libertarianism
About us
An open, user owned community for the general disscussion of the libertarian philosophy.
- Libertarianism is the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.
- Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property.
- In the libertarian view, voluntary agreement is the gold standard of human relationships.
- If there is no good reason to forbid something (a good reason being that it violates the rights of others), it should be allowed.
- Force should be reserved for prohibiting or punishing those who themselves use force.
Most people live their own lives by that code of ethics. Libertarians believe that that code should be applied consistently, even to the actions of governments, which should be restricted to protecting people from violations of their rights. Governments should not use their powers to censor speech, conscript the young, prohibit voluntary exchanges, steal or “redistribute” property, or interfere in the lives of individuals who are otherwise minding their own business.
Source: https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/what-is-libertarianism
Rules
1. Stay on topic
We are a libertarian community. There are no restrictions regarding different stances on the political spectrum, but all posts should be related to the philosophy of libertarianism.
2. Be polite to others and respects each others opinions.
Be polite to others and respects each others opinions. We don't want any form of gatekeeping or circlejerk culture here.
3. Stay constructive and informational
In general, all types of contributions are allowed, but the relevance to this community must always be evident and presented openly by the contributor. Posts that do not meet these requirements will be removed after a public warning. Also remember to cite you sources!
4. Use self-moderation measures first before reporting.
This community is fundamentally built upon freedom of speech. Since everyone understands libertarianism differently and we do not want to exclude any kind of content a priori, we appeal to the individual users to block/mute posts or users who do not meet their requirements. Please bear this in mind when filing a report
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That is the sole right of the creator/author to determine. Many creators do stipulate in their wills that upon their death, all their works go into the public domain. Others leave it to their descendants to profit from. But the point is, it's the right of the owner to do with it what they will, just as it's your right as a homeowner to decide what happens to your house/property when you die.
The only place I can see room for looser IP laws is in the medical domain, so that important live saving medicines aren't locked away behind patents and price gouging. However, I also fully understand why there are strong patents in medicine: because drug research is incredibly expensive and time consuming, and there needs to be an incentive to do it by private companies, and patents create that incentive because they know if they find some wonder drug, they can recoup their research costs and make a profit too. If there was no IP protection in medicine, then there would be no incentive for private companies to do it, so the government would have to do it all (maybe that is a better system overall, not sure).
Like I said before, IP laws could definitely do with some serious revision to bring them up to date for the 21st century, and remove things like patent trolling, but in my opinion, it's ludicrous to say we should do away with them entirely and live in some kind of IP-less society.