There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? But politics is merely war by other means. Political discourse within the state inherently involves the threat of violence and is ultimately backed by it.
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There’s no room for violence in our political discourse?Read More »
There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? Read Post »
“Should Be Legalized” is a a great, high quality parody of Eminem’s “Love The Way You Lie.” The video reminds us of the dangers of prohibition and urges Congress to legalize marijuana. I must, however, object to the video’s desire for pot to be regulated or taxed.
Legalize It _\|/_ But Don’t Tax Or Regulate It, Bro Read Post »
Watch this political ad (below) promoting Washington State’s Initiative 1098, which seeks to dedicate $2 billion per year to fund education and healthcare for children. It’s always for the children! It’s not about soaking the rich! even though this other Yeson1098 video makes a point of demonizing the greedy rich. The slogan is “the wealthy pay more, the rest of us pay less.” Bill Gates, Sr., is presented as a grandfatherly figure sacrificing his comfort for the sake of childrens’ enjoyment while he explains the reasonableness of this new scheme to legally plunder the rich.
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Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098Read More »
Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 Read Post »
In Reducing the Cost of IP Law, I argued that one improvement to the patent system (short of abolition) would be to eliminate injunctions and provie for a compulsory licensing system. As I noted there, the compulsory licensing approach is not new. Some countries impose compulsory licensing on patentees who do not adequately “work” the patent. I discussed provisions in US patent law that do permit compulsory licenses already in some situations.1 I was reminded of this when discussing with some friends a comment to this blogpost, Pirated Software Could Bring Down Predator Drones. The commentor stated: “Just declare the IP a state secret. The market value is then zero, as the company cant sell it legally. Buy it from the company for 1 cent. Then classify the contract as top secret. If the company complains, send the people to jail or gitmo.”
As I noted in the previous posts, the feds have the authority to license third parties to manufacture patented articles, without patent infringement liability; this was threatened in the Cipro anthrax drug a couple years ago. The feds then have to pay “compensation” to the patent holder. Something similar happens if the some federal agency issues a “secrecy order” for military or other reasons for a pending patent.2
It occurs to me that the very notion of a compulsory license for IP can help to illustrate how IP is an obvious transfer of wealth. Consider: under current law, the state grants a patent monopoly to some applicant. Then, the state can declare a compulsory monopoly (or issue a secrecy order), and pay you some compensation for this “taking”. Obviously this payment comes from tax payers. So the IP step can be seen as just an intermediate step to justify transferring money from everyone else to the patentee. It’s as if you tell the state you have an idea and the state takes money from others and gives it to you. Come to think of it, this is exactly the idea behind proposals for tax-funded “innovation” awards–proposed even by some libertarians (!).3 The point is that even when the state does not issue the compulsory license, they are simply deputizing the patentee to go out and extort the money himself; it’s like taxation.
(Incidentally, in An Objectivist IP Argument for Taxation, I provide another argument for why IP could be used to justify taxes.)
See Ciprofloxacin: the Dispute over Compulsory Licenses; Tom Jacobs, Bayer, U.S. Deal on Anthrax Drug, Motley Fool (Oct. 25, 2001); Compulsory Licensing in the US. See also Kinsella, Brazil and Compulsory Licenses, Mises Blog (June 8, 2007); Kinsella, Condemning Patents, Mises Blog (Feb. 27, 2005). ↩
See The Secrecy Order Program in the United States Patent & Trademark Office; 35 USC ch. 17 §§ 181, 183. ↩
See my posts Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund”; “$30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The ‘Progressive-Libertarian’ Solution“; “Re: Patents and Utilitarian Thinking Redux: Stiglitz on using Prizes to Stimulate Innovation.” ↩
A Thought Experiment about Patents and Taxes Read Post »
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, stressing “the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid”, has proposed to modernize the UK’s income tax system. Once employers provide payroll information in real-time, “it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.”
I’m sure that subjects of the Crown have nothing to fear. The state can be trusted to process their paychecks promptly, correctly, and efficiently. Only a crank would object to this modernization plan. After all, everyone fondly remembers the Star Chamber that evolved out of a similar medieval program for keeping tabs on the Jews. Since it worked out so well last time, how could anyone expect things to go wrong now?
Statism in the UK: Paychecks to be preprocessed by the state Read Post »
