Part of this stems from intellectual property laws, which are more or less a legal fiction invented by the government, and are not an inherent property of a free market.
I suggest you explain how you buy a tractor on your hypothetical free market, and explain how that hypothetical free market would solve the problem that this legislation solves.
Off-topic: Most any market is a legal fiction invented by the government. Some markets are even designed by teams of economists to reduce overheads by designing the rules of the market - say electricity markets.
The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones.
You bring up "free market" all the time, yet it is an incredibly vague concept. Do you have a link that defines exactly what you mean by the term? Ideally a blogpost written by you.
Generally I feel when you invoke the words "free market" you are just calling for a beneficient perfect god to fix whatever fault you have identified.
I am all for reducing unnecessary regulations and unnecessary government overhead. However much regulation and government overhead provides necessary things that I can't buy/negotiate as an individual.
Not really. A free market is one where people make trades based on negotiation rather that coercion. Property rights are enforced, contract agreements are enforced, and using force or fraud in the negotiations is not allowed.
This is the usual definition of a free market.
I understand that free markets are a chaotic system, which leaves a lot of people very uncomfortable. I also understand that free markets are not an easy thing to understand.
> The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones.
A war zone fits none of the definition I provided. So does slavery and selling poison to babies, other things people claim are "free market".
Intellectual property laws include trademarks. Trademarks reduce fraud and help prevent selling poison to babies.
Q1: Where do trademarks fit into your definition of a free market?
The topic is buying tractors that can be fixed without using the vendor's service agents.
Q2: How does coercion apply in the situation of buying a tractor from John Deere? (I.e. what part of buying a John Deere tractor is not a free market negotiation in your definition).
Copyright is a property right. All property rights are abstract definitions that don't exist outside our minds (e.g. I have one dollar in a bank account).
Q3: Where does copyright fit into your definition of a free market?
PS: I strongly disagree that there is any consensus about how a "free market" is defined. Maybe provide a link to a place that you agree with the definition, preferably defined in high detail.
In software we all see the abuses of copyright and patents, so I can understand why you rail against them.
You have again used the term "legal fiction" which I translate to "a law you don't like". What is a legal non-fiction? Our laws are rules. All rules ultimately only exist in our minds except rules (or sub-dependencies) imposed upon us by a god or the universe.
> Trying to control your use of [a John Deere tractor] after the sale by abusing IP law.
That control doesn't require any IP law at all: DRM can be equivalently enforced by private contracts and/or a secret that is too difficult to reverse engineer (recent gaming consoles). John Deere can negotiate a private contract with you that you must use their parts and service agents. Surely that is a likely outcome of a properly free market?
> Property rights (like the rights to life and liberty) are inalienable.
I think that statement is too vague to have any real meaning. Inalienable just means something like "very important rule" or perhaps "meta-rule". Property rights includes intellectual property rights (its all just rules).
Your rights to life and liberty sometimes conflict with my rights to life and liberty. Laws and wars can result from compromise and conflict.
Thank you for explaining your position better. I admit I am struggling to see internal consistency with your definitions. I guess I am mostly responding to you because I tend to read your comments as short political soundbites, and I prefer more comments with deeper explanations of any point someone is trying to make. I sincerely appreciate your time in giving me more detail.
I actually expect we are mostly in broad agreement.
Perhaps I would tend to give inaliable rights a higher priority than you? Rights to property, life and liberty need to be encoded in the legal constraints that restrict free markets in unobvious ways. Adding fair legal constraints is tortuous. Even more difficult is avoiding regulatory capture and other tricks that work against our inaliable rights, or give unfair advantages to some groups or individuals.
Compromises are grey. Good engineering is making good compromises. Good lawmaking is equally about making compromises, but is much harder than engineering because the outcomes are more abstract, the measurements are harder, and there is more historical and political baggage.
> Rights to property, life and liberty need to be encoded in the legal constraints that restrict free markets in unobvious ways.
These rights are not restrictions on the free market. They are fundamental to the free market.
> Your rights to life and liberty sometimes conflict with my rights to life and liberty.
They don't. Your right to life, for example, does not require me to give you food. It means I cannot take your life. Your right to liberty means I cannot enslave you. There is no right to enslave another, regardless of what the law says.
When I say "legal fiction" I mean writing laws that attempt to change reality. For example, a law that says π == 3 is a legal fiction. Your rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not a legal fiction. The government frequently tries to create new "rights" that are not rights at all.
Put another way, the government enforces rights, or abrogates them. It cannot invent them.
Inalienable means it's an inherent property of being a human being. I.e. people still have a right to liberty, even if the government says it's ok to enslave them.
Evidence? Communism tries to deny the right to property. The result is communist countries cannot even feed themselves. Slavery tries to deny the right to liberty. The result is a also poorly performing economy. Countries that guarantee the rights to life, liberty, and property thrive.
One can sign a contract that enslaves you, but it is unenforceable in a free society. John Deere sells you a tractor but retains the "right" to remotely disable it? I'd say that would be unenforceable as they sold it to you, meaning it's yours to do with it as you please.
If they wanted to rent it to you, it should be a rental agreement, not a sales agreement.
