potentia est ” (“knowledge is power”)–Francis Bacon’s famous expression. For thousands of years, the human standard of living was flat. It finally started significantly increasing with the Industrial Revolution –with the rise of capitalism (strong, systematic protection for property rights) and with the spread of technology and scientific
In Adam Mossoff in the WSJ , Objectivist Diana Hsieh admits IP is a “thorny” issue. Progress! The WSJ piece citing Mossoff notes: The Sewing Machine War was the first instance of what is today called a “patent thicket.” The disputes prevented Singer from selling his invention, and tensions ran high in and out of court: When Howe personally called
Cato’s Robert Levy argues that it is, in The moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage . He argues: Thomas Jefferson set the stage in the Declaration of Independence: “[T]o secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” The primary purpose of government is to safeguard individual rights and prevent some persons from
As discussed in previous posts, the state grants monopolies (patents and copyright) then penalizes companies for using (“abusing”) them, in contravention of state antitrust law–so that there is a “tension” between these state laws.[1] (And of course the state exempts its own monopoly powers from antitrust regulations, and partially exempts the IP
[See Update here .] As noted by Mike Masnick on Techdirt (post reprinted below), due to the monopoly granted by patent (yes, it is a monopoly ), people are literally dying because Fabrazyme is in short supply and the sole, monopolistic manufacturer, Genzyme, can’t make enough quickly enough–and no one else is permitted to make it due to the
In response to my Reducing the Cost of IP Law , my friend and ex-colleague (and mentor) Steve Mendelsohn , a patent lawyer in Philadelphia, wrote me the following. N.B.: Steve is not a libertarian but is honest and smart, unlike patent shills (he’s also an excellent patent attorney, if you need one). Here’s an edited version of his comments,
As I noted in Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property , statists used to be much more honest. The federal government used to a Dept. of War . In 1947, its named was chagned to the Dept. of Army of the “New Military Establishment,” and in 1949, to the Department of Defense. Europeans are usually more honest than Americans. Socialists
As a recent column in the Wall Street Journal reminds us, online freedom is jeopardized in the name of “net neutrality” ( The FCC’s Threat to Internet Freedom ). This is just another case of the state re-labeling things to sound benign but that are really invasions of liberty and property rights–another good example being use of the term
In my 2007 post What Are the Costs of the Patent System? (discussed in “ Reducing the Cost of IP Law “) I tried to estimate the cost of the patent system (see also my reply to David Friedman in the thread to “Volokh’s David Post: The High Cost of Copyright”; Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation ; and There’s No Such Thing as
The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship is a $1000 prize awarded by the Mises Institute each year for the the article published in the preceding volume of Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editorial Board. Forty-four articles were published in Libertarian Papers in
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.