In, Bryan Caplan’s EconLog post Fraud and Punishment , Caplan comes down on the pro property side while Hayekian Will Wilkinson proclaims that “libertarianism is not Rothbardism” and chides Caplan and others for “conflating” the two. Leaving aside this dispute about who should be thrown out of the libertarian “church,” I noted a few points made
The question of how to objectively determine damages for negligence (tort) in a libertarian system often arises. There is not much solid, libertarian analysis out there on this issue–the answers are usually either positivistic and assume some presumptive validity of common law rules; or they are libertarian but without much mooring in any coherent
In response to my Reducing the Cost of IP Law , my friend and ex-colleague (and mentor) Steve Mendelsohn , a patent lawyer in Philadelphia, wrote me the following. N.B.: Steve is not a libertarian but is honest and smart, unlike patent shills (he’s also an excellent patent attorney, if you need one). Here’s an edited version of his comments,
In this post , Monsanto’s General Counsel disagrees with Google’s Head of Patents and General Counsel, who had complained about the risks companies like Google face from huge damage awards in patent lawsuits. I am so tired of patent lawyers and companies with vested interests making the tired old argument that we should not “weaken” patent
Since 1988 I’ve been fascinated with Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “ argumentation ethics “ defense of libertarian rights. This was around the time I was exposed to the legal concept “estoppel” in a contracts law class, which I ended up using in my own arguments for libertarian rights. I gave an overview of Hoppe’s and related rights theories in my 1996
Just came across an interesting blogpost by one Bary Stocker, a “British philosopher based in Istanbul”: Hoppe: Habermas’ Anarcho-Conservative Student . See also Revisiting Argumentation Ethics ; Discourse Ethics entry in Wikipedia (which yours truly started); Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics ; my New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights
I wrote previously on the Troll Tracker case (see Update on Patent Troll Tracker ; Troll Tracker Lands Job Fighting Patent Trolls! ). This case concerns defamation suits filed against “Troll Tracker,” aka Rick Frenkel, by two Texas lawyers, in the aftermath of Frenkel’s identity being revealed, after bounties put up by one of the subjects of his
My article, “ Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright ,” was published today in Economic Notes (No. 113, Jan. 18, 2011), a publication of the UK-based Libertarian Alliance. (This article is based on my speech of Nov. 6, 2010, at the 2010 Students for Liberty Texas Regional Conference, University of Texas, Austin; audio and
On occasion you get some defender of patents who is upset when we use the m-word to describe these artificial state-granted monopoly rights. For example here one Dale Halling, a patent attorney (surprise!) posts about “The Myth that Patents are a Monopoly” and writes, ” People who suggest a patent is a monopoly are not being intellectually honest
As I noted in Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property , statists used to be much more honest. The federal government used to a Dept. of War . In 1947, its named was chagned to the Dept. of Army of the “New Military Establishment,” and in 1949, to the Department of Defense. Europeans are usually more honest than Americans. Socialists
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.