Zeroing in on a topic like “intellectual property” offers a chance to clarify fundamental notions in economics generally. You think you understand something like property rights or the nature of competition--you have studied the ideas for years!--and then a challenge comes along that blows everything up. It’s an opportunity. Time to think and
[This is part 2 of my live blog of this book] How strange this “intellectual property” issue is. In normal life, we tend to (or should) credit enterprise and markets for most innovations that surround us. I’m typing on a system here that includes products for several dozens different creative companies, with hardware and software and applications
[This is part 4 of an ongoing live blog of Against Intellectual Monopoly] Drugs patents took it on the chin a few years ago, when major drug companies refused to sell cheap AIDS drugs in Africa. Presuming the drugs work, countless lives might have been saved. But the desire to protect the high price on the patented drug--despite the low marginal
WSJ The U.S. housing market continued to deteriorate in the third quarter as even the most credit-worthy borrowers increasingly fell behind on their mortgages, highlighting the problems policy makers have faced in trying to address the problem. A new report from the Office of Thrift Supervision and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found
Here is an example of what I write about frequently, copyright renewals that doom a book to obscurity, books that hardly anyone cares about for which the rights owner is not obvious but desperately need to be put online. The case in point is Methodology of the Social Sciences by Felix Kauffman, a member of the Mises Circle (the guy who wrote all
The Fort Worth paper this morning had some details on how stimulus money is being used: to buy massive military-style weaponry for local police in towns that have next to no crime at all. Ah, what a peace-loving president we have. (I was in Fort Worth for our Mises Circle meeting, which went fabulously well, by the way!). So I see here that we
A fascinating chart from J.P. Morgan provides a look at the percentage of cabinet level political appointees who have private sector experience from Roosevelt to Obama. Of course there is a downside to private-sector experience. In government, these people tend toward corrupting partnerships between government and business. And yet, it seems
The WSJ reports on an interview with a Fed official who says that the central bank will keep rates at 0% for two more years at least. But right now, banks have no reason to lend (zero earnings) and no one has any reason to save (zero earnings), and the risk associated with long-term projects is nowhere reflected in these obviously phony rates
ABC news provides a helpful round up of the latest national poll on national politics, in PDF with plenty of detail, that shows a continued fall in approval ratings for the Obama administration, in nearly every area of domestic policy. These polls could make it more difficult for Obama and Congress to impose health-care socialism, so that’s
[Chapter 8, live blog] All popular business histories are replete with lies. Or to be more charitable, they are filled with untruths based on a stupid version of cause and effect: inventions happen because people take out a patent on them. This assumption is hardly ever questioned in the mainline literature. Writers look through patent records and
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.