The Tragedy of Intellectual “Property”
Writing by abuhatem on Friday, 7 of December , 2007 at 10:04 pm
Mises Blog: Answering a Highschooler’s Questions on Intellectual Property
I was reading the Mises blog today, from the Ludwig von Mises institute, a think-tank for the Austrian school of economics, as well as some Libertarian political ideas, and I came across this wonderful article by Stephen Kinsella. Kinsella is famous for his 2001 article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is a Libertarian lawyer from Arizona. While I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Libertarians, their views on foreign policy and economics are superb.
Kinsella shows the no. 1 tragedy with regards to so-called intellectual “property. He discusses John Locke’s argument of “first use,” which rationally establishes the right to private property, and in essence clarifies why intellectual “property,” cannot truly be defined as property in the truest sense. Defining it as property infringes on the property rights of others, as Kinsella explains:
So, in short, the problem with patent and copyright is that it amounts to theft of rights to scarce resources.
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Category: Economics, Political philosophy
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