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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