Wrong; because collecting taxes is necessary to prevent infringement on others property rights, which is precisely what government is established for. Arguing from a basis that specifically precludes that is not at all like arguing for that. It's when you start talking about "civil rights" rather than property rights that you no longer have such a clear basis; then it does becomes conceivable to make those arguments. But I didn't do that.

Once the product is available, profits don't need to go to the inventor; the whole rationalization of government-granted monopoly is to prevent someone else from stealing your work and taking it to market before you; it allows you to raise capital and begin production before you face competition. Once you're selling them, you've already got the (considerable) advantage of first-to-market; any further advantage is unjust according to principles.
Note that I didn't say there would be no change; merely that it doesn't take away all protections. It only removes the unjust (and incidentally, economically harmful) protections.

Well, suppose no one does. Then there will be no research; it's clear that, from that state, a corporation or individual would stand to profit for a while if they established an R&D lab, and (under secrecy) developed new products; they'd be the only ones on the market for a while with a new product.

So, since they come out better off for a while, and no worse after that, they'd fund research. In fact, there would be increased incentive for innovation, since you have to make an improvement every year to beat your old product (cloned by others) as well as the competition; there's no possibility of stagnation while there are innovations to be made.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Sells 8.3 Million Copies in First 24 Hours
Well, I suppose, if one works on the presumption that they can copy it instantly, or at least within 24 hours...

You know, it costs money to scan and print a book, too; not quite as much as getting a manuscript from an author and printing the book, but it's not free. And you don't know which book is gonna be a big seller until after sales have already peaked, in most cases. So it's not such a profitable proposition as you might think. And there's still licenses; require buyers to sign an agreement if you like, and sue those who reprint.

Profits will still be available; perhaps not as much profits. That would probably mean that some books would no longer be published that are now, because they're not worth publishing on their own value. If they're only profitable to publish because of the application of force by the government, then won't we be better off (as if it mattered) when the resources used to publish them are reallocated to uses that are actually profitable?

No, it's really not annoying.

What's annoying is argument on the basis that someone, somewhere (or a lot of people, a lot of places) will be worse off if we stop them from forcibly restricting the actions of others with their own property... It's no surprise people will be worse off if we change things; we could argue in favor of slavery, because slaveholders would have been better off without abolition.
(In fact, I assume you actually would claim that some (appropriately weighted) summation of all people is better off; you've made no effort to establish such a metric, though, and the weighting function is subject to no end of debate; with an appropriately selected weighting scheme, slavery would still be arguable as an overall good, even though it stomps on some people's rights.)

Heh, your understatement is really quite funny.

But I'm not advocating funding through taxes; that's a false dichotomy. As I've pointed out, profits would continue to motivate things; and without the use of force to prevent certain production, it's rather likely that greater economic efficiency would be obtained as a result.


You've said that my arguments don't hold water; that idiom means that they have "holes" or logic flaws in them; yet you fail to point out anything about them, and instead pursue an explanation of what the consequences are. I can only interpret this as an implicit rejection of my premises regarding property rights, and a very vague implicitaion that your premises are related to the best outcome.

While disagreements on principles of government are (to say the least) difficult to resolve objectively, I think it's clear that mine may be applied more reliably; in general, principles of government regarding valid actions and restrictions are superior to principles regarding outcomes, because they don't suffer from the law of unintended consequences with every application.

Quite frankly, I don't think it's worthwhile to have a policy discussion on the basis of outcomes; the socialist will say that if we abolish property, everything will be great, the anarchist will say if we abolish government, everything will be great, and so on. (The cynic may say that if we abolish political discussion, everything will be great.) While studying history is instructive in choosing a set of direct principles (by comparing outcomes of governments established close to those principles), it's not at all helpful for actual policy discussion.