This is just sloppy and incoherent. First, he misspells my name. Is it that hard? Second, he totally mischaracterizes Roderick Long, who does have a principled case against IP. And this reads like it was written in Latvian and translated by Google translate.
A good article could be made about this issue, but this is not it.
Property rights are a fundamental aspect of all classical liberal and libertarian philosophies. Within these ideological paradigms, there is little disagreement over the concept of selfownership and property rights in tangible goods. But when looking to property rights in non-tangible or ideal objects—like those granted by copyright, patent, and trademark law—a considerable disagreement can be seen within the classical liberal approach. [continue reading…]
Important recent work by Michele Boldrin & David Levine, authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly, about why, contrary to arguments given by pro-patent shills and the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists, patents are actually not necessary in the pharmaceutical industry and in the production of vaccines.
This is my Soho Forum debate held Nov. 15, 2021, in Manhattan, against professor Richard Epstein, moderated by Gene Epstein. I defended the resolution “all patent and copyright law should be abolished” and Professor Epstein opposed it. Oxford debate rules applied which meant that whoever changed the most minds won. My side went from about 20 to 29 percentage points, gaining about 9; Richard went from about 44 to 55%, gaining about 11, so he won by 1.7 percentage points.
Johan Ridenfeldt called to my attention recently a 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, David Gordon, and Yeager, which has this exchange:
Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …
Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
This is compatible with (and, of course, pre-dates) my own views on property and scarcity. As usual, Hoppe got it right early on.
Abstract: Aggressive IP rights are often assumed to be one feature of the global neoliberal regime snapping into place since the 1970s. Yet, as this chapter shows, neoliberals themselves have been far from unanimous on the question of when, how, and even if ideas can be treated as property. This chapter focuses on the heterodox Austrian approaches of Friedrich Hayek and his contemporary Fritz Machlup, coiner of both the terms “knowledge economy” and “production of knowledge” and an understudied member of the Mont Pelerin cohort.
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