Showing posts with label Intellectual property. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intellectual property. Show all posts

Friday, May 7, 2021

Achieving Low Prices on Automobiles and Pharmaceuticals Through Zero Tariffs and Limited Patents

      In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, and the production of several vaccines against coronavirus, the Canadian government is now signaling that it will consider waiving intellectual property protections on those vaccines.

     This news comes two-and-a-half years after Canada placed a 270% tariff against the importation of foreign milk into Canada. Canada, like the nations of Europe, had recently become caught up in a trade war, which arguably began when then-president Donald Trump increased tariffs on foreign steel.
     Those steel tariffs caused America's farmers to demand a bailout, due to: 1) the fact that the tariffs on foreign steel arguably functioned as a protection for American steel in the process; 2) the increased cost, to farmers, of farm equipment which is made out of cheap foreign-made steel, after tariffs; 3) agricultural exports from the U.S. to China declined significantly after the tariffs were applied; and 4) the fact that the farm industry hadn't yet been bailed out, and seemed to need a bailout, in proportion to the protection afforded to U.S. steel workers.
     http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/tariffs-drive-farm-income-down-and-equipment-prices/583
     This phenomenon has been commented on, in such great detail, that it was arguably predicted; by the economist Henry Hazlitt, in Chapter 11 of his 1946 book Economics in One Lesson.


     It is too bad that Canada isn't considering waiving I.P. protections on all medications, rather than just the coronavirus vaccine.
     If free-market economic theory is correct, then as long as sovereign governments respect the limitations put on them by the people, and take a more non-interventionist role in the economy, then a move towards zero tariffs, and the reduction of the length of patent terms, will result in a freeing of trade and price competition, which itself will lead to dramatic reductions in the prices of all goods.
     And if Medicare for All or universal health care isn't on the way, then cheaper medical prices is something that Americans - and people all over the world - need badly right now.

     So the free-market theory goes: If the state didn't (or couldn't) rescue or bail-out failing firms - and didn't hand taxpayer money over to politicians' corporate cronies - then failing firms and large monopolies could easily be competed-against; whether out of existence, or just out of their monopoly status.
     Auto plant workers, farmers, and people in the pharmaceutical industry, each have their own distinct ways of evaluating the comparative value of the quantity and quality of steel, cars, farm equipment, food, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and so on. Their subjective preferences, professions, and relative needs for each of these items at different times, strongly influence the way that these people will interact, and what they will buy, and when.
     Just as farmers will want to either optimize quality and cost of the steel that goes into their farm equipment, or else sacrifice quality for cost or vice-versa, the same question exists in medicine. Obviously, high-quality, low-cost medication is the most desired outcome, but that doesn't seem realistic. So, then, should medications be low-quality yet widely available? Or should they be high-quality yet restricted to the few?
     Instead of assuming that either quality or affordability must be sacrificed, and mandate that one firm should produce a good at a particular price, it is perhaps best to give the consumer the choice in the matter. And that can be done; through allowing multiple producers of similar goods to exist, and distribute different numbers of goods at different prices from other firms, so that individual consumers can choose whether they want a lot of the cheap stuff, or a little of the high-strength stuff, or something in between.
     The economic coordination between the customer and the firm he wants to go out of business, would be done not by a government that can keep that bad business afloat, but would instead be done through the consumer calling the firm to complain, or through refraining to purchase the product. Thanks to taxation and subsidization, and the limitations upon boycotts which are imposed by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the freedom to refrain to purchase a product, is limited. Thus, the right to boycott, and the right of each consumer to play his role in regulating the economy, are limited as well.

     Just as people's professions and subjective preferences influence their demands in term of price and quality, those factors will also strongly influence their vote, as well as their demands from government.
     People in the pharmaceutical industry will, naturally, vote and buy as if the labor of doctors and pharmaceutical engineers are - at least on a metaphysical level - somehow intrinsically more valuable than the labor done by the people who grow and harvest our food, and who build and maintain our cars.
     And maybe health is more important than transportation. But on the other hand, you can't be healthy if you don't eat, and you can scarcely enjoy your health if you can't travel anywhere. In fact, not being able to travel much, can have a negative impact on your mental and emotional health, by causing you to feel cooped up and trapped. But then again, some cars pollute. But some cars pollute less.
     The point being: Life is complicated. Economics are complicated. But coordination and economic planning are possible without government. So why unnecessarily involve the government in coordinating international trade, when it can barely facilitate international trade? Government's primary role should be to facilitate non-violent productive behavior, rather than to promote the production or sale of any law-abiding particular person or firm over any other.

     Tariffs, and trade policies - sadly - are often enacted in order to supposedly correct for some "crime" which a foreign country is perpetrating on either American consumers, or its own people, or both.
     China is supposedly "flooding" America with cheap products. But it's not like America is producing many of the same products. So where else are we going to get them from?
     Moreover, America levies tariffs "against" Chinese exporters, supposedly because their client firms are exploiting their workers. And many of them undoubtedly are. But does everybody in China deserve to pay the price for the behavior of exploitative firms? Additionally, those tariffs do not help those Chinese workers, because the costs of the tariffs are not footed by the Chinese exporter, but through wage-theft from the workers. That's what happens when there is nothing in the tariff law to stipulate that the exporter must charge only his most exploitative C.E.O. clients for the cost of the tariffs. There is nothing to ensure that the tariff will have the desired and intended effect.
     Additionally, China's Company Law requires foreign firms that set up shop in China, to share their technology with Chinese firms active in the same industries, as a cost of doing business in China. This cross-cultural sharing of technology, is unfortunately labeled by American capitalists, as "intellectual property theft". That's right: What China considers to be its intellectual property law, is described by America as intellectual property theft.

     This fight - between every firm and government, to produce something, and then profit through resting on their laurels leveraging the value of the product, by hoarding it and sitting on it - must end. The trade war must end, before it accelerates into trade blocs, a cold war, and hot wars.


     Do we really need tariffs in the first place? Before continuing, let's review some basic facts about tariffs.

     To be clear: tariffs are distinct from inspection fees.
     Since the government port authority is inspecting goods, the inspectors deserve to be compensated for the costs that went into inspecting those goods. It is only appropriate that the people exchanging the goods, pay for inspections (to make sure there are no slaves or stowaways on board, and to make sure there are no illicit materials) when goods cross international boundaries. Thus, customs inspection fees are not a tax, but more accurately, a use-based fee, built on a fee-for-service model.
     But customs inspection fees can be justified, without justifying tariffs along with them.

     Tariffs are unnecessary, competition-reducing, price-increasing taxes, which - like sales taxes, and for a lot of the same reasons - should not exist. If more efficient taxes could replace tariffs - and they could - then we can agree that tariffs add to the final price of the product unnecessarily. Increasing the final price, in turn, makes it more likely that those who foot the cost of the tariff, will purchase less of the product as a result.
     Additionally, tariffs - like sales taxes - can be passed-on to market actors whom were not intended to bear the burden of the taxes. This is what is meant when politicians like Donald Trump assure us that "China will pay for the tariffs" and "we (Americans) don't pay for those tariffs, they'll get passed on to China." That is only true until tariffs beget retaliatory tariffs.
     Moreover, tariffs inhibit international trade, or at least make it more expensive and complicated. Lastly, import tariffs are paid by domestic American importers.
     http://www.reason.com/2021/05/24/china-is-paying-about-7-percent-of-tariff-costs-americans-are-paying-the-rest/


     While increasing tariffs may achieve one of its desired results (namely, punishing domestic civilians and foreign producers for trading with each other), it has multiple negative effects as well. The cost of making trade more expensive, is arguably not worth the cost involved in choosing winners and losers in the market (in this case, American producers winning over foreign producers, as the result of import tariffs).
     That's why a move towards zero tariffs, for both importing and exporting, is the way to go. And the more countries that do this, the more money can be saved by the people of all countries that trade with us.



     If the cost of importing and exporting would be reduced to the price of inspection fees, then nobody's fingers would have to be worked to the bone, to generate large amounts of value that allow exporters and importers to pay their tariffs.
     If neither the U.S., nor any of its trade partners, levied any duties on the importation and exportation of goods, then there would be no need to create trade policies which take tariffs into account.
     Think about it. Modern U.S. trade policies regarding the production of automobiles, for example, mandate that at least a certain percentage of a car must be made in one country, while a different percentage of a car must be made in another country.
     Domestic producers fear zero tariffs because they would cause the price of foreign-made goods to drop. But zero tariffs would also cause price decreases of products (namely, cars) which are assembled in multiple countries, and made of parts that come from multiple countries.
     Thus, decreasing tariffs will make it easier (and cheaper, via both government and private avenues) to trade any and all pieces of equipment which are so complex that they cannot be built within a single country. This category consists of a lot more goods than we might suspect, and to things that seem much simpler than machines. This fact is illustrated by economist Leonard Read, in his essay "I, Pencil".
     


     Hopefully, by this point, it should be clear to the reader that tariffs are useless (in terms of facilitating non-violent trade and production), and why.
     In my opinion, sales taxes, and government-conducted trade policies, are equally useless. So are intellectual property protections, when they are too strong and too long.
     That is why, in 2020, I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, on a platform of medical price relief, which I called "E.M.P.A.T.H.I.C.". "E.M.P.A.T.H.I.C." stands for "Eliminating Medical Patents to Achieve Human Immortality Cheaply".
     So the idea goes: If reducing the duration of medical patents, will allow cheap generics to enter the market sooner - resulting in cheaper medical prices - then eliminating medical patents altogether might cause prices to drop even more quickly than shortening them.
     Naturally, some on the economic right are concerned that eliminating medical patents, or reducing patent terms too drastically, will result in less investment in expensive pharmaceutical research. And maybe that is true. And new vaccines always need to come out, when viruses mutate again and again.
     But vaccines aren't the only type of medication; there are also pharmaceuticals. And disease prevention isn't the only type of medical relief; administering cures and relieving symptoms exist too. More than sixty-five medications existed in early 2020, which could be used to treat the symptoms of Covid-19. Instead of shortening their patents, or distributing them to the people, our lawmakers were more focused on profiting off of medical stock, and on promoting the development of new medications which could be used to combat Covid-19.
     The same exact thing happened during the H.I.V./A.I.D.S. crisis in the early 1980s; promotion of new medications whose development meant profit for pharmaceutical developers, over previously existing medications whose sale wouldn't "stimulate the economy" as much. Coincidentally, this was largely due to the action (or inaction) of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (N.I.A.I.D.).


     It seems that Canada - a country known for its cheap medications and their easy accessibility to any foreign tourist - has finally grown tired of the trade war.
     For intellectual property protections to be waived on coronavirus vaccines, will cause large companies to lose profits. But those companies do not deserve those profits; they have not earned those profits yet. Government trade policies that rig international trade, and the legitimate violence that governments threaten in order to extort unjustifiable taxes (such as tariffs), are the only reasons why large pharmaceutical companies "stand to" reap so much profit in the future.
     Such companies have grown so entitled to this potential future money, that some of them have begun suing governments for loss of profit, for having the audacity to pass laws punishing fraudulent, exploitative, and irresponsible behavior.


     This insanity must end.
     China - and India, which was recently hit with high Covid death tolls - each have more than a billion people. To paraphrase Mao Tse Tung, considerations must be made for the fact that hundreds of millions more people live in China (and India) than in any other country on Earth.
     We cannot pretend that the difficulties obtaining medications, which are faced today by people in foreign countries, will not affect us in the United States tomorrow. Our health is tied to the health of every other people who participates in global trade. This fact does not mean that we have to submit to unreasonable government restrictions regarding health and trade, though. It just means that we should stop protecting property rights so strongly.


     America cannot go on for much longer, pretending that the reason why it is enforcing intellectual property protections for longer and longer every decade, is due to its desire to be "exceptional"; distinct from the other, more "socialist" nations.
     "Socialism" doesn't mean "government doing stuff", but even if this simple definition of socialism were true, then protecting I.P. rights so strongly, is actually more "socialistic" than doing nothing.
     If capitalists insist on defining "socialism" and "redistribution" in such generalized ways, then why wouldn't it qualify as "redistribution" to extort money from taxpayers to pay for the apprehension and prosecution of I.P. violators (a/k/a pirates)?


     Why should the cross-cultural exchange of information, regarding Covid-19 and coronavirus vaccines, continue to be limited by law, when those limitations increase the prices of those goods, and when there are so many people on the planet who need an affordable vaccine?
     The solution is not to rush the vaccine. The solution is to decrease intellectual property protections, and trade barriers, which keep vaccines and medications expensive, until investment in pharmaceutical and vaccine R&D (research and development) begin to noticeably decline, and result in a level of medical production and innovation which is widely considered unacceptable.
     Until that problem appears, decrease the length of medical patents - and decrease tariffs unilaterally - and hope that other countries will follow suit. We must stop pointing to other countries, and saying "they have higher tariffs than we do, so they should lower them first", nor "they don't respect our patent laws, so we shouldn't have to respect theirs".
     Dying sick people and steel producers alike, cannot afford to play the "whataboutism" game anymore. They need affordable medicine, food, and transportation. There is no need to heap political barriers, to accessing and owning those resources, on top of the economic and social barriers to owning them, which already exist.


     The tools it takes to help people afford the needs of life, are political, but only to the extent that the politicization of the problem is the problem. Without all of the political tools like I.P. and tariffs and trade deals, the problem would be easily recognized as more economic than it is political. But only when economic exploitation ceases, will it become obvious to all, that the lack of access to human needs, is in fact a social problem; a humanitarian problem.
     It is one thing to say that a certain good shouldn't be owned. But it is another thing entirely, to say that a whole civilization should not have access to the technology necessary to produce, for themselves, what others refuse to produce for their benefit. Depriving people of technology, makes them into slaves to the technocratic productive class; just as depriving them of education makes them slaves of those who withhold information from them.


     It's time to liberate information and technology.
     Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom said "information wants to be free". This is true of damaging information about governments, and it is true about pieces of art which nobody would see without either money or the mass distribution allowed through filesharing. It is also true of information technologies, like assembly instructions, and the shapes of parts.
     Three-dimensional printing has not only liberated production; the production of printed guns has even empowered those wishing to defend themselves from corrupt government with the help of the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court case of D.C. v. Heller (which finds that the amendment protects the individual right to bear arms).
     Just as plans for guns can be sent over the internet, so can plans for cars. The more parts that people can produce in their own homes, the less they will have to rely on large companies to overcharge them for replacement parts.
     Considering that the current "fourth industrial revolution" is giving us technologies that fuse biological and digital technology (i.e., "Bio-Tech"), it is hard to wonder how long it will be before a poor sick person, in China or America, will be able to "download" a medication over the internet. Or at least a surgery program that they can upload to their robotic surgeon.
     The 2010s and 2020s are bringing humanity amazing medical innovations. A baby lamb was grown in a plastic bag, used as an artificial womb. A spinach leaf was grafted onto a piece of human heart tissue, and the blood made to run through the stalks of the spinach. Cloning technology and stem cell technology is developing all the time. Moreover, adult stem cell research is developing, which means that more medical advances can be made without controversially harvesting embryos.


     Why should any of this mind-blowing, life-expectancy-increasing technology, be any more expensive than it needs to be?
     Lowering sales taxes and tariffs - and the length of intellectual property protections - for any and all kinds of goods - can only result in longer, more comfortable, affordable lives for people, with less pressure to work long hours.

     Ironically, it is not the desire to remain faithful to the Constitution, which has caused this problem. Refraining from obeying the Constitution's limitations upon government, caused this problem.
     Obeying the Constitution's call - to secure rights to authors and inventors "for limited times" [emphasis mine] - would have prevented the current state of high prices and few competing producers. Allowing patents to get longer and longer all the time, with no limit in sight, is helping nobody but the government, profiteers who have long since stopped producing, and the grateful dead whose numbers are growing all the time.
     Zero tariffs and limited I.P. would thus hurt nobody, except for the "producers" that corrupt our government, take advantage of us by stealing our money, and then stop producing.



Written on May 6th and 7th, 2021

Published on May 7th, 2021

Edited and Expanded on May 8th and 12th, 2021

Link Added on May 25th, 2021

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Saturday, December 1, 2018

Supporters of Free Markets Should Oppose Gifts of State Privilege to Property Owners


     Some free marketers don't know capitalism when they see it.
     1) Easy credit from the Federal Reserve,
     2) small business loans from the S.B.A.,
     3) incorporation as an L.L.C. (which confers privilege to be irresponsible of legal and financial liability),
     4) the granting of patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property rights,
     5) continued insurance of business accounts by the taxpayers (through the F.D.I.C.),
     6) giving trade promotions and protections,
     7) favorable professional regulation that has the benefit of shutting out established firms' competitors,
     8) sometimes even subsidizing and bailing out, and
     9) protecting physically with state employed police and military, and state licensed "private" security guards:

     These are all ways in which government protects each one of the businesses in this country. Not each business receives all of these, but nearly all receive at least a few.
     The taxpayers - a group which includes poor people, who pay sales taxes, income taxes, and innumerable opportunity costs - foot the bill in each stage of this process. Anyone who supports retaining the state's monopoly on these things, cannot be said to support competition, not free markets, nor true statelessness.
     Leaving aside the issue of whether and where it's legal to fully own property in the first place, anyone who is born without property is coerced into either foraging and homesteading for survival (if possible and legal), or else selling one's labor. Those are the only "legitimate" modes of survival which do not involve either theft or violating minor infractions which arguably criminalize victimless crimes.
     Aside from being coerced into "choosing" from among these, to whom we shall sell our labor, we are additionally coerced into relying upon established sellers for food and other products, because our foraging and homesteading options are limited, and because our ability to go into competition with those producers is limited by an regulations.
     And in a "free market capitalist" system with "minimal" regulations, "minimal" will be excused to justify any or all of the business privileges I have listed, based on the false assumption that capital is the source of wealth (rather than land and labor, which come prior to it).
     That idea, of course, is what leads to the notion that corporate tax credits are socialist. Because only someone so deluded as to think free markets must involve even "minimal" business supports (from the state), would argue that allowing corporations (which the public created) to keep more of the money it has stolen while maintaining its books with taxpayer backup, counts as giving workers collective ownership of those corporations.



For more information, please click the following link to read my previous article on this subject:



Originally Written on August 11th, 2018
Edited on December 1st, 2018
Published on December 1st, 2018

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Friday, May 5, 2017

Revised Position on Discrimination and Interstate Commerce

      Private businesses should be free to do whatever they want on their own property, free to refuse service and job offers to anyone they please, and free to charge any price they want for the goods and services they provide.
      ...As long as they aren't involved in interstate commerce, and their state says it's okay; and as long as they don't receive any taxpayer funding (to support subsidies, small business loans, intellectual property protections, trade promotions, corporate liability limitations, bailouts, police and military protections, professional licensing considerations favorable to already existing businesses, and other privileges granted by the public).
      We can only have full private property rights, and a real free market (with easy entry into competition and trade) when businesses give up all of these artificial privileges and protections (which are funded, in part, through the extortion of taxpayers' earnings)
      Until companies are willing to give up all of these privileges and protections, we should regard at least 99% of these businesses as our property; that is, public property. Until they give up their mercantilist protections – constitutional though they may be – they should do whatever we tell them to do.
      Since we, the public, fund the Secretary of States' offices that grant these companies their charters, and their corporate status (with the limited liability protections which come with that) in the first place, these businesses should hire and serve whomever we tell them to hire and serve. If they want exemptions, the public has every right to condition the terms of those contracts.
      If the public tells its property – the businesses – to give away the goods they sell, they should comply. At the very least, they should refrain from getting in the way of people who are attempting to obtain, access, or use these goods themselves.
      Consider this patria potestas (“I brought you into this world, I can take you out”) applied to the relationship between government and enterprise. We the People created the government, so it is our right to alter or abolish it if and when it ceases to serve the purpose for which we created it. Moreover, it is our duty to abolish government that becomes destructive of these ends.
      Likewise, We the People created the government, which in turn created the businesses (through charters). Therefore, it is the right of the people – through their property, the government – to revoke companies' privileges (if and when they abuse those privileges). When companies form business alliances - which impersonate government Departments of Commerce - to steal from taxpayers to subsidize them and bail them out, it is the people's duty to revoke their charters, or even to abolish the Secretary of States' offices, so that no new corporations (and no new corporate privileges) can be created.
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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Monopoly and Property Rights

 Written in December 2010
Originally published 12-30-2010

Say you have an idea, an invention, or a way to improve a product. You want the exclusive right to get paid for your idea and secure your intellectual private property. So you go to the local, government-run patent office to do so.
Now nobody can compete with you unless they change their idea until it's different enough by government standards. Then you have a virtual monopoly. Monopoly is government protection of industry. So libertarianism and state capitalism are practically the same thing, especially when it comes to economic issues and the protection of property.
And all patents are registered at the federal level, so it's a centralized state capitalism, i.e., fascism, which easily sways towards totalitarian state socialism as soon as the state comes to favor building up its bureaucracies and creating government jobs when it thinks it can survive without cementing its business ties. So state capitalism and state socialism are the same thing.
So libertarianism and state socialism, though traditionally perceived as opposite, are really more similar than anyone could imagine.
And, obviously, anarcho-socialism cannot exist in any real way, because you can't take commercial or propertarian liberty away from the individual without having some form of public or socialized governmental organization with which to do so. So anarcho-socialism and state socialism are the same for all intents and purposes.
The public chooses at detriment to property owners, and property owners continue to possess and own at detriment to the remainder of the public.
Public-possessed means of production, private-owned means of production. What's the difference? In any remotely statist system, all private citizens are members of the public, and all public entities are operated by government agents for private profit.
I saw someone on TV talking about North Korea, saying that as soon as a country comes to embrace capitalism, democracy is never far behind. But late-night host Craig Ferguson says that capitalism and democracy need each other to balance out, because one is evil and the other is good, like the Olsen twins.
But does democracy develop in order to protect capitalism, or rather, in response and in opposition to it?
This country is built on the idea espoused by Franklin, Jefferson, and Rousseau - that private property rights are secured by public consent.
     So now that we've realized that both socialism and capitalism are bullshit and basically the same thing, where do we go from here?




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Friday, July 13, 2012

Intellectual Property: Adam Kokesh et al. vs. a Polyarchist Approach

            In a recent lecture which was posted on YouTube as “Dismantling Intellectual Property Myths (Adam Kokesh)”, media personality and former Marine Adam Kokesh – who  ran for the U.S. House from New Mexico in 2010 – defended his stance against intellectual property (hereafter referred to as “I.P.”), calling it an immoral “racket” and a “government scam…” which has no role “whatsoever in a free society”, and which is “holding us back in so many dangerous ways”.
In rejecting I.P., Kokesh takes a stance comparable to that of libertarians, classical liberals, and individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Samuel E. Konkin III, Jeffrey Tucker, Roderick Long, Wendy McElroy, Brad Spangler, Kevin Carson, and Stephan Kinsella.
            In answering a question on I.P. which was addressed to him, Kokesh began by acknowledging that there is a divide on the topic of I.P. among American libertarians. While libertarian-leaning political theorists such as Lysander Spooner, Ayn Rand, David Friedman, and J. Neil Schulman have expressed support for I.P., I believe that the debate between the latter group and the former group have created somewhat of a false dichotomy between the pro-I.P. and anti-I.P. crowds.

            In the lecture, Kokesh used many typical anti-I.P. arguments. In saying that I.P. stops “the free flow of ideas”, he echoed Stephan Kinsella, who had previously told Kokesh that I.P. imposes “restraints on the flow of information”, describing I.P. as – effectively – a “form of censorship”. Kokesh went on to say that I.P. is “based on owning ideas and sequestering them”.
            Kokesh also described I.P. as “directly at odds with real property rights”, saying that “you can’t have one and the other in co-existence at the same time as absolute principles; either you believe in property rights or you believe in intellectual property…” (this is the type of dichotomy which I earlier characterized as false). Stephan Kinsella also previously told Kokesh that I.P. is against “property rights”.
            Before continuing my criticism, I would like to qualify two things. First, in the context of the disproportionate government reaction to illegal file-sharing on the internet, Kokesh and Kinsella are correct in rejecting the status quo of copyright law and laws providing for censorship of the internet. Second, the two are also correct to reject I.P. in the context of the status quo of institutional government as we know it, but there will be more on that later.
            Kokesh and Kinsella characterize I.P. as a restraint on the free flow of ideas and information which conflicts with property rights. I would note that nowhere in Kokesh’s lecture or in his interview of Kinsella did either one of them define “property rights”, nor did they care to make any distinction between private property and personal property, in the vein of Mutualists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Before continuing my criticism of the anti-I.P. arguments made by Kokesh and Kinsella, I would like to explain the distinction between these two forms of property, and how I see intellectual property fitting in to this dichotomy.
              In the Mutualists’ view, “personal property” denotes physical, tangible property which is movable; capable of being possessed; and can be made available for access and use. “Private property” – on the other hand – usually denotes landed, immovable property, especially when such property exists at a volume which is difficult to justify given the number of people claiming to own it in proportion to the remainder of humanity and of their respective sets of needs and their possessed natural resources and means of production; when such property is unoccupied and thus cannot be readily defended by its purported owners without depending on the action of external actors; and when access to and use of such property is conditional upon the payment of rent by tenants and occupants, especially at an increasing price.
              Using the definition of personal property which I have just articulated, the types of goods protected by intellectual property rights certainly count as such, being that these goods – such as books, audio discs, and electronic data – are physical and tangible, movable, capable of being possessed, and capable of being made available for access and use.
              However, while personal property denotes the physical goods themselves, private property would seem to denote the right to exclusively possess and control the – to borrow a word from Shawn Wilbur – disposition of the physical property; that is, the enforced agreement and promise that an individual or a group of individuals will retain the power and ability to possess the property and control what happens to it and how it is used.
              But while the Mutualist conception of private property usually denotes immovable land as property, it perhaps more strongly connotes “propriety” – that is, ownership – suggesting more of a construct than a physical good. Removing all references to land and physicality from the conception of “private property”, it is easy to see how intellectual property could be considered a form of private property.
               First, I.P. exists at a volume which is difficult to justify given the needs of others. Granted, nobody needs to have access to books and music and e-data in order to survive, but the communication of information – be it educational, recreational, or otherwise – increases our ability to learn about our surroundings (and, often, as a corollary, how to adapt to and survive in our surroundings), and enriches our intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities. Indeed – and aptly so – Kinsella characterizes I.P. as a form of censorship (perhaps in an even broader sense than that of modern internet censorship by government) which inhibits the freedom of speech and the freedom of expression. Kinsella also points out that it has been claimed that the average American would owe $4.5 billion per year if prosecuted for illegal file-sharing to the fullest extent of the law, which he would criticize as cruel and unusual punishment that would not pass 8th-Amendment constitutional muster.
               Second, I.P. cannot be readily defended by its claimed owners without depending on the action of external actors. Being that it would be very difficult for writers, musicians, and authors of electronic data to take it upon themselves to maximize the distribution of their work to their audience, they usually have to rely on professional distributors to do this on their behalf. Given the advent of the printing press and subsequent forms of mass media – most recently, file-sharing – it is just as difficult (if not more) for authors to take it upon themselves to ensure that no member of their audience share, reproduce, re-appropriate, and / or profit off of the original work, so they usually have to rely upon some external actor to uphold their claimed rights to control what happens to their work (who can credibly become such external actors and how these rights are asserted and licensed-out will be addressed later).
               The third attribute of private property which I articulated – that is, its use and accessibility being conditional upon the payment of rent by users, especially at an increasing price – does not seem to apply (at least not in any way that goes beyond fee-for-use systems whereby readers, listeners, and internet users pay for continued access to the material). I would argue that this is only an occasional attribute of private property; one which is neither necessary nor sufficient to make the pertinent good qualify as a piece of private property, but rather merely one which makes private property appear more unfair and egregious.
            In summary, I would describe intellectual property as “a system of ownership or propriety which aims to enforce agreements and promises to protect and defend one or more persons’ power and ability to exclusively possess – and to control the access to and use of – physical, tangible, and movable goods which are capable of being possessed, are capable of being made available for access and use, exist at a volume which is difficult to justify given the reasonable desires of others, and cannot be readily defended by their purported owners without depending on the action of external actors”.
            Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect that Kokesh and Kinsella would be so careful in defining “property rights” in the brief interview and lecture in which they participated, but I feel that the distinctions which I have made – as well as those which I have yet to make, especially with regard to governments’ role in all this – are well worth the time which is required to make precise.

            Rejecting the notion that “there’s no incentive to create if you’re not gonna be rewarded” which was hypothetically suggested by one of his audience members, Kokesh expressed an opinion that in the absence of intellectual property, there would remain an incentive to innovate. Kokesh says sarcastically, “it’s not in human nature to innovate at all”, and “without the violent government stopping the free flow of ideas, who would even want to generate new ideas?”.


            Kokesh rejected the prevailing response to intellectual property disputes of lawsuits as opposed to innovation, research and development, productivity, and “creating the next idea”, saying that I.P. “takes the focus away from the next idea and focuses… on the last idea, and prevents it from being shared or built on”. He suggested that in the absence of I.P., there would be a “different incentive system” – what he called the “tip jar model” – and pointed out that when people give away their creations for free, other artists can’t compete, effectively causing the decrease of products in the given market.
I would argue that although low prices benefit the consumer – and although a voluntary system in which consumers pay what they think is an appropriate price for goods is what society should strive towards – low prices do not necessarily benefit the creator and the distribution company. While Benjamin Tucker said, “a man who reproduces his writings by thousands and spreads them everywhere voluntarily abandons his right of privacy and those who read them” and “[y]ou want your invention to yourself… then keep it to yourself” – and while creators do occasionally spread their work for mass consumption without expectation of payment – most creators would appreciate recognition and compensation for their work, and some may go further to ensure compensation by seeking I.P.-type protections.


            Kokesh called I.P. “destructive to innovation”, especially in regards to the music industry, pointing out that it is not primarily musicians who lobby for the continued existence of I.P., but rather the representatives of the record labels. Although I agree, I would take issue with the fact that Kokesh did not take into account the desires of musicians who do have complete creative control over their art, and rights to their own intellectual property.

            Another issue which Kokesh briefly discussed was how long patents should exist, asking “should we still be paying royalties to the guy that invented the wheel?”. However, he did not suggest decreasing the term of patent (the time period for which patents should exist), and made no reference to the fact that most patents registered in the U.S. expire after twenty years or less, with extensions of ten years or less.
I feel that it was hyperbole for Kokesh to make the argument in reference to the wheel, as well as for Benjamin Tucker to make the argument that – had I.P. “been in force in the lifetime of James Watt [the Scottish developer of the steam engine] [it would] have made his direct heirs the owners of at least nine-tenths of the now existing wealth of the world”.  Had Watt lived in the United States – and been subject to the twenty-year patent term and a subsequent shorter extension – his patent would have expired before his death, and therefore could not have been sold or bequeathed to anyone in perpetuity.
Tucker also said that had I.P. “been in force in the lifetime of the inventor of the Roman alphabet, nearly all the highly civilized peoples of the earth would be to-day the virtual slaves of that inventor’s heirs… they would have remained in the state of semi-barbarism”. Not only does my earlier statement about patent terms apply to this example, but Tucker also makes the mistake of supposing that one sole person “invented” the alphabet; the alphabet is not an innovation with a single inventor, but rather something which exists solely for the purpose of communication between multiple persons, and which is continually developed over time.
Additionally, Tucker refers to development of the steam engine, and to an alphabet which exists in its current form due to continuous developments. From what I have seen and read of Tucker and Kokesh, they appear to pay little attention to this distinction. In fact, Kokesh’s proposed alternatives to lawsuits included “research and development”, so it would seem that he would be likely to support giving developers credit for their contribution to ideas.
Kokesh even – at one point in his lecture – said “this is not to say that you can’t have trade secrets… secret formulas”; this statement could be construed as an outright vindication of some system of intellectual property rights. While Tucker wrote that there should be no “property in ideas”, he and Kokesh also fail to mention that patent applications are rejected if it can be shown that they are simple observations or applications of physical laws, as opposed to genuine novelties of original innovation and development.
Although Murray Rothbard rejected patents, he supported copyrights, arguing that a copyright notice on a piece of literary work stating that its author does not consent to anyone using it unless they agree not to copy it constitutes a contract. However, just as it would be ridiculous to claim that reading the Bible or the Constitution makes one subject to their orders – especially in regards to those who don’t believe in the Bible, or are not willing citizens of the United States, or believe that claims of the power to do this or that which are made in the Constitution do not necessarily prove the existence of the ability or the properly-delegated authority to do so – it is ridiculous for Rothbard to pretend that reading a copyright notice obligates one to refrain from reproducing the work in question. Of course, the underlying premise in this notion is that it is not the act of reading which causes the obligation, but instead the existence and properly-applied authority and / or power of some external actor who would attempt to require one to obey.
 What else has been ignored so far in the discussion is that the American legal system guarantees patents for a determined period of time, and in a manner that is impersonal, being that the duration of the patent term – leaving aside the existence of periodic renewal fees – is typically determined without input from the originator. This is why I agreed with Kokesh – to some extent –  when he said that I.P. is one of the “things that the Founding Fathers got wrong”. The power relationship between the originator and the government will be discussed later.

            Kokesh takes his own work as an example, and defends the practice of “copyleft”, saying “my career is based on generating intellectual property, and I don’t claim any of it… everything that is produced with copyleft is free to use and replicate and pass along as long as you don’t charge for the content itself; as long as you don’t claim intellectual property, as long as you don’t turn it into intellectual property” by altering it and selling it.
            Although my intention is not to lambast Kokesh for being excessively well-compensated for his reporting and interview work – and although I cannot say for certain exactly what is his major source of income – I would point out that Kokesh is most likely reasonably well-compensated for his contributions to media, that he is a former Marine, that he is the son of a venture capitalist, and that he is (to be perfectly frank) a white man living in America in the 21st century.
My point is that Kokesh can afford not to claim intellectual property rights to his work, at least more so than the average innovator in the third world, the average American innovator who is a member of one or more minority groups, the average American innovator who has less job experience, and the average American innovator who does not have the advantages associated with having performed military service. To show that I do not say this out of contempt for Kokesh, I would point out that the same is true of myself in regards to my blog posts and YouTube videos, although perhaps not in regards to my more ambitious and laborious future projects such as books; time alone will tell.
 While I applaud and admire Kokesh for his support of copyleft as a solution to problems associated with the modern system of intellectual property rights under the U.S. government, I would argue that Kokesh may be inappropriately concluding from the fact that he does not need I.P. that nobody else should be allowed to claim intellectual property rights on their work.
I also take issue with the manner in which Kokesh rattled off sayings like “there are no new ideas under the sun” and “we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants”. He surmised that a rejection of I.P. could include arguments such as pointing out that while one may have written a book, one did not invent a language, come up with sentences, invent paragraph structure, or invent paper or ink.
             In using the phrase “invent a language”, Kokesh – likely without knowing it – refuted Benjamin Tucker’s pretention that language and its manners of use can be “invented”. Kokesh is correct to imply that the use of language is refined and improved over time – periods of time which, I might add, are much longer than the U.S. patent term – by more than one person. However, we cannot say for certain what Kokesh’s reaction would be to claims of intellectual property rights to developments of languages which could have been made by people such as J.R.R. Tolkien and the inventors of Esperanto and other constructed languages, many of whom employed the traditional grammatical structures of existing languages – and some of whom rely on grammatical and syntactical structures thought to be universal – in their creations.
            I would further suggest that – in making his “we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants” comments – Kokesh is making somewhat of a social-contractarian argument against intellectual property. We may remember the words of Harvard law professor and current Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, who in 2011 said “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own… you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe… because of police… and fire forces that the rest of us paid for… part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of [what you earn] and pay forward for the next kid who comes along”.
            Warren concludes from the fact that modern American society – which affords its citizens sufficient opportunity to earn and accumulate wealth – has components which happen to include publicly-funded roads, schools, police, and fire stations, citizens have the responsibility to pay their earnings forward to the remainder of current society as compensation for the work which has been done by past society.
This is a fallacy because Warren fails to take into account the fact that people who are born in the United States have no ability to choose not to be subject to its laws, nor to choose to be subject to solely the laws of the state or community in which they reside, nor to choose to be subject to the laws of a government competing within the same jurisdiction, nor to choose to be subject to any government which does not have publicly-funded roads, schools, police, and / or fire stations, etc..
She suggests that a person should be obligated to pay into a system which they do not have the opportunity to resist, nor the opportunity to earn the wealth necessary to relocate themselves to the jurisdiction of a foreign government without being required to pay some of that wealth to the government which has jurisdiction over their native land which they feel is oppressive of their rights. 
Furthermore, she fails to consider that what she claims to be the price of earning wealth in a society which affords sufficient economic opportunity is an inhibition and a conditioning of that very opportunity itself. I would argue that this renders Warren’s conception of the conditions for a fair and just society inherently self-contradictory.
       Similarly, Kokesh suggests that while society has been responsible for developing the contributing components of a hypothetical modern author’s book – such components specifically enumerated by Kokesh having been language, sentences, paragraph structure, paper, and ink – the author of the book, as compensation for the contributions of past society, owes current society something; namely, to give in to the demands of current society not to claim intellectual property rights to his work.
          To be explicit, I would argue that – even admitting that some compensation may be due as a condition of living in a free society – no reasonable claim can be made that compensation should be made to current society on the premise that its existence was made possible by the work of past society.
Even so, I maintain that under the current system, society is not free (at least in the civic, institutional sense), due to the fact that – as I explained earlier – no alternatives exist to the subjugation of individuals to the government or governments claiming exclusive or shared jurisdiction over the territory in which such individuals reside and / or are present; this brings me to my last point.

            Murray Rothbard argued that patents are coercive monopolistic privileges granted by the State. In refuting I.P., Adam Kokesh used phrases like “the government” and “the violent government”. Being that both Rothbard and Kokesh were criticizing the system of intellectual property as it exists in the context of the United States government, their manner of phrasing is to be expected.
            Kokesh also used phrases like “the force of government” and “force and violence”. Although in the latter phrase, Kokesh did not say “the government”, with both phrases he suggests that all government is inherently forceful and violent. Nowhere did he define force or violence, or consider that under certain conditions, government can be non-forceful, non-violent, and non-coercive.
            My conception of the freedom of the individual in regards to government or governments is similar to that of Roderick Long; one which could be termed “polyarchism”. It is a position which is neither Statist nor anarchist. It rejects not only the monopoly of Statism, but also the chaos which could result from anarchism in the form of people resolving in their own favor the disputes of others who have vested interest in the relevant decisions.
I believe that it is this type of autocracy which can cause anarchism to become chaotic, and that it is the aforementioned type of monopoly which decreases the number of alternatives to governance from among which individuals are free to choose; decreases them to one in all current cases. It is the lack of competition between governments within the same territory – the imposition of monopoly government by ability to use physical power to ensure the perpetuation of its own exclusive jurisdiction – which causes, and essentially is, tyranny.
Benjamin Tucker called “the patent monopoly” one of “the four monopolies”, the others being those of money, land, and tariffs. He argued that intellectual property creates scarcity where none naturally existed, and that I.P. is an unnatural monopoly. I agree that each of Tucker’s four monopolies are unnatural, but I say so only because government itself is an unnatural monopoly. How monopoly government managed to escape Tucker’s attention – as a cause of all other monopolies, at that – we may never know.
I would argue that a government monopoly could be natural and just by virtue of a government proving itself so competent, responsible, and moral that everyone who is eligible to become citizens of that government would choose to renounce citizenship of their previously chosen government in order to do so. But that’s beside the point.
Long before some government becomes able to distinguish itself from among its competitors in such  a manner, we must make it so that alternatives to jurisdictionally-exclusive governments exist in the first place. But how might a just system of intellectual property rights exist in such an environment? To determine this, we must revisit the various aspects of I.P. which we have gleaned so far, removing those aspects which would only exist under unnaturally monopolistic government.
Intellectual property in the form of copyright seems to exist as a purported contractual agreement which is made obligatory upon the reader of a copyright notice in the act of its reading. Similarly, intellectual property in the form of patent seems to exist as a purported contractual agreement which is made obligatory on one who consents to be subject to a government which makes a claim that it shall have the power and authority to secure – in the Constitution’s own words – “for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”.
The obligation to refrain from reproducing and / or re-appropriating a work in a manner that is not innovative or original is applied through the assistance of actors other than the originator – acting through properly-delegated authorization by the originator, who chooses such actors from among a set of competing alternatives – being that I.P. cannot be readily defended in a manner that is sufficient without such assistance.
In the presence of such competing alternative actors acting on the behalf of – and in assistance of – the originator of a work, the originator would be free to choose whichever agency he feels acts in accordance with his ethics and desires.
If he desires the freedom to sell or bequeath a patent or copyright, he can choose to have his I.P. upheld by one of the agencies which offers such options. If he desires the freedom to determine for his own purposes the duration of his patent term, he can choose to have his I.P. upheld by one of the agencies which grants him the ability to choose that duration, or he can choose from among a set of agencies which offer various predetermined patent terms.
Naturally, an originator would desire to optimize the effects of his claimed intellectual property rights. To do so, he would seek some compromise between the maximum number of people on whom an agreement to refrain from making use of his I.P. would be obligatory, and the maximum amount of restitution from those who do make use of his work. To maximize the former, the originator would choose the agency which governs the greatest number of people; to maximize the latter, he would choose the agency which applies the harshest penalties.
Whatever compromise the originator chooses, the effects would be negated – at least among people making informed decisions about who governs them – because very few people who would violate the claimed I.P. rights of others would choose to be subject to an agency which levies harsh penalties for doing so, and very few people who do not endorse I.P. to begin with would choose to be subject to an agency which governs a large number of people, many of whom are likely to have taken into account their personal views on I.P. in choosing their agency.
Effectively, pro-I.P. people would have their rights applied, but no reasonable anti-I.P. person would be penalized for violating those rights. Of course, such a system brings to mind the Bible verse from 1st Timothy “the law is made not for the righteous but for the lawless”, and leaves prevailing modern notions of ethical government and societal justice in shreds.
But it also begs the questions; are ethical government and civic societal justice anything more than the legislation of morality? Should men be held accountable to anything other than the consistency their claimed beliefs? Furthermore, can any progress be made towards reconciling opposing views on intellectual property, or on other ethical issues of contention? Additionally, what is to be done in the mean-time, before competitive government can become a reality?

What remains to be addressed is precisely how such a system would purport to resolve disputes between and amongst competing dispute-resolution organizations (or agencies, or syndicates), i.e., governments. A detailed theory on this topic can be found in Robert Murphy’s “Chaos Theory: Private Law and Private Defense”, but suffice it to say that it entails such governments ceding authority to independent courts without vested interest in resolving the disputes, making decisions in a way that can be appealed many times in perpetuity.

Any semblance of finality would emerge only through temporary trends in the types of choices made by persons in the market for government. Nothing would be set in stone, and nothing should be, because ethical trends and the sets of information which are available to people which may indicate that the truth suggests this or that course of action are ever-changing.
I would argue that such a system would provide viable avenues for individuals to attempt to influence the prevailing governmental environment in a manner that is consistent with their personal ethics; if most people support I.P., then most governments will have laws protecting I.P. rights, and if most people oppose I.P., then few governments will have laws protecting I.P. rights. If most people think a twenty-year patent term is appropriate, then most governments will apply the law relevant to that notion, and if more people believe a shorter patent term is appropriate – or that the sale or bequeathing of patents is unacceptable – then there will be alternatives available which will allow them to act upon such beliefs.
In my opinion, for the time being – until competitive government becomes a reality – the perpetuation of systematic intellectual property rights is either immoral or amoral, as is all action which is not explicitly and intentionally focused towards the abolition of monopoly government. Therefore, the only solutions available to us with regards to I.P. relate to lack of action, direct black-market action, and – to borrow a phrase from Wally Conger in describing liberalism - the “leash[ing of] the State to make it more palatable”.
Making the current Statist I.P. system more palatable, we can vote and petition the governments in such a way that may cause the decrease of the duration of patent terms and patent term extensions; the relaxation of prosecution for breaking laws against file-sharing; the decreased censorship of the internet and elsewhere; and the repeal of laws on patents, file-sharing, and censorship.
Acting directly through the black (or underground) market, we can continue sharing copyrighted material in protest. However, we should only do so judiciously, and take special consideration for the desires and needs of originators who are living as opposed to dead, who are well-off as opposed to struggling, and who earn their livelihoods by distributing materials face-to-face; for example, musicians and authors who tour more than their competitors.
Refraining from acting, we can refrain from claiming copyrights (opting instead to take Adam Kokesh’s lead by copylefting), refrain from applying for patents and patent term extensions, and encouraging others to refrain from doing the same.

Whatever set of solutions we choose, we should bear in mind that intellectual property rights is one of the most contentious – and potentially divisive – issues among the various competing schools of anarchist thought.
We should also bear in mind the distinctions between personal and private property; between natural and unnatural (or artificial, or unearned) monopoly; and between Statism, polyarchism, and anarchism.
Additionally, another distinction must be made between monopoly which is asserted through power for its own perpetuation in the form of State violence, and monopoly which is claimed by individuals in the form of exclusive rights to the product and fruits of one’s labor. While monopoly government may shape and be conducive to monopolistic intellectual property rights under the current system, a claim to an exclusive right to control what happens to one’s work is not necessarily an endorsement of monopoly government, and such a claim does not always see fruition, especially given sufficient alternatives in the market for just government.

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