Hacker News Reader

Comment by kybernetyk | Hacker News Reader

>you get this staunchly anti-government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP.

Actually most libertarian are strictly against any form of IP and patents. They prefer trade secrets over state regulation.

But then again I don't know if you mean real libertarians or just crypto-statists calling themselves libertarian because they don't know better...

View on HN

Granting that the Venn diagram of "libertarian" and "Objectivist" is a contentious matter, Ayn Rand was very outspoken in her support of copyrights and patents, and one of the plots of the villainous collectivists in Atlas Shrugged was to nationalize all patents.

Ayn Rand was also very outspoken about not being called a Libertarian, she create Objectivism to be separate and apart from Libertarianism, one of the differences between Objectivism and Libertarianism is copyright/patents

That Venn diagram has little to no actual overlap at all.

The objectivists just find it to be to their advantage, these days, to make it appear that they might. The controversy that you suggest is as manufactured as the controversy about anthropomorphic climate change.

I permit others some rope when it comes to labeling themselves. I mean self-labeled libertarians, and it's pretty much all of them that believe completely in IP being literal property to be treated every bit as much, if not more than, real property. Even a couple anarcho-capitalist friend strongly believe in it. They'll all say they don't like the government's involvement, they'll say the Ip owner's insurance company should sure my insurance company if I violate a patent. So it ends up being the same thing in the end.

And I'm aware a sizeable chunk of anarcho-capitalists think IP as a concept is bullcrap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com