How many times have we heard leftists agonize over the gap between the rich and the

poor? It is commonplace for the free market to be attacked on the grounds of haves and have-nots, over unequal distribution of the pie, where the richest 1% control a fifth of the worlds resources whereas the poor receive the pie crumbs. The basis of this argument is the idea of scarcity, which views property as a static entity to be assembled, disassembled, rearranged, distributed, redistributed, etc. Property is not a scarce or limited entity whose value is determined by the subjective whims of others, but rather a creation of mans mind in accordance with the objective requirements of the flourishing of human life. In my brief study of economics according to Karl Marx, I learned of the Labor Theory of Value, the theory that all of a goods value comes from the physical labor that was put into it. The implication of this theory is insidious: managers, financiers, entrepreneurs, and even inventors profit unjustly from the creation of goods and services under capitalism. According to this theory, the only value created is when a worker physically acts upon the good. This theory leaves no consideration for the immense intellectual achievement of the entrepreneur, who discerned from innumerable variables that the creation of a new factory creating a certain good is economically justified; the financier, who scrimped and saved to acquire capital, and then risked a fortune built over a lifetime in order to bring the entrepreneurs idea into reality; the managers, who trained and supervised employees so that their individual actions would be able to be summed up into a company that creates more value than it consumes in the process of production; the inventor, whose productive genius made the entire division of labor in the production of the goods possible in the first place. I am saddened that Karl Marx is joined by certain factions of libertarians, including some in the Austrian school of economics, in the denial of value creation by the inventor. I urge the deniers of the validity of Intellectual property to think deeply about what exactly rights are, and where they come from. It is not by economic analysis that we will resolve the issue of Intellectual Property, but rather by philosophical inquiry. Let us put aside the concept of property rights for a moment and turn to the more basic concept of rights. Ayn Rand defines rights in her essay Mans Rights: A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a mans freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a mans right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated actionwhich means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) The right to life is the source of all rightsand the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. Rands definition lays out the basis of property rights: the moral defense of the use of a value. The definition of a value, defined by Rand, is something that we act in order to gain or to keep. A tree, for example, grows leaves in order to make use of sunlight, as sunlight is something that objectively benefits the tree. The sunlight is valued by the tree, as it acts in order to gain or to keep this value. The tree does not grow leaves in order to satisfy a whim that has determined sunlight has value, but acts according to the objective science of biology. Just as some things objectively benefit trees, some objectively benefit animals and humans, and are valued accordingly. But man is a rational animal and must identify the raw materials he needs to create a value, change them according to an intellectual process into the value, and use the value in a way that is rational for the purpose of sustaining and advancing his life. In this way all property fundamentally is intellectual property, as he has no instinct to tell him which berries will sustain him and which will poison him, which entity is a value and which is not, or even how to use a value when he attains it. Armed with this knowledge, we can properly tell the fool who proclaims inequality of wealth as a great evil that wealth, property, and value are all ultimately rooted in and created by the human mind. Since values are created, there naturally is no inherent conflict concerning property among rational, rights respecting individuals. Some libertarians argue that Intellectual Property is an assault on property itself. To use the concept of property rights to deny the existence of intellectual property is to commit what Rand calls concept stealing; that is, to take a concept further up the conceptual hierarchy and use it to deny the existence of a more fundamental concept upon which the concept used in the denial depends. For example, a Socialist may claim that all property is theft, but the entire concept of theft depends on property! One cannot use the concept of theft to deny the concept of property. Let us turn our attention to the Scarcity Theory of Property, as explained by libertarian legal theorist and concept stealer Stephan Kinsella in his essay Against Intellectual Property: Why are tangible goods property? A little reflection will show that it is these goods scarcitythe fact that there can be conflict over these goods by multiple human actors. The very possibility of conflict over a resource renders it scarce, giving rise to the need for ethical rules to govern its use. Thus, the fundamental social and ethical function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources. This theory does not explain who should have the property rights to a good. The theory does not account for who created the value, so how could it? Recognizing that two farmers cannot plow the same land does not explain who has the right to plow when there is a conflict between two farmers over the land.

There is no need to come up with new concepts when a robber claims the right to use your property. To create property rights in response to conflict over values is to create property rights too late. If property and property rights do not predate the looter using force to extort values, then only one party has a legitimate claim on use of the values: the armed man, as only he can enforce his claim, and property rights are futile if they are unenforceable. Bearing in mind that value is created, and that each individual has a right to values he creates, there is only one response to the conflict created when one claims the right to anothers property: enforcement of property rights, by force if necessary. Do not think the Scarcity Theory of Property is a concept compatible with what we have come to know as Capitalism, as this Might is Right implication of scarcity is continually cashed in upon by every Statist who claims that the Government has the right to tax, regulate, nationalize, etc., as the Government is the biggest conglomerate of armed men in a region, and in any conflict between the State and the lone individual over values, the State is destined to win. To say that rights come in response to conflict is to hand over the most important defense capitalists have against the coercive power of the State: the moral defense. As explained previously, we can individually produce values as we see fit. The hysterical Malthusians who seize up in terror as the world population hits the unsustainable numbers of 1 million, 100 million, 1 billion, and now 7 billion, have had every single one of their theories concerning the scarcity of resources proven wrong. It was the Malthusians who originally viewed resources as static and scarce, and thus predicted catastrophe. The reason why they are continually wrong is because values are created from practically infinite raw resources, and there is no practical limit to what we create. Later in his essay, Kinsella comments on another implication of the Scarcity Theory. Were we in a Garden of Eden where land and other goods were infinitely abundant, there would be no scarcity and, therefore, no need for property rules; property concepts would be meaningless. It is here that the contradiction that is the Scarcity Theory of Property self-destructs. Values are unlimited, but this fact does not mean the demise of property concepts, only Kinsellas concept of property based on scarcity. In the creation of a new value, the inventor has an exclusive right to that which he created. He does not have exclusive control over scientific principles or other facts of reality as he did not create them. He has the exclusive right to use the material end product as he sees fit, as it is the material value that he created. To duplicate patented machinery, copyrighted literature, or other examples of Intellectual Property without the consent of the creator is to use a value that you have no right to use. To deny the immorality of this action is to imply that the value created when one duplicates an invention only has value due to your action of duplication and no other. The difference in value creation between unauthorized duplication and creating an original is the value stolen, and to deny that it is easier to duplicate a book than to write one is to deny a fact of reality.

I have now finished explaining a brief overview of the philosophical basis for intellectual property, and refuted a common philosophical argument against it. The economic and utilitarian benefits of intellectual property are readily apparent to users of medicine, readers of literature, and other values protected by IP in law. However, I will not use them for justification purposes. One does not need to economically justify himself in defending his right not to be murdered by the State or any common thug. Economics may be useful in explaining the benefits of property rights to an unphilisophical individual, but the social science itself has no justifications to offer.

Regardless of whether I have convinced you on the subject of Intellectual Property, I ask you to beware anyone who speaks of balancing rights with the public welfare, greater good, or any other undefinable absurdity. Even if such concepts as public welfare could be objectively determined, it could never be used to justify the murder of an innocent individual, or any infringement upon his rights. This rhetoric has been used by petty tyrants to justify innumerable incidents of genocide, murder, rape, theft, and every other conceivable method of coercion. Even if an inventor with unparalleled productive genius produced a motor that could power the world with limitless, marginally free energy, decided not to allow its duplication, no amount of legitimate need or democratic votes could strip away the moral authority concerning the use of the value from its owner. If man does not own the product of his mind then how can it be said that he owns anything at all? If IP is not recognized by the State, all property rights will surely follow. In a society such as a collectivist tribe where no rights are recognized, one would not need patents and copyrights to protect against unauthorized duplication. What value could the combustible engine possibly have to a group of savages who rely solely on force in social relationships? The reason why an engine has no value to the violent tribal chieftain is not subjective, it is because his mind does not conceive of its use in the context of benefiting human life. Values are identified, created, and used by the human mind, and the individual must have a right to dispose of his values as he alone sees fit. Recognizing this fact and integrating it into ones philosophy properly is to recognize intellectual property.