If "intellectual property" is not a misnomer, then it needs to be explained on what basis a property right is time-delimited, as are copyrights and patents but not other forms of property. Is this a property right or a subsidy granted by law, e.g., to foster innovation and creativity?
Conservable Economist
Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?
Timothy Taylor
Quote from the article: "If I use your idea, you still have the idea, but are less able to profit from using it. The two concepts may be cousins, but they not identical."
ReplyDeleteIt is simple not true that communication and use of an idea makes it less profitable. The profitability of an idea comes from how well you are using it not how many people are using it.
"Intellectual Property" is simple the logical extension of the western imperialist conception of property into the commons of intellectual culture. It does what all property does.
It puts an armed thug in front of a resource that everyone needs common access to and says it is now in the private control an elite so they can manage "scarcity" whether real or artificial by charging rent.
All property is about controlling what other people do. Intellectual property is controlling people by defining what ideas they may or may not rightfully act upon.
Marx correctly predicted that this was where the capitalist system would end up. Where even our very thought must be commoditized, priced by a market, and bought and sold for profit and subject to rents.
In a free market you can't ever allow even the thought that a thing cannot be brought or subjected to market control. Everything that can be "exchanged" must be judge nominally according to it's money price.
The quality of common abundance and thus no pricing must not ever be allowed to exist lest the idea that market's cannot judge the value of certain thing to exist.
A free market in "intellectual property" by definition it means the violent elimination free conceptualization and sharing by mankind just the globalization of a free market in land and other resources means the elimination of freely accessible commons for public use.
So yeah intellectual property is property because it fills the oligarchs need for it to be treated as such. Property is what power determines it to be and all the yammer of philosophers will never change that fact.