This is an excellent article. One other point that could be made: it is claimed that piracy of copyrighted material (songs, books, etc.) or patented innovations (e.g. pharmaceuticals) happens instantly. This is false for several reasons. First, with pharmaceuticals, competitors have to incur large costs to fabricate a similar drug. And second, would-be competitors can't just copy everything that is produced on day 1; the need to wait and see which products are successful. They don't want to copy duds. So the originator necessarily has a head-start advantage while would-be copiers have to wait and see which products are profitable.

It is IP socialists who insist on lumping patent, copyright,, etc. together under their propaganda term.

Pharmaceuticals can NOT easily be copied--especially if the FDA process doesn't force companies to publicize their proprietary info during the long approval process! See https://c4sif.org/2021/12/b... and https://www.stephankinsella...

it's not "reality" it's just a propaganda term spread by socalists that has caught on. The reality is that patent and copyright are similar in many respects and are both unjust for similar reasons, though they do different types of harm. I believe patent law is more harmful but it cannot be said objectively one way or the other.

Non sequitur. Patents are not "intellectual property", instead they are a right to a specific time frame for the inventor to turn a profit on his or her investment. Patent falls under rights doctrines, not property whose right to that time eventually expires. Yes, Levi's of San Francisco got the rivet idea on jeans from a tailor in Reno who had requests from lumberjacks to put them on when built. He was flooded with orders and wanted to increase profit with mass production that would lower the prices on individual pairs but increase profit with volume, Did not all lumberjacks have access to rivets? Those few ole lumberjacks were doing it after market and with a rivet not as well designed. It's not even close to being socialism, since it is not a right to seize any property that socialists practice.

Your incoherent post doesn't make it clear whether you are pro-patent or not. You seem to be even though you make the odd claim that patents are not IP, even though this is in fact the dishonest propaganda claim made by other pro-patent liars. Whatever you call patent and copyright, they are in fact socialistic. Socialism as Hoppe explains is the institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property rights, which is exactly what patent & copyright do.

Here's why. Private property rights are those assigned and determined in accordance with two basic principles: homesteading or original appropriation (the first person to start employing a previously-unowned resource has a better claim than latecomers, due to the prior-later distinction adumbrated by Hoppe); and contractual title transfer (if A owns a resource and sells or gives it to B, now B has a better claim than A, because of the contract, and a better claim than everyone else in the world since he stands in A's shoes and thus everyone else is a latecomer with respect to the A-B pair). In other words, in principle we can determine the owner of ANY contested resource by asking: who used it first? What contracts were made from previous owners? (And one subsidiary question: is there a title transfer due to a tort committed against B by the owner A, in which case A has to pay restitution/damages to B, but his can viewed as a subset of the contract prong noted previously; also, we are talking here about external objects; in the case of human bodies, the person himself is the presumptive owner).

Paten & copyright assign a negative easement to C which gives him ownership rights in resources owned by A or B--C an prevent A/B from using his property as he sees fit, even though the use is not a tort and even though A/B never contractually agreed--consented--to C having this negative easement. IP rights are thus takings of private property rights--infringements, which is the essence of socialism. So you are wrong.

That's ignorant. Socialism as per the first socialists ie like John Stuart Mill were utilitarian much the same way as Mises is a utilitarian. Patents being property is total bs. It's a right which is a higher moral law juxtaposed to any property be it personal or real estate. The purpose for calling patents intellectual property is to set up a strawman argument so its total bs.

you're still incoherent. Seems like you are... pro-patent and you think calling patents "property" is something done by its opponents to disparage it...? Man you are confused.

"Those who started using the word property in connection with inventions had a very definite purpose in mind: they wanted to substitute a word with a respectable connotation, “property”, for a word that had an unpleasant ring, “privilege”." --Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1950), p. 1, 16. Quoted here https://c4sif.org/2010/12/i...

It's you who are confused. Your ontology includes Ayn Rand soviet romanticism ie anti Christian/western thought. You are romantic to believe patents in the US Constitution actually say they are property. It's you who have succumbed to dogmatic socialist pressure. I included Levi Strauss in my comment as an example of how patents make a poor man rich, lead to mass production, driving prices down, utility up and culture domination. This is also evident in the golden age, which the left calls the gilded age where thousands of inventors became rich with their right to a period of time was respected to make a profit. Read the Capitalist Manifesto where Bernstein did all the work for you, and get your head out of the quasi Bolshevik novels of Rand. Yes, I do believe the left has created a strawman in calling patents property, since they have been involved in disparaging property rights even before Jean Jacques Rousseau and his student Marx. They had to separate their holy human rights dogma from property they said no one has a right to. There is only two kinds of property, real property and land, and the latter was explained by John Locke, another Christian that you disparaged before in your comments with character assassination's and the sworn enemy of Rousseau and Marx. If you aren't careful you'll go mad and insane like both of them did in trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

"You are romantic to believe patents in the US Constitution actually say they are property." I don't think it says this at all. It is the advocates and defenders of patent and copyright who call them property. They did this when free market economists in the 1800s started criticizing these unjust, unnatural grants of monopoly privilege as contrary to the free market and competition, and the defenders responded with "no they're not monopoly privileges, they're property rights. 'intellectual' ones, but still property rights."

That said, the law does treat IP rights are property rights to some extent. When the state takes patent rights by a compulsory license they compensate the owner on the same grounds of eminent domain law.

"It's you who have succumbed to dogmatic socialist pressure. I included Levi Strauss in my comment as an example of how patents make a poor man rich, lead to mass production, driving prices down, utility up and culture domination."

So... you don't think patents are property, but you are in favor of them. Well you are wrong, son.

"Yes, I do believe the left has created a strawman in calling patents property"

You are completely confused, son. It is the DEFENDERS of patent that call it property. And most leftists favor patent & copyright since they buy into the hoary labor theory of value, which undergirds the defense of patent & copyright. There are a few leftists like Tucker who were against the patent & copyright monopoly and seemed to imply it was related to their opposition to property in land which they also viewed as a monopoly, but by and large the right and defenders of IP call it property, and the left doesn't really usually oppose patent & copyright b/c they are intellectuals who write books or artists who make art or they buy into the labor theory of value. Both left and right are wrong about patent & copyright. As are you, if you think patents are justified (I don't give a flying rat f*ck whether you call patent & copyright "property" or not).

"There is only two kinds of property, real property and land,"

Actually you are confused yet again. Real property MEANS land--it means realty. Helloo. Called immovables in the civil law. As opposed to personalty or movables, another type of thing that can be subject to property rights. Property rights always apply to scarce, rivalrous resources, whether immovable (real, land) or movable (personalty).

To describe an inventor’s pioneer advantage as a “Knowledge Cantillon Effect” (and therefore bad) is to commit a fallacy of context-dropping.

When a state creates new money to further its ends, it is initiating force. Those who are closest to the state’s spigot benefit from this use of initiatory force, and are accomplices to the crime, or at least its beneficiaries. This is what the Cantillon effect properly refers to - and it is evil because it arises from initiatory force.

No such force-initiation exists when an inventor produces an innovative new product that people want to buy. These are completely different contexts.

The author might as well derogate the accomplishments of anyone who does anything first, let’s say the first human to run a 4 min mile, as the “runner’s Cantillon Effect”. And insist that any related earnings of such individuals be redistributed.

When Austrians argue against a right to Intellectual Property, they sound like redistribution-istas. Somewhere on the lower rungs of hell, ol’ Marx is smiling at Engels, who dangles nearby.

You've completely misunderstood the concept of property. Property rights arose spontaneously as a way of reducing conflict over scarce, rivalrous resources. Such
rights are EXTERIOR to political authority, coercive power which colonized the
natural law of property rights reworking it into a strategy of domination.

'Intellectual property' is part of and depends on political power. It exists always and only INSIDE political authority. Where REAL property rights function to prevent and when necessary peacefully resolve disputes over scarce, rivalrous resources, Intellectual Property functions to artificially transform abundant, non rivalrous resources into limited, rivalrous ones at the same time it incites massive conflict which would not otherwise arise.

“'Intellectual property' is part of and depends on political power.”

Property is connected to politics only insofar as the need for rights to be protected. This applies equally to all property: note that the value of any property is based on an interaction between the conceptual and the material/physical. Even something as “physical” as land only has a value based on its conceptual use. Man’s conceptual faculty (his intellect) is the root of all property. There is literally no such thing as purely physical property.

Capitalism is what unfolds when this (protection of rights) is ensured because individuals operate and control every aspect of their property: only voluntary trading of intellectual and physical values is permitted.

“Intellectual Property functions to artificially transform abundant, non rivalrous resources into limited, rivalrous ones at the same time it incites massive conflict which would not otherwise arise.”

This is incorrect. Ideas are not abundant - they are the quintessential scarce resource! It is only when one can own one’s ideas that there are incentives to generate more ideas. The argument that an inventor’s ideas belong in “the commons” aligns with socialism - not capitalism.

To hear this from individuals who understand incentives and are otherwise pro-capitalism shows the dangers of a-philosophical thinking. This error comes from taking one half of the mind|body, values|action, intellectual|physical false choice, and derogating the other.

No no no! The whole world can simultaneously think an individual idea. And were it to do so, it would in no way PREVENT the author of the idea from thinking it. On the other hand only one person can drive an individual Mercedes 300 SL. If someone else drives off in it the owner is absolutely prevented from using it. QED

I notice that you didn’t address the collectivism that is implicit in your position.

Your viewpoint translates to “unlike property, ideas must belong to everyone because we assume it”.

This is an advocacy for the collective ownership of ideas by folks who argue strongly for the individual ownership of property.

The ownership of an idea is rivalrous, alienable and excludable, if allowed to be. So, the entire rationale amounts to a “begging the question” fallacy. For example, if you own a patent on a mousetrap, then I can’t use the idea to build the mousetrap without your permission.

Whether people CAN come up with a useful new idea is not relevant. Someone has to be the first to ideate and implement it. It is not an unreasonable standard for assigning ownership: analogous to ownership that is based on being the first to improve a piece of land by using one’s mind & effort. It incentivizes more ideation that generates immense value.

Lots of people could also have bought the particular car that you drive. But you bought it first, and now someone who wants to drive it would need your permission.

“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”

— Thomas Jefferson

All I can do is explode with laughter. I can only repeat that we can each think the same idea at the same time. For instance we can both simultaneously hold in our mind the realization that intellectual property is a malevolent, rent seeking scam. The point is when you think it that does NOT prevent me from thinking it and vice versa. QEDD

Explosive laughter is a good smokescreen to evade the implicit collectivism in your position, which you have not addressed.

Check out this relevant (and short) essay titled "Patents and Copyrights" which I think is the best starting point for this topic. It also addresses why IP should not be held in perpetuity and what happens when a patent or copyright expires.

It makes no difference if thousands of people can think about a better mousetrap. What matters is that "A" was the first to design it and build a prototype that worked. I get that you are not objecting to A's right to produce the mousetraps that he designed.

But absent a right to IP, building mousetraps by himself is A's ONLY way to benefit from the years that it took to develop the product. A cannot hire an employee "E", because E might learn the design and go into business for himself. A may not sell his design to "B", because if anyone can copy it, then so can B. Nor would B pay very much, because he faces the same problems. Investor "I" realizes that there is no protection for his investment and a very low potential return-on-investment, and is unlikely to invest any money in A's "mousetraps 'R Us".

How many inventors & inventions are likely to exist in a system as described above?

Get back to me after you've stopped laughing - and started thinking. Perhaps you can figure out how the above "mousetrap" problems get resolved in a system which denies IP-rights and has no system IP-rights-protection.

"Check out this relevant (and short) essay titled "Patents and Copyrights" which I think is the best starting point for this topic. It also addresses why IP should not be held in perpetuity and what happens when a patent or copyright expires."

Rand's argument is horrific, comically bad. If ideas are legitimate property rights they should not expire. Why would the term be an arbitrary one set by the government--17 years for inventions, life of author plus 70 years for authored works?

"It makes no difference if thousands of people can think about a better mousetrap. What matters is that "A" was the first to design it and build a prototype that worked."

Actually patent law does not require you to be the "first". You don't even know what you are talking about. And just because you are first doesn't mean you should be able to legally force people not to use information you voluntarily made public--by selling a new product and advertising its new features, you are telling people how to do something. So you can't complain if they learn and use this information you chose to make public.

I know Rand very well. Her argument for rights is wrong. Creation is not a source of property rights. In fact she half-saw this here -- http://c4sif.org/2010/09/lo...

Rand is wrong because her argument supports the idea of property rights in scarce resources, obtained by homesteading, or by contract. Once you grant that, and Objectivists DO--then all you have to understand is that IP rights are incompatible with these real property rights. According to standard common law and natural property rights, and Rand's own view of property and her view of aggression--in which you can own a resource that was unowned, that you homestead, OR acquired by contract from a previous owner; and where she opposes aggression, meaning no law is justified unless it prohibits the initiation of force or violation of property rights (aggression/trespass)--then IP rights take away property rights in already-owned resources. they in effect grant a negative easement over these property rights, to the IP holder, even though the owner of the burdened property never agreed to this negative easement. It's a taking of property. http://c4sif.org/2011/06/in...

Rand would agree that I own my factory, for example, if I build it myself from raw materials I homestead, or if I use resources I purchased by contract from a previous owner. Right? And she agrees that people are entitled to engage in ANY action they want, with and on their property, *so long as they do not commit aggression* or invade the borders of others' property. Right? So if a patentee can prevent me from using my own resource to make a product, that is a limitation on my property rights--but I never agreed contractually to this restriction, and I *didn't commit any tort or trespass or act or aggression* when I make products, that would justify the use of force against me to stop me from using my property as I see fit. It's that simple.

Your retort could be "well when you make the products you do trespass on the inventor's intellectual property rights" but this is question-begging since it presupposes what is to be proven.

Rand's mistake is that she thinks need gives you rights and she thinks creation is a source of ownership. It's not. She confuses wealth with property. Your labor and intellectually creative actions help you transform your already-owned resources into more-valuable arrangements, thus increasing your wealth, but it doens't create now property rights, since you own the output products beacuse you owned the materials that went into it. Rand sort of glimpses this here -- http://c4sif.org/2010/09/lo... but she gets tangled up b/c of the way she talks about "value"--she talks of "values" as "things" people "create" which is ambiguous and contrary to the subjective nature of value--nothing "has value"--there is no intrinsic value and we do not "own values." Value is something you demonstrate in action, as Mises says, and as Rand herself recognized when she said that a value is something you act to gain and/or keep. The fact that I value some end result does not mean there is "a value" out there that I own because I "create" it.

The bottom line is Rand believes in property rights in material resources, assigned in accordance with homesteading and contract. But this is incompatible with the assignment of IP rights since it re-assigns ownership in these already-owned resources in accordance with a third principle that invades the first two.

For the distinction between creation of wealth and acquisition of property rights, see http://www.libertarianstand... in the section "Creation of Wealth versus Creation of Property"

Rand simply didn't understand that iP is incompatible with property rights. Partly because she took for granted that the patent & copyright authorized by the US Constitution was part of capitalism, and partly b/c she was an author who valued her ability to sell novels. She correctly recognized the role of the mind in creation of wealth, but falsely assumed this means you have to have property rights in the "values" you pursue and create. Mises was right that value is subjective, and this is *not* subject to Rand's criticism of "subjectivism" which is really a critique of moral relativism. Mises's subjectivism is perfectly compatible with Rand's own definition of value. Rand just made a mistake. Like the Founders did. Her US/Founders/Constitution-worship and her own career as a writer and intellectual blinded her to this and she was sloppy and made a huge blunder. Just as she did on anarchy. Those are her two biggest substantive mistakes: her minarchy, and her IP nonsense.

""Rand would agree that I own my factory, for example, if I build it myself from raw materials I homestead, or if I use resources I purchased by contract from a previous owner. Right?"
But what I'm saying is that Rand doesn't even approach the subject like this."

It doesn't matter. She and I both agree that there are property rights in material objects, and that you can identify the owner with homesteading and contract. It doesn't matter why we agree on this; we do. She simply does not realize that her adding in IP rights is incompatible. The point is she has to choose: either you have sound rights in property, or you undermine them with exceptions. It would be like her saying no man may initiate violence, except in cases A B and C.

"Rand starts with self-evident perception-level information and works her way up methodically to the abstract concept of rights.
She doesn't start at an arbitrary conclusion and then try to reverse engineer the logic she never used to arrive at it in the first place via rationalization.
For example:
1. She identifies that you're a rational being that needs to think and act in order to live"

Yes, and owning your body allows you to think and having the right to use resources that you appropriate from the state of nature or that you acquire by contract from others allows you to act on your thoughts and values and goals.

"2. She identifies that if you're going to live among other such beings then your rights to think and act must be protected"

There is no "right to think". There is only a right to have the physical integrity of your body and owned resources respected. This is implicit in her endorsement of the non-aggression principle, which acknowledges that *only physical force* can violate rights. Get that part--physical. Physical. Physical force can only be applied to material objects: your body, or the resources you own. Rights pertain only to these scarce resource for the same reason that only these rights can be violated,--because physical force can only be applied to such entities.

"3. To this end of protecting rights she identifies that we establish a government"

And she is wrong. Government commits aggression, the very aggression she has otherwise condemned.

"At no point in the steps does IP become separated from property rights, nor would it even be intelligible to suggest such a thing."

There is no such thing as IP. Information *cannot be owned*. The only things that can be the subject of property rights are rivalrous, scarce, material objects-your body and other things. This is why Rand recognizes rights can only be violated with physical force and violence. IP rights are just a disguised way of taking away already-existing property rights in such things.

Suppose we had a Randian world where law respected property rights in such disputed things, and the winner of any dispute was the person who had homesteaded the resource, or had obtained it by contract from a previous owner. These two principles are sufficient to determine the owner of any disputed, contested resource. Now Rand comes along and says, aha, but there is a third principle: normally, we determine the owner of a resource by asking who found it first, or who got it by contract from a previous owner; but there is a third principle: who thought-of-a-way-to-use his own resource has a negative servitude over usage-rights in others' already-owned resources. In the law this is a negative servitude or easement. A negative easement is legitimate if the owner of a resource grants it to someone by contract. This is what happens in a homeowners association: all the owners of homes grant to their neighbors specified negative veto rights over certain uses. It's legitimate because the owners consent to it. Just like sex with a girl is fine if she consents. But if she doesn't consent, it's rape. LIkewise, if you have a veto right over how I use my property, but i didn't consent to it, this is a taking of my property rights.

Now the comeback will be the sophistic "but all property rights are limited; my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins" or something stupid like that (Rand rightly criticized a similar stupid metaphor by Holmes, the shouting fire in a crowded theater). But this reasoning is also flawed, since others' property rights are NOT limitations on my property rights, but on my *actions*. I explain this already , here https://www.stephankinsella... and https://www.stephankinsella...

"So what I'm asking is for you to show your logic in arriving at the concept of rights. Not how this or that technical issue would be resolved in this or that concrete example." I lay this out in my rights theory. But it is irrelevant because my theory concludes, like Rand does, that we human beings have property rights in scarce resources that we homestead or acquire by contract. Rand wants to "add on" a third principle, but it detracts from her basic property principles--that we all already agree on. when you and she advocate IP it is very similar to the positive rights welfare-statists urge: they say yes, you have negative rights against crime etc., but you *also* have positive rights to housing, food, money--they don't realize that you can't have both. Positive rights have to come at the expense of negative rights. If you have a right to housing then I have an obligation to provide you with it meaning that my own property rights in my body and my money are now invaded. Likewise, if you print more money you debase the value of existing money--money supply inflation causes price inflation. And likewise, if you add a third way of assigning rights it comes at the expense of standard, natural property rights. You can't have both.

"Show us at which step IP is separated from rights in general, show us how Rand gets it wrong and what the correct steps are."

I don't even know what this vague language means--"where IP is separated from". You have to think rigorously and precisely, systematically and consistently. WE all agree on property rights in material goods, based on objective principles of homesteading (original appropriation) and contract. Adding IP into the mix literally takes away from these rights. It is you who are advocating contradictions.

All one can do at this point is howl with laughter. VERY FEW products come under IP law. Take cars. Companies invest trillions in plant and equipment knowing full well that 100 startups can come along and produce competitive car lines. But this has led to great ingenuity, variety, improvement and prosperity not at all the sort of losses you so drearily prophesy.

Gary North:

The modern world of mass production began with the expiration of James Watt's patents on his steam engine design. Before expiration, steam technology did not spread far and wide.

Where does North say all this? Is he against patent law? If you don't mind, DM me on Twitter or FB if you know -- @nskinsella

3D Printers vs. Patents
Gary North - September 10, 2016

People invent things. They apply for patents. Governments issue them. They grant a monopoly of manufacture for about 15 years. The inventor can license his invention and collect royalty payments.

Patent law works because it is enforceable. A manufacturer has a facility. It is in a location. If it produces goods based on designs that belong to someone else, the owner of the counterfeiting operation can be fined or sued by the owner.

What happens when the tools used to manufacture items are owned by individuals? They don't sell what they produce. They use it. There is no trail of money to trace buyers to a single manufacturer.

How does an inventor sue 10,000 manufacturers?

He has a schematic. That is the basis of his patent. The schematic is available to the public. It just cannot legally be used.

So, someone with a web server in a tiny nation obtains a domain name in that nation. The United Nations is now in charge. This person can post a schematic online. Google can find it.

What happens when the schematic is a digital code that can be used to produce the item on a 3D printer anywhere on earth?

Maybe the inventor can hire lawyers to get the schematic removed from a server in an island nation. But at what price? Maybe it gets removed from the server. How long will it take for someone in another nation to post the same schematic?

This will be digital whack-a-mole.

For mass produced goods in factories, patents may be enforceable at some price. But 3D printers will do an end run around factories. They will allow customized versions of items that today can only be produced by factories. This is understood in theory today, but it has not yet shaped patent law. There is not a sufficient economic threat to factories from 3D printing. In 30 years, this will no longer be the case.

Think ahead 50 years. Think ahead 90 years.

Patent law is like copyright law. It is limited. It rests on the physical production of goods in specific locations. Specific locations are in specific legal jurisdictions. It also rests on retail sales in specific locations. Neither limitation will be the case with widespread 3D printing.

The enforcement of intellectual property rests on today's array of prices. It is expensive to become a counterfeiter. You must have specialized skills. You must have detailed knowledge of markets. You must be a skilled person in concealment. None of this will be true in 30 years.

https://www.garynorth.com/p...

Thanks https://c4sif.org/2022/01/g...

North is so annoying as a writer--he writes like a toddler. But he's basically right here. It's not clear that he opposes patents though.

some more articles from Gary North:

Copyrights, Patents, and Ownership
Gary North - December 04, 2017

https://www.garynorth.com/p...

Chapter 39: Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks
Gary North - February 12, 2020
https://www.garynorth.com/p...

Goodbye, Copyright. Farewell, Tenured Guilds.
Gary North - February 15, 2016
https://www.garynorth.com/p...

gary North:

The phrase “intellectual property” conveys the idea that a temporary monopoly granted by the state to the discoverer of an idea is conceptually the same as the permanent right of someone to a piece of physical property that he bought or inherited.

See “Intellectual Properganda”:
"Those who started using the word property in connection with inventions had a very definite purpose in mind: they wanted to substitute a word with a respectable connotation, “property”, for a word that had an unpleasant ring, “privilege”."

[Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1950), p. 1, 16]

Ideas are in fact the quintessential non-rivalrous resource, as economists well know, and scarcity as used in economics and politics refers to this non-rivalrous character. You are playing games and equivocating by using the informal sense of scarcity as "not abundant." https://www.stephankinsella.com/2022/01/on-conflictability-and-conflictable-resources/

Libertarians don't disparage patent laws and they know the state is utilitarian and that government was created by the market in western tradition. Each invention adds on to the last one pushing production up. That is the pure logic behind it, all this nonsense linking it with homesteading and the like isn't libertarian. Private property in land serves the same purpose for increasing production. Patents have an expiration which falls directly under a right in a block of time. We already have all the evidence of it being a higher moral law. Whether the corporations are doing more of it today because of the increased regulations on the less financially able entrepeneur or not. In the
case of rivets in blue jeans all of the small retailers benefited from it once it went into mass production because of Levi's patent. This occurred across the industries during the golden age ( leftists called it gilded age).

The current medical crisis shows just how dangerous politico-governmental power is, and why the ancap society is really the only safe, civilized society. Now statists try to argue that without monopoly government police, oligarchs would amass private police they would deploy against, would use to subjugate the individual. The opposite is the case. In the ancap society the consumer controls security directly, subscribing with security services best safeguarding his person and property at the best price. An oligarch could form his own security service - however that is very expensive - and tens of millions of individual consumers funding their own security services are acting on a scale dwarfing any security organization assembled by an oligarch.
To summarize, in the free society the free individual is able to protect himself FROM malevolent oligarchs by his collective consumer power. By contrast, consider what the medical crisis has revealed to us about the grave danger inherent in a politico-governmentally administered society. A corporate cartel needs only to sufficiently infiltrate the governmento-regulatory bureaucracies in order effectively seize control of monopoly government security, security it can then re-purpose as weapon with which to subjugate the free individual. Consider the trucker resistance movement ongoing in Canada and where the Ottawa chief of police has openly stated that the politico-governmental surveillance and security bureaucracies are working to disrupt and dismantle the freedom movement. Let us trace back the linkages of power which are at play: The pharma cartel produces a drug. It has its surrogates in control of the medico-public health bureaucracies call for mandatory vaccinations. Regional politico-governmental fiefdoms use that call to impose a vax passport regime and use their local police departments to enforce it. In this way crony capitalist cartels effectively gain control of state administered security services, services putatively serving to safeguard the individual.

There's little doubt that corporatism has shut put the entrepeur and making it extremely difficult for the entrepeuer. Mises either directly or indirectly use German Metaphysics like subjective value and also the Ubermensch. Without patents the plebians are still subjective to the regulations that favor the ceo especially subsidies. Those put corporations with natural heiarchy and sometimes above. Did Ayn Rand not defend the corporation and ignore the entrepeneur?

If you've ever agreed to a EULA, and I think the odds are almost 100% if you've bought and used software, then you've voluntarily consented to someone's IP under their terms, also acknowledging their ownership.

No political authority needed- just contract enforcement, by private means if necessary.

Wrong. IP has nothing to do with contract. IP is an in rem or real right; contract is in personam and binds only the parties to the contract. You are confused.

It's you that is confused. You can contort it if you'd like, but you implicitly agree to the use of IP via a EULA, acknowledging it's validity, and it was all know what the "P" in IP stands for.

You don't know anything about contract law, this is obvious. Where is the consideration? What are the terms? Why am I "bound" just because I "see" some words printed? Shrinkwrap and clickwrap contracts are not obviously legitimate. But even if they are, they only bind the parties. It still does not bind third parties, which you need to do, to have IP. You don't even understand the IP you think you support. I guarantee all the IP socialists out there would totally reject a proposal to replace IP law with contract law. Gee, I wonder why. You morons should just shut up, read, listen and learn.

Your argumentation style is literally that of a 5 year old. Laced with absurd proclamations devoid of actual reason/logic.

How ironic that you misread North, then complain he writes poorly.

" Shrinkwrap and clickwrap contracts are not obviously legitimate. But even if they are, they only bind the parties."

This statement of yours says it all. My desire is to have constructive debates with emotionally mature and respectful people, which is why I'm ending said discussion with you, because in essence your communication style is that of a "angsty" teenager.

So you don't have a coherent argument for iP? That's the bottom line. https://www.stephankinsella...

No, you're just an a-hole that makes discussion/debate unpleasant. Your Napoleonic complex shines through in almost every comment.

I like respectful discussion, not wallowing in the mud with pigs.

You people always turn to emotion and evade substance. So typical. So you don't have a good argument for IP yet you promote and shill for IP socialism anyway.

"You people always turn to emotion and evade substance."

That's you, you're projecting:

"You morons should just shut up"
"North is so annoying as a writer--he writes like a toddler."
"These mental midgets run and scurry when challenged."

That's just in this comment section, in an hour or two.

Really, I have no desire to "discuss" in your manner, that of a schoolyard bully. To THT's point, maybe you do need a punch in the nose.

Do you actually speak this way to people face to face? I can't believe that you do, or you'd have certainly been punched a time or two.

Maybe that's why you resort to insults in your "discussions" online.

It's the concept of IP not being property that is the appeal to collectivism, not the other way around.

You implicitly suggested that was my thinking, so in a way, that was indeed your point, whether you realize it or not. (with all due respect)

:)