite correct. As a result, knowledge as natural resource suffers, turning what once might have been a dignified effort to extract self-sustaining value from the work of refining one's environment into an entitlement to another's property, something that market sympathizers and libertarians the world over have decried as repugnant "theft". This is the distinction that I think Chris Phoenix was getting at - although I'm sure he didn't have such a leftist interpretation of it.

Intellectual property is a social convention, and a recent one at that. IP depends on a body of law to enforce it, otherwise, private efforts to enjoin the use of IP would be prohibited by more basic criminal and property laws. IP laws then, are essentially monopolies granted by the democratic state that would not otherwise exist. As technological development becomes ever more critical, these grants serve to hinder public enrichment in favor of private enrichment. That being the case, we should certainly consider reigning in these entitlements to private parties, and start restoring our stockpile of natural knowledge resources, to insure that we do not create a world full of dependents and knowledge addicts.

Comments — Nato Welch 2006/03/11 14:22