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Comment by obirunda | Hacker News Reader

Monopolies form easily? That's funny, you should try and start one, seems quite profitable.

Seriously though, this is an oft repeated fallacy, and frankly irrelevant to the discussion.

IP laws are the actual culprit in facilitating the apparatus of the state for the creation of monopolies. Most people seem to embrace this double-think that IP laws are good while monopolies are bad. You simply don't get monopolies without IP laws. IP laws are the ultimate king maker and exclusively exist to perpetuate profits of the IP owner.

If your proposition of regulation is to disband the patent offices and repeal the copyright act, my sincere apologies.

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Getting rich is easy. You just need rich parents.

Two things can be true at the same time.

The truth is, if you are in the position to make the step towards becoming a monopolist especially in a new market it is not impossible to do so (and by the rules it should be).

Getting to that position isn't easy tho.

But from a consumer standpoint the only thing that matters is if you have monopolists or not — we don't care how hard it was for them to become one other than it might change the number of monopolists that force their crop down our throats.

Without imaginary property, AMD would have signed a similar contract - they would rather focus on their own products rather than reverse engineering the HDMI standards to create their own implementation. At which point AMD would be in the same position, unable to reverse engineer HDMI or adopt solutions from other companies who did.

Imaginary property laws most certainly encourage and facilitate monopolies and collusion, but they are not necessary to the dynamic. Such laws are essentially just the norms of business that companies would be insisting on from other businesses anyway, for which it's much more lucrative to assent and go along with rather than attempt to defect and go against them.

Another example of this effect is the DMCA - the tech giants aren't merely following its process verbatim, but rather have used it as basis for their own takedown processes with electively expanded scope - eg why we see takedown notices pertaining to "circumvention" code, or the complete unaccountability of Content ID. Google and Microsoft aren't significantly hurting themselves by extralegally shutting down a tiny contingent of their customers, meanwhile the goodwill they garner from other corporations (and possible legal expenses they save) is immense. The loser is of course individual freedom.

If only the free market was even more free, all our problems would be solved!

The invisible hand of the free market will come and fix all the things! /s

If you talk to people who still subscribe to that notion, it quickly becomes clear that they value their miniscule chance to win the capitalist lottery more than the wellbeing of the many — the idea that markets balance everything to the advantage of everybody then seems to be just an excuse to be egoistic and without any care for others.

Don't get me wrong, nobody has to care for others and I am not going to be the person to force you, but if you don't care about others please stop pretending you are doing it for the greater good.

You're conflating several schools of thought. Utilitarianism, which appears to be your basis for defining ethical behavior, underlies this reasoning behind compulsory government action.

This line of thinking is often repeated in election cycles and mindless online discussions, with mantras like "We justify doing something heinous because it serves 'American Interests'" or "We'll coercively tax one group and redistribute funds to another because they'll do something dubiously for the 'greater good'".

However, Utilitarianism is not a foundational principle of libertarian ideology. In fact, libertarianism often refutes and rejects it as applied to governments. It doesn't prioritize egalitarianism or rely on public opinion when defining citizens' rights.

The argument for a free market unencumbered by protectionist policies isn't about the greater good; rather, it's an argument for an ethical government grounded in first principles.

The "greater good" argument tends to crumble under close examination and logical scrutiny. Its claims on reason collapse as soon as you scrutinize them more deeply.

Notably, Utilitarianism has been the basis for nearly all modern-day dictatorships, which rely on a monopoly of violence to enforce the "greater good".

It's possible to support free markets while still caring for others – this is called altruism. It's similar to utilitarianism but without coercion and fallacies.

I studied philosophy and ethics so you can safely assume I know my definitions. But that does not matter, as you apparently failed to read what I wrote.

Could you please paraphrase my "greater good argument" that crumbles under close examination? A examination you somehow failed to provide? Maybe you hoped people are too impressed by you use of words to recognize that you even failed to provide an argument against an strawman you created?

No offense, but the way you write makes you sound like a 15 year old teenager that figured out using smart words makes you sound smart, without any deeper understanding of or regard for the concepts at hand or the arguments made. If you want to show some argument is wrong you can't just simply claim it is, you need to demonstrate it - ideally using the very logic and examination, you seem to so highly value.

My original post was intended to clarify why I believe Libertarian ideology is distinct from and incompatible with Utilitarianism, particularly since in your response, you conflated the concept of the greater good as a core principle of Libertarian ideology. This is quite surprising given your claim to have "studied philosophy and ethics".

To address this misunderstanding, let me break down the logical fallacies I alluded to earlier:

- The "tyranny of the majority" problem: Since happiness is determined by the number of individuals, a simple majority can impose its will on the minority, potentially denying them their rights or freedoms.

- The "moral arithmetic" fallacy: This assumes that individual well-being can be measured and added up like numbers in an equation, ignoring the complexities of human experience and the difficulties of making such calculations.

- The "majority rules" fallacy: This implies that whatever the majority wants is automatically just or right, without considering the potential for mob rule, manipulation, or coercion.

- The "ignore individual rights" fallacy: By prioritizing the greater good over individual interests, Utilitarianism may lead to the trampling of human rights and dignity.

No offense, but it's worth noting that a more nuanced understanding of philosophy and ethics might be beneficial for more accurate representations of complex concepts.

Again: explain which argument about the greater good I supposedly made.

Ideally before you go off on a totally unrelated tangent again. Not trying to be mean here, but if you want others to understand why I am wrong a good start is to explain what my argument was.

Because it certainly wasn't: "conflating the concept of the greater good as a core principle of Libertarian ideology". But maybe to the reader your amount of projection onto my very simple statement is in itself telling.

"the idea that markets balance everything to the advantage of everybody then seems to be just an excuse to be egoistic and without any care for others."

There are two problems here: 1. You misstate and mischaracterize free-market ideology as having the pretense of being to the "advantage of everybody". It's potentially a byproduct but definitely not a first principle. 2. You cast a judgment of value on egotism and selfishness as being the true motivators behind free market proponents. Selfishness and egotism are human characteristics expressed across all ideological spectrums.

"Don't get me wrong, nobody has to care for others and I am not going to be the person to force you, but if you don't care about others please stop pretending you are doing it for the greater good." - Here is where you conflate utilitarian with libertarian ideology, especially as you label those who disagree with your view as pretenders and posers for the greater good, again misstating the position of your ideological opponent and then proceeding to cast a judgment of value on the positions they don't actually hold.

Not trying to be mean here, but have you thought about getting some reading comprehension lessons? It could really help you understand the things that you read as well as give you a more well rounded view things.

Haha. By the nonexistent gods.

Have you ever considered I was talking about specific individuals that muttered those things towards me instead of reading everything I did as a paragraph from a political reader? I have no close relationship with Libertarianslism, as where I come from it is not very wide spread as a political ideology and more of a curiosity that gets mentioned at the fringes.

So what I criticized here are the things people told me in online discussions as a defense for why the system we have is okay. I did not ask them which ideology they subscribe to, but I am pretty sure that was not some pure text book form of Libertarian ideology. So I am still curious how my criticism of an observed phenomenon made you jump directly in defense of Libertarian ideology, that I neither thought about nor mentioned.

Additionally: I can start to understand what you're talking about once you start at the beginning instead of diving straight into some sort of convoluted US-internal political debate. Rephrasing what you thought the other person said and why precisely it is wrong is a good habit to keep before writing hundreds of lines attacking them on what you think they said.

Ok. This is even worse. You shouldn't use your misunderstandings from previous discussions with other people and make generalizations with everybody else you meet on new discussions, especially if you are using an incendiary tone.

I will defend utilitarianism, since I like it a lot and all your arguments against it are bad.

- The "tyranny of the majority" problem is a problem of direct democracy, not utilitarianism. Happiness in utilitarianism is determined not by a number of individuals, but by all individuals and perfect utility function must take into account both majorities and minorities and create consensus. This will only fail if majority and minority have directly opposed interests, but in this case overall good is still better this way (you don't want to deny majority people their rights too in favor for minorities).

- The "majority rules" fallacy is a problem of democracy overall. Every democracy system is vulnerable to this, not only utilitarianism. But then again, perfect utility function should take into account people's desire to not be fooled, so there's that.

- The "ignore individual rights" fallacy is the same as "tyranny of the majority". Utility function takes into account interests of all individuals and tries to create the best possible consensus.

- The "moral arithmetic" fallacy is the best one here, since it's actually close to the truth. You can't really create a perfect utility function, but you don't need to. You can create imperfect one and improve it later with feedback and democracy mechanisms. With time imperfect utility function will get closer and closer to perfect one. Profit maximizing utility function can't be calculated too, but corporations handle it just fine. But if you're not blind, you can see that profit maximizing utility function leads to a lot of real people suffering (climate change, wars, hunger, poverty and many many more) while leading to profit maximization (alignment problem).

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