An old-time socialist cliche in favor of socialized medicine is that private companies profit from people’s sickness, which is supposed to be unconscionable. Actually the best way to meet people’s needs is through a system that permits profitability as a sign of success and efficiency, just as it makes sense that farmers should profit from people’s hunger or builders should profit from people’s need for shelter etc.
And yet, reading about how drug companies are using the state to prohibit the production of life-saving drugs in poor countries, solely to extract monopoly rents, the phrase does seem to make some degree of sense — as this passionate lefty here points out.
A student at the Mises University, who is surrounded by some of the smartest young lefty students in the country, told me last week that there is no question in his mind that the injustices done in the name of “intellectual property” are not only driving young people away from the idea of property rights in general but are actually inspiring a re-embrace of socialism.
This is why the intellectual stakes are so high. It is urgent that believers in real capitalism separate themselves completely from this false notion of “intellectual property” so that it not permanently discredit the cause of property property, free markets, and capitalism generally. To save the idea of private property, it must be completely severed from impostor forms.
