Why does Hank Rearden be the only one to enjoy the benefits of Reardern metal? – A looter in Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand in her essay “Patents and Copyrights” Ayn Rand claims that the heirs must not be allowed to inherit Intellectual property rights, yet, today to read that article you will have to pay royalty to Leonard Peikoff, as she left her intellectual property to him. Rand claims that when a man mixes his labor with a tangible piece of nature, he must be allowed to fully enjoy the benefit of his labor. Whether he choses to sell it, gift it, or consume it for himself, its his decision, because all these things give him the enjoyment of his labor. Similarly, she extends the argument that when a man creates an idea(which could be a music, design, text) he must be allowed to enjoy the benefits of his labor by allowing him to chose to sell it, gift it, or consume it for himself.

But here is the problem with the idea. Lets say, you wrote a poem, and I heard it in a recital. I liked the poem and now I decide write it down on my paper. But according to Rand somehow this usage of my property is prohibited without the prior consent of the poet. Its my mind from which I am retrieving the poem, its my pen, its my paper, and its my property where I am doing this act, and I can do anything with these things, I must be fully allowed to do whatever with my property or else it would be a violation of my property rights, but somehow if I want to write that poem on the paper, I must ask the permission of the poet.

Maybe the poet will allow me write that poem down on my property and stick it on the wall, but lets say if I wanna sell that sheet of paper, now I must pay the poet some sort of royalty. Its my property, its my labor in transcribing, but I must pay the poet. Rand attacks this idea, by saying that without the labor of the poet, I couldn’t have made that value to the paper. That is, without that poem that paper is worthless, the real value has been added to the paper by the poet. Since I physically wrote the poem, so I must also enjoy a part of the revenue but not without taking prior permission of the poet and paying royalties to him.

Fine, lets say that is true, the poem is poet’s labor and it did add “true” value to the paper. So I must pay the laborer a value from my earnings. But value is subjective. What if the buyer of that paper does not considers it to be valuable. What if according to the market, the paper is now of worth less than it was before the poem was scribed on it. Say I take a bunch of blank sheets(for $10) and write down Atlas Shrugged on it, and I take it to market for selling them, but the market says, that they don’t value Atlas Shrugged that much, and now they are offering even less for the paper as they would have to the black sheets themselves(say now the novel is valued for $2). That means Ayn Rand’s labor has cost me $8. Does that mean Ayn Rand must pay me those $8 for damaging my property by her labor?

Why not? If I draw a tiger with a spray paint can on your car, I destroy your property, and I must now pay the value, or the compensation to you. If someone says that I didn’t take prior permission of the car owner, well how about this, I am a car painter, and you give me the task of paint your car red. But instead of that, I paint “rising sun” on it with blue spray. This has ruined the beauty of car according to the car owner. So now I must PAY the car owner the damages I have done to his car.

Take a bit more practical example, if I order 10,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged from a printing press, and decide to pay Ayn Rand 50% of all the earnings as the just value of her labor. Now each copy is of $10(and the cost of blank sheets per copy is $2). But none of the copies are sold, and now I can’t sell the paper to the value of the buying price, that means Ayn Rand’s labor has ruined the paper, and since according to Rand, SHE is the person who actually adds the value to the paper, now she has added negative value to the paper.

I sold all the 10,000 copies to the recycling center, and I got $1 for each copy. I invested 10,000 times $2=$20,000 and made a loss of $10,000 so should Ayn Rand now must pay me that 50% of the value she added? Shouldn’t she pay me $5,000 now?

Atlas Shrugged: Spoiler Alert

Coming to Hank Rearden and Rearden Metal, I surely don’t suggest that Rearden must be forced to share the secret of Rearden metal, because that would be an act of aggression, and as unjustifiable as Rearden stopping others from manufacturing his metal if they somehow understand how its made. Though in the novel its not made clear how open was the secret of Rearden metal. If others are able to create it by merely reverse engineering the metal, then Hank Rearden has no right to stop them from making it, because that would be a violation of THEIR property rights.

Also the way the government retrieved Rearden Metal’s secret from Hank Rearden, there was no violation of anyone’s property rights. They had information on Rearden, they had proof, they could have published it in newspaper, but instead they gave Rearden an offer of keeping their silence in exchange of the information of Rearden Metal. Hank Rearden voluntarily signed the gift certificate since no physical coercion was involved here. Had the looters said “We will harm Dagny Taggert” then the situation would have been different, they merely said “We will destroy Dagny’s image in public”. It was Blackmail, but then it was a voluntary exchange which benefited both the parties, Rearden got to save Dagny’s image, and Government got Rearden Metal’s information.
Read more about Blackmail here.

Spoiler ends