[This paper is the conclusion of a two-part series. The first article was “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way.” ] Anti-Eating Mouth Cage US Patent Issued in 1982 As I noted in Part 1 , there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP)
Libertarian Papers was launched a year ago, in late January 2009. I assessed our first half-year a few months ago. At this time I’d like to explain how Libertarian Papers came to be. The timing is especially suitable, since Libertarian Papers was born one year ago today, in a 15-minute IM chat between Jeff Tucker and me. It was late Monday night,
[An earlier version of this article was published in the Freeman , September 1995. It was adapted from a longer essay in the Journal of Libertarian Studies .] Libertarians and classical liberals have long sought to explain what sorts of laws we should have in a free society. But we have often neglected the study of what sort of legal system is
Like a submarine patent , the intellectual-property issue has lurked beneath the surface of libertarianism for decades. IP was for a long time largely assumed by most libertarians to be legitimate, a type of property right. This is because of the influence of Ayn Rand, one of the most influential of all modern libertarians, who was strongly
In previous decades libertarians viewed intellectual property as a boring and technical area of the law, the province of legal specialists. They also assumed it to be a legitimate, if arcane, type of property in a capitalist, free-market society. After all, it’s in the Constitution, and Ayn Rand blessed it. But we don’t ignore it anymore, and we
[Lightly edited transcript of speech given at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, June 6, 2010.] In addition to defense, security, education, money and banking, scientific research, providing for the poor, space exploration, food and drug safety, roads and transportation, the definition of marriage, immigration and border
[Excerpted from The Man versus the State , 1884] Most of those who now pass as Liberals are Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it, I must first point out what the two political parties originally were; and I must then ask the reader to bear with me while I remind him of facts he is familiar with,
[Excerpted from The Man versus the State , 1884] It is said that when railways were first opened in Spain, peasants standing on the tracks were not unfrequently run over; and that the blame fell on the engine drivers for not stopping — rural experiences having yielded no conception of the momentum of a large mass moving at a high velocity. The
How rational is the rational animal? In a column entitled “Vudu Lives (Outside the Box),” David Pogue, the engaging technology reviewer for The New York Times , inquires about some apparently perplexing failings of human nature. We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. But if that’s true, why do we eat stuff we know isn’t
[Chapter 7, The New Deal in Old Rome ] The political machine is familiar to Americans. While it may lead to gross abuses, experience shows that some sort of behind-the-scenes organization may be useful to the functioning of democratic institutions. Such an organization may hold diverse elements of the population together and provide continuity of
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.