We did not have to wait long for the first act of kindness along our journey. My nephew Tom lived a couple hours away from Point Reyes and intended to start hiking with us. That did not work out as planned. We started from Point Reyes shortly after 9:00 am on May 25, 2011 with driving, diagonal rains obscuring our vision and numbing our bones, but no Tom. Later on when people would comment about the beauty of Point Reyes we would joke “Too bad we never saw it.”
We hiked for six miles without stopping, fueled partly by the adrenaline from beginning our journey and partly by the need to stay warm. We stopped after Tom caught up with us from a side trail. With the drenching rain still pouring down Tom pulled out a little cook stove and heated up some much needed tea. We continued on with both our spirits and bodies warmed.
Nephew Tom
The storm abated in the afternoon, enabling us to hike the last few miles in sunshine. Through rain and sun we engaged in conversation both deep and light-hearted. Neither of us have any great love for corporations, though we did argue over intellectual property. Part of that discussion is pertinent to raising expectations for community, and because of that I share my take on intellectual property with you now.
The point of a free market is to encourage specialization and expanding markets through the autonomy of the individual to develop new products, or to bring existing products to new areas. Without government there is no such thing as protected intellectual property and civilizations copied freely from each other up until the blossoming of corporations and international property law. The fact that people freely copied new ideas from each other was in no way a disincentive to autonomous, curious folks coming up with these ideas to benefit their societies. I say this as one who has invented and composed things myself. In no way do I feel entitled to all the production value of my ideas, but that sentiment probably is not shared by those who mistakenly think such an unnatural monopoly comes from a free market.
Without intellectual property, a competitive edge would be given to local and regional businesses making products for their respective areas. Being social creatures, we like to do business with people we know. The resulting diffusion of resources makes diverse, local communities stronger as a result. Through the grace of government intellectual property instead shifts this competitive edge to corporations, absent the natural conditions of a free market. Ultimately, intellectual property is not a means of naturally fueling progress but of artificially concentrating wealth, and concentrating wealth never turns out well for all the local communities that benefit from wealth and resources being diffused.
There is a case to be made for protecting resource poor individuals from resource rich corporations stealing and capitalizing their ideas, but when the law of the land as decided by the Supreme Court determines that corporations are individuals too, such a case becomes a moot point.
A big reason for this journey was to reveal the discrepancies between facts and the fiction that continually gives a corporate economy the benefit of doubt in this, the land of the corporate funded media and think tanks, not to mention the corporate stacked Supreme Court. Raising expectations for humanity, community and kindness would require eliminating a few misconceptions out there. However, the journey would prove to be more pilgrimage than mission, with the ordinary kindness of people like Tom enlightening our path the whole way.
