AMERICAN LABOR DAY 2025: Why I Work

These quotations are from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, most of them spoken by the story's hero, Howard Roark. 

 “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I am only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition.”  (Plume Edition, 1994. Page 16)

“An open car drove by, fleeing into the country. The car was overfilled with people bound for a picnic. There was a jumble of bright sweaters, and scarf fluttering in the wind; a jumble of voices shrieking without purpose over the roar of the motor, and overstressed hiccoughs of laughter; a girl sat sideways, her legs flung over the side of the car; she wore a man’s straw hat slipping down her nose and she yanked savagely at the strings of a ukulele, ejecting raucous sounds, yelling, “Hey!” These people were enjoying a day of their existence; they were shrieking to the sky their release from work and the burdens of days behind them; they worked and carried burdens in order to reach a goal—and this was the goal. (Plume Edition, 1994. Page 131)

 “… There will be thousands passing by your house and by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and see it—that’s all I need.”

“Then you do need other people, after all, don’t you, Howard?”

“What are you laughing at?”

“I’ve always thought that you were the most anti-social animal I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

“I need people to give me work. I’m not building mausoleums. Do you suppose I should need them in some other way? In a closer more personal way?” (Plume Edition, 1994. Page 158)

DefCon 512 June 2013

“Why are you a good architect? Because you have certain standards of what is good, and they are your own, an d you stand by them. I want a good hotel, and I have certain standards of what is good, and they’re my own, and you’re the one who can give me what I want. I’m doing—on my side of it—just what you’re doing when you design a building. Do you think that integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket? No, it’s not as easy as that. If that were all, I’d say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren’t. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something that one doesn’t borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to chose a symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn’t choose a cross nor an eagle nor a lion and unicorn. I’d choose three gilded balls.” – Kent Lansing. (Plume Ed., 1994. Page 321)

“I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

(Plume Edition, 1994. Page 480)

“From different states, from unexpected parts of the country, calls had come for him: private homes, small office buildings, modest shops. … The story of every commission he received was the same: “I was in New York and I liked the Enright House.” “I saw the Cord Building.” “I saw a picture of the temple they tore down.” It was if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places. They were small, inexpensive jobs—but he was kept working.” (Plume Edition, 1994.  Page 533)

Austin Astronomical Society
13 October 2023

“Three quarters of them don’t know what it’s all about, but they’ve heard the other one-quarter fighting over your name and now they feel they must pronounce it with respect.  Of the fighting quarter, four-tenths are those who hate you, three-tenths are who feel they must have an opinion in any controversy, two-tenths are those who play safe and herald any new ‘discovery,’ and one-tenth are those who understand.” (Plume Edition, 1994. Page 536)

“One cannot collaborate on one’s own job. I can co-operate, if that’s what they call it, with the workers who erect my buildings. But I can’t help them to lay bricks and they can’t help me to design the house.” (Plume Edition, 1994.  Page 569)

American Numismatic Association
Rosemont (Chicago) 2019

“Roark got up, reached out, and tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tenses against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want out of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life. … Your work.” He tossed the branch aside. “The material the earth offers you and what you make of it.” (Plume Edition, 1994.  Page 577)

American Numismatic Association
Chicago Virtual 4 August 2020

“But first, I want you to think and tell me what made me give years to this work. Money? Fame? Charity? Altruism?... You see, I’m never concerned with my clients, only with their architectural requirements. I consider these as part of my building’s theme and problem, as my building’s material—just as I consider bricks and steel. Bricks and steel are not my motive. Neither are the clients. Both are only the means of my work. Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action …”  (Plume Edition, 1994.  Page 604)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS    

Money as a Crusoe Concept. 

Mutiny Aboard the San Antonio 

Recent Astronomical Observing 

Neighborhood Book Kiosks

The first one in my neighborhood appeared in February and I thought that it was unique. I saw another one a bit farther from home. It finally occurred to me that this is a phenomenon. I like it as an example of spontaneous order, an axiom in Austrian economics. Reading on Wikipedia revealed that other people think the same way that I do. And not everyone else is happy with us.  

This is the one in my neighborhood.
It has four sides with two panels of books and it rotates.
(I don't know who owns the easement.)

From The Atlantic

U.S. -- The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit

All over America, people have put small "give one, take one" book exchanges in front of their homes. Then they were told to tear them down.

Conor Friedersdorf

February 20, 2015

Since 2009, when a Wisconsin man built a little, free library to honor his late mother, who loved books, copycats inspired by his example have put thousands of Little Free Libraries all over the U.S. and beyond. ... 

I wish that I was writing merely to extol this trend. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they've taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/little-free-library-crackdown/385531/

 

[Texans are a little more open to letting people do the right thing without permission from the government. Wells Branch is a neighborhood on the north side of Austin. Dell, HP, and others have campuses there.]

 

WBNA | Wells Branch Neighborhood Association

Little Free Library Boxes

Welcome to the Little Free Libraries Summer Scavenger Hunt!

 

Did you know there are currently 14 Little Free Libraries throughout Wells Branch?  LFLs are free book exchanges where anyone can “take a book, return a book.”  Join us in June for a LFL Scavenger Hunt.  You’ll have the opportunity to visit our neighborhood LFLs, find some great (free!) summer reads, and earn a chance to win a Barnes & Noble gift card.

http://wbna.us/community/library-boxes/

 

Posted to Nextdoor dot com serving our wider subdivision

[ I found out that the Little Free Library boxes were not the first of their kind. “Book Crossings” appeared about the turn of the millennium.] 

 

Leaving reading materials in public places when no longer needed has long been a silent means of communication and sociability amongst bibliophiles. Ron Hornbaker conceived the idea for what is now known as BookCrossing in March 2001[2] and enlisted business partners and co-founders Bruce and Heather Pedersen[3] to launch BookCrossing.com on April 21, 2001.[4]

 

After two years the website had over 113,000 members and by 2004 it was prominent enough to be referenced in an episode of the Australian soap opera Neighbours.[5] The same year it appeared as a new word in the Concise Oxford Dictionary,[6] although as of 2017 only Collins of the major online dictionaries retained it as a word.[7][8][9][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookCrossing

 

On a busy backroad I take to the freeway.
It serves walkers well.
(Again, it seems to be on the property owner's
public easement.)

[From Wikipedia] Closely allied with the BookCrossing concept, the original public bookcases were conceived as artistic acts.[1] Very early examples are the creations of performance artist duo Clegg & Guttmann in 1991. Collections of bookcases were conceived as "free open-air libraries" in Darmstadt and Hannover in Germany in the late 1990s.[2]

 

Controversy and criticism[edit]

In 2003, BookCrossing was criticized by the astrologer and novelist Jessica Adams, who claimed that books were being "devalued" by the website as BookCrossing could lead to lower sales of books and, therefore, the reduction in royalties being paid to authors.[20] Most BookCrossers dispute this argument, however. They claim that the website introduces readers to authors and genres that they have not read before, that the website encourages more people to take up or reclaim reading as a hobby, and that some members, having read a book that they have enjoyed, will buy extra copies to distribute through BookCrossing.[21]

 

Another busy side road. 
You have to step up onto the property for this.

In March 2005, Caroline Martin, managing director of the publisher Harper Press, said in a speech that "book publishing as a whole has its very own potential Napster crisis in the growing practice of bookcrossing".[22] BookCrossers rebutted the link to Napster, saying that while music filesharing involves duplicating audio files countless times, BookCrossing doesn't involve duplicating books (and also does not involve violating copyright, as books can be sold or given away freely without permission of the publisher being needed). When BookCrossing was first launched, the founder of BookCrossing, Ron Hornbaker, originally wondered if people would make this comparison.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_bookcase

 

[A related link on Wikipedia]

Give-away shops, freeshops, free stores or swap shops are stores where all goods are free. They are similar to charity shops, with mostly second-hand items—only everything is available at no cost. Whether it is a book, a piece of furniture, a garment or a household item, it is all freely given away, although some operate a one-in, one-out–type policy (swap shops). The free store is a form of constructive direct action that provides a shopping alternative to a monetary framework, allowing people to exchange goods and services outside of a money-based economy.

 

A neighbor told me about a different one.
I found this instead.
(Clearly on the front lawn.) 

[More from following the links in Wikipedia write-ups]

The anarchist 1960s countercultural group the Diggers[1] opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of political art.[2] The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley[3] and sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism.[4] Although free stores have not been uncommon in the United States since the 1960s, the freegan movement has inspired the establishment of more free stores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give-away_shop

 

Also on Necessary Facts

Money as Press and Speech 

Charles Lamb 

Frankenstein, Rayguns, and Bicycles 

Five Books About Books 

Reflections on the Passing of Comrades

Recently, two Objectivist writers passed away: William Parr, and James Kilbourne.  I knew them tangentially, at best. Their passings were noted on Michael Stuart Kelly’s discussion board, Objectivist Living. 

Bill Parr taught statistics at the China European Institute of Business Studies. Mikee (Michael Erickson) found biographical links online and posted them. 

http://www.ceibs.edu/faculty_c/notice/obituary_en.html

http://www.ceibs.edu/faculty/cv/images/20070316/5413.doc

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billparr

On MSK’s OL, I said this: 

So sad... I feel bitter about not knowing that he passed. Just a couple of general reflections on this if I may...   

1.  Bill was teaching statistics at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai and that was really cool. His CV is, indeed, as Mikee said, "impressive": he four-pointed his graduate and post-graduate degrees at SMU, no mean feat. After working at Harris Semiconductor, the University of Tennessee hired him with tenure - hired in 89, tenured from 90 - also an achievement. He had over 50 original papers and a slew of book reviews and et ceteras go along with that.  He had a life of achievement. His death at such an early age is sad, but no one knows how long they have. One Norn spins; one Norn measures; one Norn cuts; even the gods have no control over Fate.   This is not the first time that I wished I had gotten to know someone better before they died. (I lost a manager in an industrial accident...) And that leads to: 

2.  The paradigmatic downside to all this individualism is that lack of social contact.  That is very American.  We are not the only individualist culture in the world. Even Nigeria has them. But I find this in other social spheres as well. Right now, two of my hobbies are numismatics and astronomy, and while they do embrace large populations with attendant varieties of personality, they tend to attract those who do better with empirical concretes and their abstractions, than with they do with actual living people.  

My other hobby is the Texas State Guard here (or here) on my blog. No one is ever left out there alone. Twice in the last three months, I sat with another guardsman who told a personal story. While he and his family dealt with the grief of loss of a parent or a child, the "details" at the funeral home were "taken care of" and not another word was communicated. Someone knew about their situation and someone else responded. No one is ever left alone -- which has a downside, also.
 I do not know where the middle ground is.  Perhaps it must remain Either-Or.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHY1D0tKRA

James Kilbourne had been active on SOLO: Sense of Life Objectivists before it diverged into two sites, SOLO-HQ and RoR: Rebirth of Reason. James was proximally responsible for the split.  He posted an open letter about the owner of SOLO, Lindsay Perrigo, outing him as an alcoholic.  (As the site owner and moderator Perrigo allowed the post, if for no other reason than to open the discussion about his apparent mood swings.) Kilbourne was gay. It is not a surprise (and perhaps a cliché) that he shared several of Linz’s passions, including the performances of Mario Lanza.

With a great deal of sadness, I just read the following on a Facebook post by a person named Stoney Stone. This was posted on James's own Facebook wall.
 

Stone said

RIP James Gregory Kilbourne. News from Jean today that Jim passed away on Wednesday evening...a heart attack. Jim was a major influence on many of my friends and me in our younger years. He made me think. His spirit will live on in our hearts. — with James Gregory Kilbourne.

For those who don't know anything about James, he was one of Barbara Branden's closest friends.
 

Barbara Branden, on 01 Aug 2006 - 9:43 PM, said:

... James Kilbourne, whom I met eleven years ago on a moonlit terrace in Athens, Greece. A boyfriend once told me a fable that I loved, and I had him tell it again and again. The story was that my friends and I had been born and had lived on Rigel, where we had played, carefree and happy, among the stars. One day, God decided that it was time for us to go to Earth and learn its mysteries. He picked us up in His hands and scattered us over the earth – and from then on, each of us searched always for our lost playmates. In James, I knew almost at once that I had found my playmate from the stars.

Michael Stuart Kelly said: 

He also wrote an article on the old SoloHQ that caused a holy turmoil in online O-Land.Drooling BeastThis article was a catalyst that, from one angle, helped OL come into being. Back then, Barbara said good things about the article and Perigo, one of the site's owners and James's target, reacted with malice and hatred toward her that endures until today, even now that she is gone. Soon after, SoloHQ split into Solo Passion, Rebirth of Reason, and Objectivist Living.
 James was gay, for those who might find value in knowing this. He was open about it, but very low-key as an individual. I had the pleasure of meeting him once. Kat and I visited him with Barbara at his house for dinner. He was charming to the extreme. We even got Kat to listen to some opera.  I communicated with James regularly by email for a while, but eventually we drifted apart.  I always had in the back of my mind to look him up and try to dig further into the delight Barbara found in him. I no longer have that opportunity. The longing remains but James and Barbara now belong to memory. I hope there is an afterlife because I would love to see them playing among the stars and join them.Michael

Then I wrote this:

I saw this yesterday, but was blanking out on it. Another loss.  I remember the storm on SOLO, I did not remember that essay being the start. This is his SOLO (RoR) autobiography:

Quote

"Co-founder (1989) of Custom Training Institute (www.CustomTraining.com), a training company that applies the concept of knowledge engineering to solve a company's information technology challenges. We are survivors of the recent tech depression. I am a passionate lover of life, liberty, and great music, particularly symphonies and operas. Politically, I am a Washingtonian classical republican liberal with Jeffersonian leanings. I am a defender of the real victim, the overlooked innocent, and the truly heroic."

  

His articles covered a range, but he clearly shared several interests and perspectives with Lindsay Perigo, which may explain his concern.  James Kilbourne's SOLO (RoR) articles are here:

http://rebirthofreas...uthor_107.shtml

The first friend I lost was Fred Reenstjerna. Not an Objectivist by any stretch, Fred influenced my intellectual development by challenging me in ways that I never expected. I posted a obituary to Rebirth of Reason here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0129.shtml

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Public Good Be Damned 

The Virtues of Aviation Culture 

Not Invented Here 
Gregory M. Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths 

Happy Birthday, Paul

My brother is in the hospital getting a Dacron aorta.  A simple arm strain injury at work led him to discover that we have the same genetic defect: coarctation or stenosis of the aorta and a bicuspid valve.  Mine was corrected by surgery (just the pinch, stretched, not Dacron; and not the valve) in 1956.  Medicine has improved. Certainly people have.  No one ran marathons in 1956; and he has run several.  Lately, however, he could not make three miles, so he says that he should have known…

 

After he started working on this,
and was living in California, Paul took acting lessons. 
After a lifetime on stage, he said the lessons helped.
He performed the work in clubs several times.  
Sketches of Dorian Gray trailer

The sibling rivalry we accepted as normal as children would not be tolerated today.  My being three years older and often 150% of his weight, it just was not fair.  When I went off to college, he had more growing space.  He also signed up for the wrestling team, picked a fight with me, and pinned me in one move.  So, that settled that. 

Episode One

He qualified for Cleveland Public Schools major work (“super normals”) program, which I did not.  Also, he actually practiced the piano, which I did not.  He had the insight to choose the violin while I picked the coronet.  So, he could get over his mistakes quietly, which I could not.  He became a musician. 

"Grey Haired Rats" -- Playing piano in a rock band sucks. I've had just about every kind of electric piano ever made. They all stink. More than once, I've had to play some strange approximation of a piano provided by a stupid promoter. One time the piano was 175 feet from the stage. (No you can't move it). Once the "piano" was actually an organ (Hey, it's got keys, what's the problem?) On top of that, keyboard instruments were ridiculed by just about everyone in our crowd it seemed. Too much like British prog-rock or worse, the Doors. Peter Laughner once told me pianos are OK, sometimes, but the pedals are only for squares.  -- THE STYRENES
 by Paul Marotta, Scat Records liner notes here.

We both held many jobs over the years.  He spent more time selling and less time on trucking docks, but, as Ayn Rand said, all work is an act of philosophy.  Eventually, he made vice president at New World Records, and even got a seat on the board before he was fired.   The Nineties were an interesting time.  We thought they never would end.  But they did, on September 11, 2001.  

Episode Two

Work got hard to find, so in 2005, my wife and I returned to school to complete the four-year degrees we never needed before.  When Paul saw how easy it was for me, he returned to earn a bachelor of arts in literature at Purchase College in the SUNY system.  He needed the vacation from life.  His wife had died far too young from cancer.  He was uncentered.  Time out for school was a good choice. 

He spent some time in California.  Now, he is in Massachusetts.  He has a new significant other - and a new heart.

Episode Three

You can browse for “Paul Marotta”, though like “Mike Marotta” you will find many. We are not dentists.  These YouTube links will help. 

• The Styrenes perform "OneFanzine Reader Writes" on Glasgow TV show The Beat Room in 1998.
•  The Styrenes perform "Drano InYour Veins" and two others at Pirate's Cove, Cleveland, 1979.  (The sound is not good.  The Dancer is easier to follow.)  
• This fan posting of  “Drano in Your Veins” has better fidelity.
• The Styrenes - All The Wrong PeopleAre Dying
• In C By Terry Riley - A 'rock' orchestration by The Styrenes - Part 1
• The Styrenes in Wikipedia here.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

World Peace Through Massive Retaliation: Educating the Gifted and Talented in Cleveland, Ohio

Where All the Children are Above Average

Nerd Nation 4.5

The First Dagny

Labor Day Celebrates Productivity

“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live—that productive work is the process by which man controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit man’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth into the image of one’s values—that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind…--that your work is yours to choose, that your choice is as wide as your mind…” – Ayn Rand, “Galt’s Speech”

Before the industrial era of capitalism, social celebrations were an escape from labor.  In the 19^th century, workers in Europe took the traditional first day of summer, May 1, for themselves.  But in America everything is new and labor unions in New York City took the first Monday in September for their celebration in 1883. President Grover Cleveland declared the first national Labor Day holiday in 1887.  Apparently, he acted in reaction to the Europeans and communists, and in fear of May Day, but the impetus came from the labor unions of New York City.  Furthermore in those four years, 30 states, starting with Oregon, already recognized the day.  Labor Day was a spontaneous American celebration in honor of productive labor, not class war. After all, in America, workers could become capitalists.

Jeff Yagher as Jeff Allen in Atlas Shrugged Part II

Typically the American Labor Day is a family event, the last weekend of the summer for swimming, picnicking, or vacationing.  Just as Thanksgiving is for celebrating our productivity with a bountiful family meal, Labor Day is our enjoyment of the leisure we bought with our purposeful, marketable efforts.  And it is a day, not of sloth and idleness, a surcease from drudgery, but a day of activities, of plans carried out.  It is a bit ironic that after the busy holiday we find actual paid employment a welcome relief.

In 1972, Edwin Newman interviewed Ayn Rand for his show “Speaking Freely” on NBC-TV. Among other statements, Ayn Rand said: “I am not an enemy of labor unions. Quite the contrary. I think that they are the only decent group today, ideologically. I think they are the ones who will save this country, and save capitalism, if anybody can.”  She went on to say: “But the one flaw is that labor unions are government-enforced and become a monopoly and can demand higher wages than the market can offer. This union power creates the unemployable. It creates this vast group of people, the unskilled laborers who have no place to go for work. The artificial boosting of the skilled laborer’s income causes unemployment on the lower rungs of society. Every welfare measure works that way. It doesn’t affect the so-called rich, if that the humanitarians are worried about it, always affects the poor.”

A few minutes earlier, on the same show, speaking of the proper role of government, she said: 

“But on the matter of protecting people from physical danger, if certain conditions of employment, let us say, are unsafe and it can be proved that there is a physical risk – I don’t say that we have to wait until somebody dies – then the employer who is creating this risk can be sued, and can be severely punished financially. In other words, there can be a law protecting a man from physical injury by another man. In this case, the employer who puts men into conditions of danger – not accidentally, but intentionally or carelessly – can be penalized because he is infringing the right of his workers not to be injured physically.”  

The entire interview and many others are collected in the anthology Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz (Lexington Books, 2009).

Usually, she rode free: her pins for the Commercial Telegraphers Union of American and the Order of Railroad Telegraphers were her pass.  They were different lines of work.  Railroads were 20 years slow in figuring out that they could manage and control trains with the only thing that traveled faster.  In addition, commodities brokers, hotels, banks, and many other enterprises also needed telegraphers.  Mattie Kuhn worked for both.  So, she belonged to both unions. Ma Kiley: Railroad Telegrapher by Thomas C. Jepsen, reviewed on Necessary Facts 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

Shrugging the Stigma of Success

Autobiography of a Worker

Engines of Creation

The Pretense of Sociology

PATENT NONSENSE: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND NON-OBJECTIVE LAW

US patent law changed for the worse with the Leahy-Smith "America Invents Act" (September 16, 2011) which became effective March 13, 2013. America went from "first to invent" to "first to file."  Bad as that will be, it is not the only problem with US intellectual property law, which never had a correct and consistent philosophical foundation.

Despite myths to the contrary,  Alexander Graham Bell did not race Elisha Gray to the Patent Office to win by an hour.  In 1876 (and until the AIA of 2011), the Patent and Trademark Office awarded the patent to the first to invent.  Also, back then a working model was not required. (That had been changed in 1870.)  A working prototype or demonstration model is helpful, but not necessary. Even before the AIA of 2011, the USPTO granted patents to software. The first was awarded on April 28, 1968, to Marty Goetz for a sorting algorithm.  (See the Computerworld story here.)

The essential difficulty is that mathematical ideas are not patentable. The law assumes that mathematics exists to be discovered: no one invents it.   An element of the original patent to Goetz was that software could be built in (burned in; programmed in) to a solid state integrated circuit ("chip"). So, it would be an essential contradiction to claim that the arrangements of gates on on integrated circuit is not patentable.

If you have an idea for a new kind of door latch, you can draw out the design and be awarded a patent. You can take that engineering drawing ("blueprint") to a machinist who will make one, even to your specifications for materials and colors.  The engineering drawing is acceptable as evidence of a new invention.  

Now consider these:

 "The Klein Bottle as an Eggbeater" by Richard L. W. Brown

Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 5 (Nov., 1973), pp. 244-250 

Brown, ibid.

What those describe is a Klein Bottle, one of these:

Earrings and more for sale

at Klein Bottle Dot Com

http://www.kleinbottle.com/tiny_klein.html

Fallopian Klein Bottle

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/

object_images/535x535/10328086.jpg

It is real, but it does call to
"And He Built a Crooked House"
by Robert Heinlein, about a tesseract, though.

The Klein Bottle was a mathematical idea, a demonstration in topology, which, by the assumptions of US Patent Law, existed for Euclid and Pythagoras, even existed from the Creation for anyone to discover, and no one to invent.  But clearly, no such thing existed until it was conceptualized, defined, described, and ultimately built.  So, should the Klein Bottle (and Moebius Strip) be patentable or not?

The physical Klein Bottle or Moebius Strip is not mathematically different from other descriptions as equations or maps. Consider the famous Pythagorean Theorem.  A drawing from a Euclidean geometry book is no more or less real than an algebraic statement from Cartesian geometry. The ancient Egyptians knew that if you make a triangle out of rope - 3 cubits 4 cubits 5 cubits - you will have a right angle, which will enable you to redraw your property lines after the Nile recedes.  Thus, a knotted rope 3-4-5 would be a "patentable device" when in fact, it is only a restatement of a mathematical theorem. 

Now, we protect that kind of invention (or discovery) through copyright.  The US joined most of the rest of the world in 1989 when one of President Reagan's final acts was signing the law joining the Berne Convention.  The author automatically owns the copyright. You do not need to file for  copyright in the United States.  (It is still recommended by the Copyright Office, of course.)  Perhaps even stronger is first publication.  Publication of an original idea in a peer-reviewed academic journal established your claim to precedence.  Today, when academic researchers are charged with fraud, perhaps the most common crime is to simply search and sort for articles in obscure journals, and put your name on one, and send it to another obscure journal, and claim the publication in your curriculum vitae. The serious crime is academic fraud, not copyright violation - though that does remain.

Analogous rights are attached to fashion trademarks.  You can steal Donna Karan's designs; do not attempt to copy the DKNY label.  (See Johanna Blakely's famous TED Talk on innovation and intellectual property in the fashion industry.)  

The reason for these knots - knots are also a serious problem set in topology - is that we have no objective basis for understanding and instantiating intellectual property.  Our ideas on property are rooted in medieval laws about land. Two people cannot stand in the same place at the same time.  Land cannot be replicated. Anything that is non-rival and non-exclusive is considered a "public good". A beautiful sunset - or even a murky one - is an example. That simply will not do.  Granting a government monopoly was the best idea from the Middle Ages. The city of Venice had the first intellectual property patent laws in 1474. Several of our American colonies began as "patents" from the Crown.  We never got beyond that.  

Make Your Own Paper Klein Bottle

http://sciencevspseudoscience.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/klein_bottle.jpg

I have been arguing these problems with an Objectivist comrade, patent attorney Dale Halling, on the Galt's Gulch Online discussion board of the Atlas Shrugged movie producers.  His claims here (actually posted by his wife): The Myth that Patents are Monopolies.  My reply here: Patents Redux Again

Halling asserts John Locke's theory that property is that with which you mix your labor.  My response is that breaking into my house requires work but does not grant title to my property.  On the contrary, digging a hole and filling it up is hard work which creates no property.  Halling claims that a mathematical algorithm is not objective, not repeatable, and has no material existence.  Software, he says, meets all of those criteria: software is real. However, the Klein Bottle and Moebius Strip prove that mathematical expressions are substantial. 

In fact, even more than Marty Goetz's sorting algorithm, the RSA Cryptosystem is a perfect example of a mathematical idea, instantiated as a computer program, which has very real value.  The mathematics of the totient function came from Leonard Euler.  Supposedly, it existed for Pythagoras, Euclid, and God.  But it took three geniuses from MIT to make it real. The problem is that Phil Zimmerman thought that everyone should have one.  So, he took the same mathematics from Euler and wrote it up as a new computer program and distributed his "PGP:Pretty Good Privacy" for free. (Read one of very many stories here.)

That hit another legal barrier: the US government considers cryptography to be a weapon of war; you are not allowed to export it without a license; but the Internet is global, as the communist gerontocracy of People's Republic of China is constantly reminded.  Once you put something online, it goes everywhere.

==> "How Amazon Got a Patent on White Background Photography" from Ars Technica here. 

That is not the first time that mathematics was sequestered.  In the 18th century, Gaspard Monge's Descriptive Geometry was declared a military secret. Those examples clearly deny the USPTO's claim that mathematics exists for everyone to discover and no one to invent. 

U.S. patent law does not allow independent discovery.  For that, Newton and Leibniz, Bell and Gray, and Srinivasa Ramanujan simply do not exist.  Well, they do exist, but they have no right to their discoveries and inventions.  According to Halling (and Ayn Rand) that is objective justice.  I must demur.  But I do not know how to solve the problem.  Is it true that simply copying that which exists because someone else created it is the labor of a burglar? Is the problem the easy word "simply"? Is copying really hard enough that it qualifies as new labor?  Does anyone really slavishly copy with no input of originality?  

In his Constitution of Government for Galt's Gulch, (reviewed here on NecessaryFacts) jurist Wolf Devoon looks to equity and common law for justice. He expects that in any suit, either or both parties will make novel claims, otherwise the matter would not have come to court.  Perhaps like entrepreneurship, justice is ineffable: it must be learned, because it cannot be taught.  To best serve a commercial society, a truly bourgeois culture of production and trade, the best courts would be successful marketers of justice.  The suggestion is not original with me.

Errol Flynn as Robin Hood
action figure created by
Kingley-Wallis

I believe that we do need intellectual property recognized by law. If the moral case were not enough, the practical consequences are irrefutable.  The classic argument comes from The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando De Soto. Bright ideas that benefit a home, farm, or village burn out for lack of capital to fuel them because the poor have no property rights. That is why they are poor. The consequences are manifold (another mathematical concept). The government's own electrical power utility cannot borrow capital to maintain or expand because the poor steal electricity. It is not the mere tapping of current, but the fact that the users have no legal addresses.  Here in America your home will be a good asset for your power company for the next 30 years no matter who lives there because your home address has legal reality. You have a right to the property; when you buy power, you lease that value. 

That said, I seek to avoid reversing cause and effect, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. President Obama, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and others of the "you did not build that" gang claim that entrepreneurs use public roads and other public infrastructure which we the people provided.  Of course, those entrepreneurs also paid up front long before they went into business.

However, the salient point - as any Austrian economist will prove for you - is that each mile of pavement made us all poorer.  It is a testament to entrepreneurship not that they made good use of the highways, but that they succeeded at all despite the desertification of the economy by public works.  The "benefit" of public works are a "broken window" fallacy.

It may be a similar fallacy to claim that our IP laws brought prosperity.  They may only be to jurisprudence what public roads are to transportation.  It may be true that having patents and IP law are important to prosperity.  It may be more important that we have the right laws, not just something left over from the Middle Ages.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Objective Intellectual Property Law

Open Secrets

Hacking

Knowledge Maps

The Code Book