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KOL459 | Twitter Spaces: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Libertarian Property Rights, and the Case for Abolishing Intellectual Property

by on April 15, 2025
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 459.

In response to lots of froth on Twitter related to Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law,” which was echoed by Elon Musk (Musk and Dorsey: “delete all IP law”) I decided to attempt to host an impromptu Twitter Spaces about this. After overcoming some technical glitches, here is the result (and thanks to @Brunopbch, @NotGovernor (Patrick Smith), and @TrueAmPatriot86 for assists). I proposed to the space: “Fielding Questions About Abolishing Intellectual Property, about IP, and About Libertarian Property Rights”, and that’s basically what we ended up talking about. The Twitter spaces can be viewed here; I have clipped off the first 8 minutes or so of setup talk for this podcast episode.

Grok summaries and shownotes and Youtube Transcript below.

GROK HIGH LEVEL SUMMARY:

Below is a concise summary of the video “Stephan Kinsella on Intellectual Property (IP)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FdFoB9QHY), divided into six parts, based on the provided transcript and informed by the linked post (https://c4sif.org/2025/04/musk-dorsey-delete-all-ip-law/). The video features Stephan Kinsella discussing the case for abolishing IP laws in a Twitter Spaces session.
Summary in Six Parts
1. Introduction and Context (0:01–1:03)
Kinsella opens the session, discussing technical setup and his recent online IP debates, sparked by figures like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, who advocate abolishing IP laws.
2. Addressing IP Objections (1:09–5:16)
Kinsella invites questions and tackles a common concern: IP protects small creators from big corporations. He argues this is misguided, noting Musk and Dorsey’s history of non-aggressive patent use (e.g., Tesla, Twitter), and challenges the assumption that creators deserve government-enforced rights.
3. Misconceptions and Debate Challenges (5:23–12:28)
He debunks myths equating copying to theft or plagiarism, criticizing IP as anti-competitive. Kinsella laments Twitter’s combative nature, where users avoid substantive dialogue, and shares his desire for recorded discussions to foster learning, citing past successes.
4. China and IP’s Economic Impact (12:34–15:22)
Responding to a question, Kinsella argues China’s growth shows benefits of lax IP, as adopting Western technology isn’t theft but learning. He critiques U.S. politicians for using “IP theft” to justify tariffs and impose Western IP laws globally.
5. IP vs. Property Rights and Innovation (15:48–38:02)
Kinsella disputes claims that IP is a natural right, explaining ownership comes from first use or contract, not creation. Using Bitcoin as an example, he emphasizes secrecy over legal enforcement. He argues IP reduces innovation by granting monopolies, slowing progress for patent holders and competitors alike.
6. Corporate Power and IP’s Decline (38:09–1:15:40)
He asserts IP fuels corporate giants (e.g., pharmaceuticals, Microsoft), not small creators, inflating prices and harming consumers. Kinsella notes copyright’s decline due to piracy and predicts technology (e.g., 3D printing) may render patents obsolete. He concludes that abolishing IP requires embracing uncertainty for justice, despite public fear of change.
This summary condenses the video’s key points into six sections, aligning with the principled and pragmatic arguments Kinsella makes, while reflecting Musk and Dorsey’s anti-IP stance from the linked post. Let me know if you need further refinement!

GROK DETAILED SUMMARY:

Below is a summary of the video “Stephan Kinsella on Intellectual Property (IP)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FdFoB9QHY), with time markers, based on the provided transcript and supplemented by insights from the linked post (https://c4sif.org/2025/04/musk-dorsey-delete-all-ip-law/) and related X posts. The video features Stephan Kinsella discussing intellectual property (IP) in a Twitter Spaces session, addressing objections, and arguing for the abolition of IP laws from a libertarian perspective.
Summary with Time Markers
0:01–1:03: Introduction and Setup
  • Kinsella greets participants and discusses technical aspects of hosting the Twitter Spaces session. He expresses openness to future collaborations and notes recent online debates about IP, particularly sparked by figures like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey.
1:09–5:16: Opening Discussion on IP and Common Objections
  • Kinsella invites questions about IP, aiming to clarify confusion rather than lecture (1:09).
  • A participant raises a frequent objection: IP protects small creators from large corporations that could exploit their innovations (1:27–2:16).
  • Kinsella acknowledges the concern but argues it’s misguided. He notes that Dorsey and Musk have historically disarmed their companies (Twitter and Tesla) from aggressive patent use, suggesting they’re not the threat critics fear (2:24–3:06).
  • He critiques the assumption that creators inherently deserve property rights in their ideas, arguing that opponents often demand practical solutions without defending IP’s legitimacy (3:17–5:16).
5:23–9:08: Addressing Misconceptions and Bad Faith Arguments
  • Kinsella discusses common fallacies, like equating copying to plagiarism or theft (5:23–5:35).
  • He argues that IP is about preventing competition, not protecting rights, and questions why creators feel entitled to government-enforced profits (5:41–6:06).
  • He expresses frustration with bad-faith debaters who avoid substantive discussion, citing their suspicion of tech billionaires like Musk and Dorsey as emotionally driven rather than reasoned (6:12–7:02).
  • He compares IP concerns to fears about libertarian societies (e.g., fire protection, crime), noting these are valid questions but require addressing emotional “feels” to gain traction (7:02–7:27).
9:13–12:28: Challenges of Online Debate and Desire for Constructive Dialogue
  • Kinsella laments Twitter’s combative nature, where users prioritize “spicy” remarks over learning (9:13–9:31).
  • He shares experiences offering Zoom calls to debaters, only to be accused of bad faith when they decline, reinforcing his view that many aren’t serious about dialogue (9:37–12:17).
  • He hopes to record such discussions for broader benefit, citing a past success convincing someone at a libertarian event (9:43–10:58).
12:34–15:22: China and IP as an Empirical Case
  • A participant asks if China’s lax IP enforcement illustrates benefits of ignoring IP (12:34).
  • Kinsella agrees, arguing that China’s economic rise partly stems from using Western technology without IP barriers, which he sees as learning, not theft (12:46–14:18).
  • He critiques the narrative of China “stealing” IP as an insult and notes that U.S. politicians use it to justify tariffs and trade restrictions, forcing Western-style IP laws on other nations (14:25–15:22).
15:48–20:23: IP vs. Real Property and Creation Myths
  • A participant notes that IP expires, unlike real property, and wonders if people value IP more due to its creative nature (15:48–16:27).
  • Kinsella disputes this, arguing that creation isn’t a source of property rights—ownership comes from first use or contract, not making something (16:34–18:34).
  • He explains that transforming owned materials (e.g., building a car) doesn’t grant new rights; you own the result because you owned the inputs (18:40–19:00).
  • He compares IP reliance to dependence on government services (e.g., healthcare, roads), noting that people struggle to imagine alternatives because they’re accustomed to the status quo (19:07–20:23).
20:56–26:02: IP as Unjust and Analogies to Slavery
  • Kinsella likens IP debates to slavery abolition arguments, where critics demanded guarantees about post-slavery economics rather than addressing moral wrongs (20:56–22:02).
  • He argues that if IP violates property rights, it should be abolished regardless of economic uncertainty, as no one is entitled to government-guaranteed profits (22:09–23:36).
  • He emphasizes that unjust laws harm some and benefit others, and removing them corrects this imbalance, even if beneficiaries (e.g., big corporations) lose out (23:42–26:02).
26:13–38:02: Bitcoin, Trade Secrets, and Innovation Incentives
  • A participant (Surfer) shares a debate where he argued that ideas, like Bitcoin private keys, lose exclusivity once shared, relying on secrecy, not government enforcement (26:13–29:04).
  • Kinsella agrees but clarifies that information isn’t ownable; secrecy provides practical control, not legal ownership (29:33–31:25).
  • He notes Bitcoiners rely on cryptography, not laws, for security, reinforcing that possession (control) differs from legal ownership (31:49–35:28).
  • On trade secrets, he explains that companies already use them over patents, and revealing innovations (e.g., via products) naturally invites competition, which IP artificially restricts (35:35–38:02).
38:09–55:04: IP’s Impact on Innovation and Society
  • Surfer argues that IP reduces innovation by lowering incentives to improve patented products and that competition drives prices to marginal costs, benefiting society (38:09–39:35).
  • Kinsella agrees, explaining that patents create monopolies, reducing both the patent holder’s and competitors’ incentives to innovate (39:42–50:32).
  • He notes that IP distorts innovation by favoring patentable inventions over unpatentable ideas (e.g., scientific theories), skewing research priorities (50:39–53:04).
  • He highlights how pharmaceutical patents inflate drug prices, harming consumers, and argues that abolishing IP would level the playing field, contrary to claims it protects small creators (54:41–55:04).
55:58–1:04:26: Big Corporations and the Decline of Copyright
  • Kinsella argues that patents and copyrights create large corporations (e.g., Microsoft, pharmaceutical giants), not protect small creators, benefiting entrenched interests like Hollywood and publishers (55:58–59:48).
  • He contrasts his principled, pro-capitalist critique of IP with unprincipled open-source arguments, rooting his stance in property rights and innovation (59:58–1:00:45).
  • He notes that copyright is becoming unenforceable due to piracy and technology (e.g., encryption, 3D printing), forcing creators to adapt with new business models, and hopes patents will follow (1:02:27–1:04:26).
1:04:39–1:15:40: Summarizing Principled and Pragmatic Arguments
  • A participant (Matt) suggests IP debates split into principled (property rights) and pragmatic (innovation incentives) concerns, arguing IP stifles creation by restricting idea-sharing (1:04:39–1:07:20).
  • Kinsella agrees, noting that no empirical studies conclusively show IP boosts innovation, and public resistance stems from fear of change and distrust of reformers like Musk and Dorsey (1:07:32–1:09:59).
  • He likens IP to Bastiat’s “seen vs. unseen,” where its absence could foster unseen market solutions, but global IP treaties prevent real-world comparisons (1:10:06–1:14:17).
  • He concludes that advocating IP abolition requires faith in liberty and willingness to embrace uncertainty for justice, acknowledging public conservatism as a barrier (1:14:22–1:15:40).
Insights from Linked Post and X Posts
The post on c4sif.org (April 8, 2025) highlights Musk’s and Dorsey’s public calls to abolish IP laws, citing Musk’s X post claiming IP slows innovation and Dorsey’s agreement that IP is a “net negative.” These align with Kinsella’s video arguments, particularly his critique of IP as anti-competitive and innovation-stifling. The post also references Musk’s earlier actions (e.g., open-sourcing Tesla patents) and Dorsey’s non-aggressive patent stance at Twitter, reinforcing Kinsella’s point that they’re not typical IP beneficiaries (2:24–3:06). X posts linked in the article echo public skepticism, with some users arguing IP protects small inventors, mirroring objections Kinsella addresses (1:27–2:16). Others support abolition, citing IP’s role in corporate monopolies, aligning with Kinsella’s later points (55:58–59:48).
Key Themes
  1. Principled Argument: IP violates property rights by restricting competition, not protecting creators (5:41–6:06, 22:09–23:36).
  2. Pragmatic Critique: IP reduces innovation by granting monopolies and distorts markets by favoring certain industries (39:42–53:04).
  3. Public Resistance: Fear of change and distrust of reformers like Musk and Dorsey drive IP defense, despite weak evidence for its benefits (1:07:32–1:09:59).
  4. Technological Shift: Piracy and emerging tech (e.g., 3D printing) are rendering IP, especially copyright, unenforceable, forcing new business models (1:02:27–1:04:26).
This summary captures the video’s core arguments, integrating relevant external context without reproducing protected material. Let me know if you’d like further details or analysis!

YOUTUBE TRANSCRIPT

Transcript: 0:01 hey man good to see you this is Patrick hey Patrick if you ever want to do these in the future let me know in advance and 0:08 I can host all the tech for you happy yeah maybe I will i just uh it just occurred to me an hour ago to give it a 0:14 try always happy to help it’s been uh it’s 0:20 been entertaining watching you uh get into flinging matches on Twitter recently there’s some there’s some real 0:27 troublesome people out there yep i know it’s uh I don’t know if 0:33 Twitter’s the best way to do it but um what else can you do 0:39 if Patrick has more uh experience you know as a co-host in 0:44 spaces like this you can make him the co-host instead of me right that’s what 0:49 I’m doing oh I I will I have to work today i I won’t be able to help too much 0:55 but if you want if you want to schedule this in the future I’m absolutely happy to uh assist i live stream it as well 1:03 all right well does anyone here have any 1:09 questions about IP i didn’t intend to come on and lecture i just uh thought I 1:14 would field questions from people that especially people that are confused uh or even people that are solid but kind 1:20 of u you know have any particular things they weren’t they weren’t quite clear about 1:27 i can give you a prompt that’s the most um frequent objection I’ve been hearing 1:33 recently maybe that’s something to start off with while other people are queuing up to speak all right um 1:41 I think it’s just the objection of um it’s a transfer of power 1:48 from away from small creators to large corporations that can take the 1:53 innovations of uh individuals and uh outrun them with their own inventions 2:00 with the resources that have already been put together and organized by large corporations an example of that would be 2:05 well I mean it could be anything but it could be like uh you know some new programming 2:10 technology for computers or some new AI innovation an individual wouldn’t have 2:16 the resources or a team put together to to take that new invention and run with it and IP locks it down to where the 2:24 original inventor can profit from it right yeah I get that and I understand 2:29 the the the suspicion about people that are billionaires wanting to get rid of 2:35 something that is portrayed as being a protection for the little guy um I mean 2:41 however you know Dorsey and Musk are like of all the people out there I mean 2:48 Dorsy when he was running Twitter they adopted a policy of not using patents 2:53 offensively like so they’re the ones who disarmed and I don’t think Twitter’s Twitter depended upon patents 3:01 like a lot of other companies do and Musk in Tesla years ago said he wasn’t 3:06 going to sue anyone for patent infringement so he was welcoming competition so those are the least of 3:11 the ones that the concern would be there for but to me it’s just like people don’t I understand people having 3:17 questions but they just see they just jump to this assert they start making assertions like um of course you have a 3:24 property right in things you create and then when you challenge them they don’t want to defend it they don’t know how to 3:31 defend it they immediately um start demanding answers like “Well 3:37 how would it work in this kind of world?” Um I I’m just kind of surprised at how 3:43 people seem honestly not interested in what kind of law like what kind of 3:49 law we should have like they just jump right to this one nitty-gritty issue 3:54 like well how am I going to be safe from u how am I going to make it in this kind 4:00 of world they they don’t want to they don’t want to step back and say “Well,” and like there’s this implicit 4:06 assumption that the purpose of law is to just set up things that seem fair or 4:13 something like that like there’s no systematic or or or careful analytical 4:19 approach to to to how we know what laws we should 4:24 have which is surprising coming from the people that seem to be libertarianish 4:30 like you I don’t know why you’re a libertarian in the first place if you didn’t have this kind of systematic approach to things like what are 4:36 people’s rights what law what are laws what laws are justified what should the 4:42 government be empowered to do but I got a got a chat here someone’s 4:52 asking so from my point of view I just like to say listen if you want to know 4:59 whether law should be abolished or not you got to understand what their nature is and what what types of laws in 5:04 general are justified and then we go from there um so to me that’s my 5:10 approach and I guess I’m just surprised that people just don’t want to approach it that way they don’t want to approach it systematically at all and they also 5:16 have these assumptions right that they’ve heard and they just build their assertions on that like 5:23 well or or they’ll make you say things that are just wrong well you’re in favor of of 5:28 plagiarism well copying is not plagiarism or they’ll say you’re in favor of theft copying is not theft and 5:35 then they’ll say well but it makes it harder for me to make money and you’re taking from me the money I would have 5:41 made okay now we’re getting closer to it so you think that you have some entitlement to make money 5:48 uh that you’re able to make if the government makes it easier for you to make it by preventing you from having 5:54 competition okay so now why do you have the right to earn a profit when the 6:00 government makes it easier for you why do you have the right for the government to stop people from competing with you that’s the real question so that’s the 6:06 way I look at it and then if you want to drill down to the basic to the to the nitty-gritty and to the theory you can 6:12 do it but then I’ll give links i’ll say “Okay here’s an article here’s a post.” And they just go on to their next 6:18 complaint and they don’t read the first thing so there’s a lot of people that are clearly bad faith or not equipped to 6:24 discuss things um coherently and honestly and and and 6:30 um yeah so I think that they just they they see this 6:36 suspicion jack Dorsey is an evil tech guy elon Musk is an evil tech guy why 6:41 should we transfer our our creative effort to them i think that’s how they look at it 6:49 i think it’s a feels-based I mean I think the human species is they they feel way more than 6:54 we think and it’s there it’s the outliers that do the thinking um it’s the same thing like how in a libertarian 7:02 society how will my house be protected from fires how will my streets be protected from criminals uh how will my 7:08 income based on my ideas be protected from large corporations and correct 7:15 and those are yeah those are questions worth asking that’s true you can ask a question that’s that’s true and if we 7:21 don’t address the fields um we don’t get much traction with the human species i 7:27 guess that’s my observation after attempting this for so many years the 7:32 other side of the IP thing that is also rarely mentioned is yeah okay maybe you can’t uh invent 7:40 something and have government guns protect your invention for you because you thought of it first but you know what else it doesn’t protect the large 7:46 corporations anymore either so when big pharma develops a new life-saving 7:51 medication that your child needs you don’t have to spend you don’t have to you know blow through your entire life’s 7:59 accumulated assets paying for it anymore if you can get the formula you can have it made for you know cheaply and 8:06 it goes both ways well maybe my maybe my assumption is that I’m talking to a bunch of intelligent libertarians i mean 8:12 this is Twitter so I mean maybe the audience is I mean what percent of okay 8:19 these kinds of debates that I happen to get tagged in or brought into especially when Musk or or Dorsy starts it or 8:28 Shanahan I guess it’s most Do you think it’s mostly just normies oh absolutely 8:33 yeah and and not even the cream of the crop normies this is Twitter man this 8:38 is this is like a dumpster fire i just don’t understand what if if they just 8:45 make a a series of assertions based upon assumptions that they obviously don’t have any basis to to to to think are 8:53 true because they’re wrong i know they’re wrong because I’ve studied this so they know they’re wrong but they’re so confident about it why what why would 9:01 they even engage and just make an assertion and then walk away i guess it’s just Twitter it’s just uh it’s 9:08 sparks sparks flying they’re not really interested in dialogue do you think they’re not interested in learning 9:13 absolutely not yeah you’ll see in in any of my real engagements on Twitter one of 9:19 the first things I do when I think the person is worth the time is invite them to have a voice chat with me off of 9:25 Twitter twitter is all about the fight you want to you want to say something spicy to 9:31 get the the likes and the views and the engagement and then move on right and I’ve done that several times i keep 9:37 saying I’ll have a Zoom call i want to record it now for my podcast and the reason is I don’t like to waste my time 9:43 on one person like I if I’m going to spend 30 minutes let other people listen and and in in the rare case when I might 9:50 make progress and someone has an epiphany and they go “Oh I see now.” Um then I think that could be instructive 9:55 to other people um I mean I had this happen in private conversations i was 10:00 just on the Tom Woods cruise in February and there was a lot of not normies and 10:06 not newbies but they’re not really you know Rothbart and integral capitalist types so a lot of them had never heard 10:13 this stuff so at dinner table you know I’m talking and someone says “Oh he’s written a book on IP and he’s a patent 10:19 lawyer.” And they kind of assume I’m a libertarian and I have some some 10:24 argument about IP that’s good or something and I’ll say “Oh no i’m a big critic of it.” And they’re like “What do 10:29 you mean?” And I and I say “Do you want to hear it?” And the guy says “Yeah.” So 10:34 for 15 minutes or maybe just 10 minutes I gave him a systematic from beginning to end very compressed very but but very 10:43 systematic argument from beginning to end about property rights law and the 10:48 guy listened and he followed everything I said by the end he says “Oh you convinced me.” And I’ve had that happen before and that’s nice to see right 10:58 um so I’m hoping to get one of these guys to come on and and have their eyes opened and I have a recording of it 11:05 where people can see it i can see you see people can change their mind people can learn but they keep turning they keep turning 11:11 down my invitation well no it’s a great filter i I see it like you know Socrates we’re walking in 11:17 the agora we’re offering to have conversations with anyone that disagrees with us right and I think that’s the 11:24 right thing to do but you also need a filter to get rid of the disingenuous people the people that aren’t serious 11:30 and a great filter is “Hey join me for a voice chat.” And that way other people can benefit from it too and you’ll see 11:38 how many people instantly evaporate anyways oh this happened a few weeks ago with 11:44 another guy and uh I did the same thing it was a Twitter thing and I said “Let’s have a Zoom call.” And I said “We can do 11:51 it in in in the next 30 minutes.” And and then he started saying “Well you chickenened out.” He kept accusing me of 11:57 chickening out i kept I kept repeating the invitation he goes “Well I’m not going to talk to you because you’re obviously in bad faith.” I’m like “So 12:04 I’m willing to have a talk with you and I’m in bad faith.” And he says “Yeah you’re just doing that as a way to 12:11 he said suddenly you’re you’re doing as a way to filter out.” That’s like “Yeah of course I am filtering I’m filting 12:17 people that aren’t that are serious about an actual interchange and a discussion.” Yeah that’s great all right 12:23 well it’s great to see your face and hear your voice we’ll have to talk again soon i have to go thanks everybody 12:28 thanks man see you maybe a more Twitter level question 12:34 would be isn’t China an empirical illustration that ignoring IP to some 12:40 degree is beneficial a lot yeah and so the China thing is 12:46 interesting because first of all everyone keeps repeating this thing that 12:52 China is stealing our intellectual property okay so this is the the background assumption all the time by 12:59 every politician every commentator Democrat Republican they all keep and 13:04 the thing is they’re calling China they’re they’re basically insulting China all the time i mean there’s lots 13:10 of things to insult China about but if you keep calling them a thief and 13:15 dishonest I mean it’s an insult to their character and not only that it’s like 13:20 wait don’t you think it’s a good thing that capitalism you know our form of it the 13:27 the the bits of it that China has adopted slowly over the last 40 years 13:33 has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty and part of 13:38 the way they did it was they started using technology and ideas that have been de that have been developed over 13:44 the last couple hundred years uh largely in the west I guess you know the industrial revolution Europe America and 13:52 of course you’re going to use modern technology and techniques that other people came up with you’re going to use 13:58 the best thing out there for your robots and your and your manufacturing and your equipment and your semiconductor 14:04 techniques and that’s actually a good thing so I don’t know why people think it’s a bad thing that they’re not stealing it they’re learning we learn 14:10 from them they learn from us people learn from each other that’s what competition and emulation and innovation and the spread of knowledge and the 14:18 development of scientific and and and technical knowledge is about um so I think China’s relative success in the 14:25 last 20 30 years built upon emulating kind of some some version of the free 14:31 market and capitalism and using using ideas from others it’s not they’re not 14:37 stealing anything they’re they’re doing what’s good they’re doing what’s right so 14:43 um I I just I I don’t see how uh and in fact I think that’s being used as one of 14:50 the excuses Trump is using for um and the and the politicians supporting 14:55 Trump’s tariffs you know they don’t want to just have reciprocally lower tariffs they want to stop unfair trade 15:02 practices which I guess could include subsidies to their industries but also could include lack of lack of protection 15:10 of IP so they wanna they want to use the leverage we have over China and other 15:16 countries the leverage of trade trade basically trade embargos or or trade to 15:22 say we’re not going to trade with you unless you adopt western style patented copyright 15:28 law because otherwise you’re stealing it yes it’s a common fallacy and you could 15:33 explain it but only if people are willing to listen 15:43 i think surf go ahead my friend 15:48 yeah I just Sorry i just want to say in a a recent thread you were talking about how um people don’t you know really believe 15:56 in intellectual property because it’s not immortal um it expires right i 16:03 actually wonder because most people though normal people believe in uh inheritance taxes right and intellectual 16:09 property like say copyrights or life plus um 70 years or 95 years whatever it 16:15 is I forget and uh there’s no there’s no you know tax that just continues to perpetuate with the company um it’ll 16:22 probably be extended again so not to be a downer but I wonder if it’s possible 16:27 that normal people believe in intellectual property even more than in real property 16:34 Well I think a lot of them do even a lot of libertarian theorists do they they’ll say things like “Well yeah you have a 16:41 right to your land um and uh your house and your car but 16:48 things you create with your mind or even a more pure form of property you have an even better claim to that because you 16:54 actually created that.” Like they sort of sense that there’s a separate argument for ownership it’s like 17:01 ownership normally comes from being the first one to use a resource or getting it by contract from 17:07 someone else like those are the two ways we come to own things by occupation of 17:13 an unowned thing which is not creation it’s just you’re the first one 17:18 to claim it or or by contract from someone else those are the sources of ownership and there’s this idea that 17:25 there’s a third source of ownership which is creation 17:31 but what they don’t understand is that they’re they’re confusing um they’re confusing the source of wealth with a 17:37 source of property rights the source of wealth is is the availability of scarce 17:43 resources and and and and you know raw materials that you own 17:49 and that you can then use your your intellect and your labor to transform into a more valuable thing that’s what 17:55 production is in an economic sense production means transformation or 18:01 rearranging but when you do that you don’t create and you’re creating something of you’re creating more value 18:06 for yourself in other words you’re making your own property more more useful but it doesn’t you mean you have 18:13 additional property rights you know if I if I take if I take some raw materials that I 18:19 own like metal and rubber and plastic and I turn it into a 18:26 car you could say I created the car but I don’t own the car because I created it i already owned the I own the stuff that 18:34 I rearranged so I own the car because I already own the things that went into it people don’t seem to understand that so 18:40 they think of creation as a separate source of ownership um and partly it’s because of this 18:47 practical issue they don’t understand how you’re able to monetize and make a 18:53 profit off of your intellectual labor if you don’t have a a legal property right 19:00 in those creations they don’t understand it and they don’t understand it because they’re not used because they’re used to a system where we have that you know 19:07 just like I’m sure if you go to um if you go to the UK or Canada and you 19:13 suggest abolishing um private roads I’m sorry government roads and the government health care 19:20 system people will not know they won’t or or the or the mail the post office 19:26 the postal system people are used to the government providing all that they can’t even imagine a world where 19:33 the government doesn’t make the roads and have a post office and have 19:38 government schools and provide health care they can’t they think it’s they 19:44 think it’s inevitably part of what the government does and has to do so they 19:49 just don’t have any imagination they you know if you tell them well we’re going to get rid of government healthcare and 19:55 you have to take care of your own healthcare we’re going to get rid of um government schools and you have to educate your own children either educate 20:01 them yourself or don’t have them or put them in private schools and people don’t want to hear that because right now they 20:09 don’t have to worry about that they’re comfortable with the government taking care of things and they have one they have one they have you know they have 20:16 one thing the government gives them and that’s what they get and they’re they’re okay with it and they don’t want to rock the boat um and s similarly there you 20:23 know if you’re a musician or if you’re a novelist an author you’re used to having a copyright and having other people have 20:31 to get your permission to publish it and so you can demand a royalty so that’s 20:37 the model that has arisen because the government has given us these copyrights and 20:44 patents and that’s how the whole society has you know engineered engineered the 20:49 creative industries have been they they’ve wrapped around that and so then the question is well if 20:56 we get rid of it what will society look like and the answer sometimes is well I’m not sure but it’s like saying well 21:01 we have slavery right now my my plantations in Louisiana we produce 21:07 cotton we we we make a profit but it’s only because we have slave labor if you 21:12 get rid of slavery how am I going to make a profit how am I going to have 21:18 the cotton picked who’s going to pick the cotton if we get rid of slavery so it’s natural to have that question but 21:24 having a question is just not an argument against someone who says we 21:31 should abolish slavery because it’s wrong if someone says we should abolish slavery because it’s 21:36 wrong you can you can disagree you can say “Well I disagree slavery is okay because the Bible says so or whatever.” 21:42 You you could you could disagree but it but it’s not a dis it’s it’s not a it’s not a good counterargument to say “Well 21:50 we shouldn’t abolish slavery even though you just explain why it’s wrong because 21:55 I’m I’m I’m not sure what’s what a world without slavery would look like.” That’s just not an argument that we shouldn’t 22:02 abolish slavery and the same thing is true of IP as far as I see it if I can demonstrate 22:09 the the nature of property rights how they have to come about their purpose 22:15 what types of property rights are justified and and what types of laws we should have to protect property rights 22:22 and if you can clearly see that copyright and patent are incompatible with that and violate property rights to 22:29 me that’s the the end of the story it’s like okay that means we should that means that copyright and patent laws are 22:35 not just and therefore we should abolish them and it’s not a rebuttal to say but 22:41 I don’t know what the world would look like without these laws i mean we can have some guesses we can have some 22:47 guesses about it and we have them but they’re not guarantees and the thing is people want 22:52 guarantees you know if say if say well you probably will be able to you know make money off of a um 23:00 um um if you write a novel even if people knock it off you can probably make money selling a sequel with an 23:07 Indiegogo campaign you know uh or or or being a consultant on a movie version of 23:13 it and you get a cut of their royalties i mean there’s all kinds of possibilities which people don’t explore 23:18 now because they don’t need to because they can use copyright law to bully people but if you couldn’t do that you 23:25 have to come up with other ways but people want to say well can you guarantee can you guarantee that I would 23:31 make as much money it’s like no I can’t guarantee that so they want to guarantee because they think they’re entitled to a 23:36 revenue stream or to profit um you know it’s sort of like if you say 23:42 well we need to get welfare is wrong because it steals from people that produce and it transfers the money to 23:47 the government and to welfare recipients we should abolish welfare or the same thing with government schools we have 23:54 public government schools in the US people are used to sending having the option to send their kids there 90% of 24:00 the people send their kids there because they’re already paying property taxes so they might as well get the free schooling out of it 24:06 and if you say ‘Well we’re going to get rid of welfare and and they say ‘Well what’s 24:12 going to happen to the poor?’ And the answer is well they’d have to depend upon 24:18 charity well can you guarantee that char the charitable institutions would be enough money to sustain the 24:25 poor they want a guarantee it’s like well if if if you refuse to abolish a 24:33 program that you admit is unjustified and evil until I give you a guarantee that no one will be affected by it then 24:39 we can’t make any change at all every law is bad because it has effects and 24:45 consequences i mean if a law existed but no one it didn’t have any effect it 24:50 wasn’t enforced we wouldn’t care i wouldn’t care if the if drugs were illegal if no one was ever arrested i 24:56 wouldn’t care if taxes were tax evasion was illegal but the government never did enforce it the only reason we care about 25:03 laws is because they have an effect which means that if you get rid of a bad law society will change getting rid of a 25:11 law has effects just like a bad law has effects or consequences so if you get rid of a law 25:17 that’s evil things will change the way people make money from being artistic 25:23 creators will change the the way people make money from being inventors will 25:29 change it will change in some good ways and some some ways bad for some people who now benefit from the system that’s 25:36 the whole point of a system it benefits some people and it harms other people and if the law is unjust you have to get 25:41 rid of it because of the people that it’s harming and when you get rid when you get rid of the bad law the people that are being harmed are better off the 25:49 people that have been benefiting from an evil unjust law are going to be worse off maybe but that’s why we want to get 25:57 rid of it because it it’s having a bad effect right now by rewarding the wrong 26:02 people and hurting hurting the wrong people 26:13 all right surfer has been waiting a long time patiently with his hands up go ahead Surfer 26:20 uh hey guys thanks for this discussion um Stephan I’ve been listening to you for years uh probably introduced to your 26:29 uh knowledge and wisdom through Tom Woods who I think is an awesome educator 26:36 and it took me a little bit of time to come to the realization that the 26:42 libertarian anarco capitalist perspective is the fairest one out there 26:47 at least from what I can tell um one of the things that helped me in my education was learning about Bitcoin i 26:53 ended up in a discussion with a guy the other day on Twitter about IP and my 26:59 push back was that of course they should be abolished and there’s a little bit of name calling back and forth and this is 27:04 a pretty smart guy investor guy and he also believes in in Bitcoin at least 27:10 understands it and recognizes the the freedom aspect of a a protocol for money 27:16 that’s not controlled by government and uh the conversation eventually came 27:21 around to uh an you can’t own an idea 27:28 unless you keep it secret as soon as you share it now two people possess the idea 27:34 and it’s only because of the the violence and extortion and force of 27:40 government that one man is not allowed to act on that idea even though now two 27:45 people know of it and he tried to use the argument that as a Bitcoiner I 27:53 should recognize my property rights in the private key that represents my 27:58 Bitcoin or my ability to move Bitcoin within the network and I my retort was 28:03 that well I keep my private key secret because if I let it out I can’t trust 28:10 the government to enforce somebody else taking my private key taking my Bitcoin 28:16 and then I go take the government and sue that person to get it back for me because no matter what proclamation some 28:23 man with a black rove and a gavl proclaims that you must give back the 28:28 Bitcoin to this other man who you you got his private key it it would have 28:34 been my fault for allowing that secret out right so that uh an idea or your 28:40 private key to your Bitcoin only works and stays private property as long as it 28:45 stays secret and as soon as you let it out you lose control over it and oddly 28:51 enough that kind of ended the conversation he didn’t have a comeback 28:56 almost capitulating but not outwardly he certainly didn’t admit defeat he called me a dumb dum and left it at that but I 29:04 I Oh I thought you meant I thought you meant you won like he agreed with you so he just he gave up because he couldn’t 29:10 he couldn’t have a counter to that yeah he just stopped replying that was just 29:15 the end and I I I feel like I essentially won but I didn’t get a 29:20 verbal acknowledgement that you know maybe I was a bit wrong i tagged him about this conversation and and 29:28 suggested that he join i haven’t seen him show up yet but uh I’m just curious 29:33 does is is that a fair way to say it like from your perspective an idea once shared is free reign essentially unless 29:41 you have government enforcement on it and the only way to keep an idea yours is to keep it secret and then I would 29:47 further suggest that if you really want to profit off this you think you’re going to bring some kind of new innovation to society it without IP law 29:56 it would be incumbent upon you to keep it as secret as possible build up 30:02 whatever manufacturing process you can build up create whatever supply chain you think you could create in secret 30:09 perhaps with private non-disclosure agreements which are enforcable by potentially a court but not directly by 30:17 the government as a blanket thing right this is a agreement between two individuals I’ll keep your secret with 30:24 you and if I don’t you can sue me I would suggest that if you have a great idea as soon as it’s out it’s allowed to 30:30 be copied if we don’t have IP laws but if you get a jump on the competition you have the ability to profit better than 30:36 them maybe be the leader in the industry maybe not maybe somebody comes up with a more efficient manufacturing way that 30:42 you couldn’t think of and they they overtake the market and you’re out of business but you know before government had IP laws that was the world you had 30:49 to you had to make it or or you didn’t make it whatever it was is that a fair way am I seeing this reasonably 30:55 accurately yeah yeah that’s all right there’s a couple technical little nuances I would I would push back on um 31:03 but they’re they’re not that important like for example um I 31:09 think when you have information that only you know private or confidential information stuff in your head only 31:18 um I I don’t think it’s accurate to say you own you own I don’t think you ever own information it’s information is just 31:25 not an ownable thing now it’s true you can keep secrets and to the extent you keep it secret then no one else has 31:31 access to it and you’re free to use that information for your own benefit only 31:37 um although although uh people could they 31:42 could they could discover this eventually anyway like they might come up with the ideas on on their own um but 31:49 yeah I I think that the Bitcoin thing is especially a good thing to uh to argue 31:54 because um Bitcoiners They know they all know that what’s the expression not your 32:00 keys not your coin um you don’t see Bitcoiners like your friend going around 32:05 saying to make Bitcoin really work the government needs to have a law that that 32:11 um that gives you super duper property rights protection in your keys and then 32:16 we don’t have to keep then you don’t have to keep a secret anymore because hey you have a legal right no one has 32:22 the right to take my keys so I don’t even need to keep them uh to to guard 32:27 them anymore well no of course everyone’s going to keep their key secret because you know that the way Bitcoin works as soon as someone finds 32:32 your key they can take your bitcoins and it’s too late to undo it it doesn’t matter what a court would say later so 32:38 the point is you rely upon the technological um security of the system which is So 32:46 here’s the thing people don’t understand the reason people say you own your bitcoins 32:52 um is because they’re using the word ownership which is a legal term it means a property right but there’s a 32:59 difference between the practical ability to control a thing that’s useful to you 33:04 or resource that’s called possession it’s just a fact it’s not a 33:10 legal thing it’s just a fact having the ability to possess or use something is 33:16 what you need to do to survive in the world and to to achieve things in the world but because there’s a possibility 33:24 of conflict in society people can take these things that you want to use we have laws that are supports to 33:31 that so like the law is a layer on top of so you have possession and then the law gives you a legal right to that 33:38 possession called ownership so if someone violates your possession right by taking your thing physically you can 33:44 go to court and get the government to help you get it back or get damages so the law of ownership is a 33:51 normative or a legal thing on top of the fact of possession but for something like Bitcoin the fact of possession is 33:59 all that there is but that’s good enough so if I have a property right in my house I have the possession of my house 34:05 and the law gives me a property right in the house or in my car let’s say my car 34:10 so that doesn’t prevent someone from stealing my car it just makes it harder for them to steal my car because now 34:17 they’re under the penalty of the law they might they might they’re risking going to prison if they take my car so 34:23 it makes it even harder for them to take my car or to to rob my house another thing is I might have a very strong lock 34:29 on the front of my house which makes it technically hard for them to break into my house in that case the law is not as 34:36 useful because I don’t need the law because they just can’t break into my house so you have this sort of 34:41 combination of technical means or technological means um and legal means 34:46 and they’re all aimed at making it easier for you to use a resource without other people taking it from you but if 34:53 you have something like uh Bitcoin the it’s like you have a door on 34:59 your house that no one can break into you don’t you don’t need the law to to say people can’t take your key because 35:05 they can’t take it anyway because of the cryptography um but people use the word 35:11 ownership they’ll say “Well that means I own my I own my keys or I own my Bitcoin 35:16 because no one can take it from me.” So they’re confusing possession and ownership so they’re using the word 35:22 ownership which is a legal term but what they really mean is you have possession of your Bitcoin which is so good that no 35:28 one can take it from you right um so that’s the confusion there about about that part but um as far as uh trade 35:35 secrets I mean even today lots of companies rely upon trade secrets 35:40 instead of patents for their competitive advantage and even if your secret gets 35:45 out as as long as you as soon as you reveal it to someone you can’t complain that other people start using it and 35:50 this This is what happens when you make a new product if you make a new product with a new 36:01 innov products the reason that it’s popular with your consumers your 36:07 customers is that it has advantages but in most cases those advantages are are easy for a competitor 36:14 to see and to learn from so by selling the product you’re usually revealing information to the world you’re making 36:20 the information that you had secret in your head public you can’t help but make it 36:25 public because it’s it’s in the design of the product in most cases you know if I sell a new mousetrap which has um some 36:34 feature that makes it better than the others I’m going to tell everyone hey my mousetrap is better it has X Y and Z 36:41 feature so everyone knows what this new feature is and they go oh that’s a good idea i’m going to add that to my 36:46 mousetrap so for a while I can probably charge more than my competitors because I have an advantage because I’m the 36:52 first one to market but even after that I still have an advantage because of my 36:57 reputation as an example um you know if you want to buy a pain reliever for a 37:03 headache if you go to the drugstore you can buy a gen you can buy a generic 37:09 acetaminophen um pain pill for $2 or you can buy 37:15 Tylenol for $5 they’re the same thing roughly speaking same ingredients because the patent has 37:21 expired so Tylenol can’t stop people from competing with it but they still sell for twice the 37:27 price because of the reputation so there’s there’s always an 37:32 advantage to um to being known as an innovator people 37:38 trust you you get your name out there you get a customer base you’re the first one you have you can charge higher 37:44 prices for a while and you can charge higher prices for maybe a long time because you have a reputation so there’s 37:50 lots of advantages to innovating and to being willing to reveal your secrets as 37:55 the price of selling things to people um yeah so I would look at it that way 38:02 so um there was another part of the discussion was the idea that IP 38:09 um enhances innovation whereas my feeling is that 38:16 when you have a product that’s protected by uh intellectual property rights you 38:21 have less incentive to in innovate because as soon as you change it it may 38:27 not be covered anymore and then the uh the additional or the u extended 38:33 argument for not uh enforcing IP or not having any would be that 38:40 competition over a long enough period of time should reduce the price of things 38:45 to the marginal cost of production so that society as a whole benefits from 38:51 everyone’s innovation obviously at the potential expense of the first guy to 38:57 think of it except to the extent that he can have some market advantage in the 39:03 beginning or illustrative because of their innovative nature their uh you 39:08 know the um the brand recognition that kind of thing maybe somebody will still pay a little more because they think 39:14 it’s maybe a higher quality and but over time society benefits whereas it IP 39:21 inhibits the the advantages to society makes things potentially more expensive and even keeps some people out of 39:29 benefiting from innovation because maybe they can’t afford it because the prices aren’t being brought down because 39:35 competition would naturally be there without these IP laws is that a fair perspective yeah I think that’s right um 39:42 Stephan excuse me uh before you answer that uh I’m hearing a little bit of echo 39:47 so I don’t know maybe when you speak turn the the audio down a little bit for 39:53 me for me from both Okay let me let me turn the up and down 39:59 a little let me go back inside um I don’t know if I’m the only one listening to echo no I’m hearing a ton of echo at 40:06 my end and it’s usually just spaces is glitchy guys i I hate to say it it’s one of these things 40:13 i think that if you turn the audio uh down while you are speaking I think that 40:18 can take care of it okay all right thank you um so so 40:26 basically people the argument is that so here’s people don’t put it this way 40:31 because uh they don’t think this coherently about it um a simplistic 40:36 person would say without patent law there would be no 40:42 innovation because there’s no incentive to innovate like it’s a simplistic approach it’s clearly wrong because 40:47 there’s been innovation throughout human history so their only argument really is that 40:53 there’s a type of market failure when you have an advanced 40:58 society where you have some types of goods where the value of those goods is 41:04 primarily dependent upon the way that they’re shaped or arranged in other words the pattern in them um like not a 41:11 commodity like I’m selling or or like shoes where I’m I I I make shoes based upon the leather from my animals and I 41:18 sell them and I face competition but it’s not so easy for people to compete with me because um they have to make the 41:26 shoes themselves so that’s just natural free market competition but if I’m selling like an iPhone or if I’m selling 41:32 a book where the primary value of say the book is not the physical paper but 41:37 the way it’s arranged the patterning of it and and where it’s really relatively 41:43 easier for a competitor to make a duplicate of the book by just copying it like they they take their own paper and 41:49 their own ink and they make a a copy of that book um so in that case it’s easier 41:55 for people to compete with me so it’s like they imagine there’s a system u of where the free market works pretty good 42:03 competition is okay it’s like they begrudgingly permit competition because you can make still make a profit in the 42:10 face of competing with other people because it’s it’s it’s it’s slow for people to start competing with you and 42:16 it takes a while there’s friction sort of like Trump is willing to permit 42:22 imports if other people let us export to them which is the other way around it’s 42:27 the wrong way of thinking about it right it’s like he he grudgingly permits imports as the price of getting the 42:34 right to export um just like people grudgingly concede that you can have 42:39 free market competition uh it’s okay for to sub subject me to competition because it’s not so easy for 42:47 people to compete with me but for intellectual goods like inventions or innovative products or or books or 42:54 artistic works which are easier to copy then the competition is too easy in other words and therefore it’s harder 43:01 for me to make a profit like I might make I might make a so-called some somewhat of a monopoly profit by being 43:06 the first guy to make um u some some good in a factory and it takes I 43:14 might have a market lead for 10 15 20 30 years on toothpaste or something but if 43:19 I make a if I sell a book then it it only takes you know six months for people to start knocking off my book or 43:25 my iPhone um and so it’s too easy to compete so it’s harder for me to make this monopoly 43:31 profit not really a monopoly but let’s it’s a higher than average profit um and 43:36 so in this case the free market breaks down because it fails there’s market failure is what they ultimately believe 43:42 in they think that because of this market failure for certain types of goods the incentive to innovate and to 43:49 create and to manufacture and produce is reduced and so it’s harder for me to 43:54 make a profit which is enough for me to make to recoup the costs I would invest in writing the book or in inventing the 44:01 drug or whatever and therefore I wouldn’t do it so the market breaks down so what they really end up saying is 44:07 that on the free market there’s not going to be no innovation there’s not going to be no 44:13 books there’s not going to be no music but it’s it’s an it’s a suboptimal amount it’s an underproduction so the 44:19 market has failed so the free market could be fixed if we have the government come in and identify these market 44:26 failures in free market capitalism and have the government come in benevolently and look around and find ways they can 44:32 improve the thing by patching it here and there and one of those patches is the government will grant everyone that 44:39 makes these type of goods a temporary reprieve from competition so that they can be free of 44:46 competition for 10 or 20 or 100 years in the case of copyright and therefore they 44:51 can charge these higher prices because they’re not afraid of competition and then they have an incentive to and so 44:56 that’s the argument right um and also the argument rests upon this sort of idea 45:03 that making a profit is good and it’s sort of a natural thing and it’s a natural reward for your labor and your 45:08 effort and people should be entitled to receive a profit and to make a profit off of their effort but as you sort of 45:15 implied in your comments profit is unnatural really it’s not bad thing but 45:20 it is unnatural in the sense that um the o the only reason you make a profit is 45:27 because you as an entrepreneur look around and you see you see the the 45:33 market and you see um you see an un an unfulfilled need that you can serve by 45:40 coming up with a an approved service or product so you start selling it and because you’re the first and because 45:47 you’re you’re tapping an untapped need in the market um you’re serving an untapped need in the market um you can 45:54 charge pretty high prices for a while but then of course the way the free market works other people who also are 46:00 interested in making money notice this this is part what what the price system does sends signals and 46:08 one signal is I seeing the money trading hands between customers and this new and 46:15 this new seller people observe this and they say they learn from this they go oh here’s what you do if you want to make 46:21 money from people you have to offer to them this new type of product which they apparently like so they’ve learned something by your example they’ve 46:27 learned how to satisfy consumers so what do they do they start emulating what you’re doing that’s called competition 46:34 so if McDonald’s is the first fast food restaurant and it’s popular then Burger 46:39 King or Wendy’s say “Oh let’s start doing that.” Or if Domino’s Pizza starts 46:45 delivering pizza and getting extra business because they deliver it to the 46:51 customer unlike you know Pizza Hut used to you have to go there um that’s a good idea so people start other other type of 46:58 delivery businesses crop up uh like Papa John’s and and others and and over time 47:04 the original the first guy it gets harder and harder for him to make a profit which means that over time profit 47:11 goes to zero which is the natural tendency of the free market which is a good thing because that benefits 47:17 consumers because no one’s entitled to a profit and over time competition makes you lower your prices and come up with 47:23 more efficient ways and more innovations And all these things are for the benefit of the consumer and also for the 47:29 producer in the long run I would say but it means they have to work at it and they have to face competition so 47:35 ultimately what IP advocates want is they want to have the government reduce 47:40 the competition that is faced by people who would otherwise face competition to 47:46 make it easier for them to make a profit and when you do that as now we talk about innovation 47:53 um people argue that with without this incentive of the patent system to 47:59 innovate you wouldn’t have as much innovation and so their idea is that I could innovate but I don’t because I 48:05 can’t make enough money off of it but I can if I don’t face competition because I can stop people from competing by 48:11 threatening to sue them with my patent um so I innovate however if I have a 48:17 17-year monopoly on this product my incentive to keep innovating goes down 48:24 in a free market if I come up with a new product and I finally start facing 48:29 competition I have to keep innovating to keep retaining my customers that’s why things keep getting better okay but if I 48:37 have a 17-year breathing period where I don’t face competition I don’t need to keep innovating like my my incentive to 48:44 innovate goes down because of that reason so there’s no doubt that the patent system reduces the incentive to 48:52 innovate at least for existing innovators because they’ve already got their first patent they can use that for 48:57 a while or maybe they’ll innovate every 5 years or every seven years instead of trying to do it all the time so the pace 49:03 of innovation clearly slows down not only that com your competitor’s incentive to innovate is reduced because 49:11 let’s suppose I come up with a new phone a smartphone that has some features and I start selling it for a healthy profit 49:17 that gives a signal for people to compete with me but the competitor is not going to just duplicate my phone 49:23 they’re going to take my features and they’re going to add their own features they’re going to innovate on top of my innovation and by the way the first 49:29 guy’s innovation was also in on top of someone else’s innovation because no innovation is from in a vacuum every 49:36 invention that’s ever happened in the history of mankind has been incremental 49:42 it’s based upon previous knowledge that they got from someone else that’s the nature of innovation is it’s always 49:47 incremental but the point is not only does my monopoly my patent monopoly that that 49:54 protects me from competition reduce my incentive to innovate it also reduces the incentive of competitors to innovate 50:01 because they can’t make the product that’s covered by my patent they’re not 50:06 permitted to so they would be wasting their time trying to come up with you know iPhone number two because iPhone 50:14 number two might have some new features in addition to my features but it would still violate my patent so they don’t 50:21 bother to even come up with the new iPhone improved iPhone knockoff or 50:27 whatever because they can’t sell it anyway so it reduces innovation from my 50:32 competitors as well so it slows down the overall pace of innovation and furthermore it also distorts innovation 50:39 because some things you can get patents on and some things you can’t get patents on um you can’t get a patent on laws of 50:46 nature and mathematical algorithms and abstract ideas although the intellectual effort 50:52 in coming up with E= MC² and other things like that are just as valuable and as mentally creative as coming up 51:00 with a new gizmo or machine or contraption but patent law protects one and not the other so you have physicists 51:07 and mathematicians who are doing research and they come up with things that are basically not 51:12 patentable but you could argue that that these guys um are underproducing their 51:19 their scientific and mathematical ideas too because they can’t get patents on it 51:24 so there’s another market failure so I guess we should have the government subsidize them which they do in the by 51:31 by virtue of the National Institute of Health National Institute of Humanities things like that so So there’s no end to 51:38 the government noticing underproduction of things that they think are not produced enough on the free market and 51:44 trying to goose it by artificially granting monopolies to stimulate it or 51:51 by subsidizing it by redistributing tax funds i mean the whole thing is just a mess um so but the point is in any 51:59 society if you didn’t have patent laws you would have a natural balance between say the abstract work done by physicists 52:06 and by uh by scientists and the amount of effort done in R&D to come up with new new machines 52:14 you’d have some balance I know 6040 2030 9010 I don’t know what it is but there’s 52:19 some balance but whatever that balance is when the government starts rewarding one and not rewarding the other like 52:25 when They reward uh uh practical innovation that can result in a patent 52:31 but they don’t reward abstract and basic scientific research then you you distort 52:37 the balance you you you just Milton Friedman has pointed this out murray Rothberg pointed this out it’s called a 52:43 skewing or a distorting effect now why would why would it be good for the government to artificially interfere and 52:49 to subsidize and to give patent grants that change the structure of of of 52:55 innovative activity and scientific research why not leave it alone and let the natural balance happen anyway 53:04 yeah listening to all this uh makes me think how barbaric society still is you know like far 53:20 behind if anyone else would like to speak just raise your hand and I sent you an invitation or you can request 53:41 I just would like to say while I’m up here as a speaker thank you very much for um verifying my understanding 53:51 clarifying a few things putting this out publicly so that I can share it with 53:56 other people perhaps the gentleman I was debating with the other day will take the time to listen and maybe he’ll be 54:02 convinced that he has been seeing things incorrectly and uh maybe come around and 54:09 recognize that this is a a better better way to look at things in society whether or not the US government or any other 54:16 government’s going to abolish IP laws anytime soon is is in my opinion not 54:21 very likely uh there’s a lot of people that are will argue for it as as we know 54:26 as we see out there in industry but you’ve made an excellent uh very thorough um argument and description of 54:34 the tradeoffs and why society as a whole and really people who are not innovators 54:41 should really be in favor of abolishing IP laws because all these big corporations and somebody said earlier 54:48 you know pharmaceutical manufacturers they get this is why natural natural remedies are not pushed by you know 54:55 pharmaceutical companies they can’t make a profit they can’t p patent natural remedies and so their own correct 55:02 version of a chemical tweak that they can get the government to protect them with most of it in my opinion is poison 55:09 but that’s a whole another discussion but if it was actually good now most of 55:15 society does not benefit a handful get super rich a lot of poor people can’t even touch some of this stuff some of 55:21 these cost of new drugs and procedures that get patents are super expensive and 55:27 that just hurts all of society at the benefit of a handful of people that are protected by government and I just love 55:33 the fact that you put this out in public for people to listen to uh hopefully I see it’s getting recorded so I’m going 55:39 to share it out for anybody who needs to understand where some of the unfairness in this world comes from it comes from 55:45 magic words on paper written by a small group of people who call themselves government and they’re not necessarily 55:51 out helping the rest of us folks so thank you very much for hosting this and letting me come up and speak 55:58 you’re welcome thanks uh um and you know the thing about so let let me make a few 56:03 points um uh the one silver lining perhaps of the 56:08 patent system is that if you understand that it does distort and uh impede 56:14 innovation and if you are skeptical as I am too of the pharmaceutical industry i 56:20 mean after all the government is subsidizing it number one so the prices are inflated because the government pays 56:25 for it and also because the government pushes it through the pharmaceutical I mean through the uh medical licensing 56:31 and prescription system and the and the and the bastardized insurance system that the government has pushed on us 56:37 that we have which makes you know you don’t see the cost of things um and also 56:42 then the prices are skyhigh so the only advantage of the patent system is that it it makes the prices of these harmful 56:48 drugs very much higher so yeah monopoly prices for for basically poison being 56:54 charged i mean I’m not saying all they’re all poison but yeah I’m skeptical of a lot of it so I guess you could say that well at least they’re so 57:00 expensive people don’t take them as often as they otherwise would but it it certainly uh pushes doctors the whole 57:05 system is designed to get doctors to push patented drugs which are hyper expensive which the the taxpayer 57:11 subsidizes and pays for and then give Bernie Sanders an excuse to complain about capitalism having high prices and 57:18 the government needs to lower these prices to a lower level which is still outrageous and have the taxpayer pay for 57:24 it when the Bernie Sanders it doesn’t occur to him to say why don’t we just get rid of the patent system then the 57:30 prices will will fall by 90% anyway um here’s the other thing 57:35 um people have been sold this myth and if they’re sus they’re suspicious of big tech and and cor and capitalist 57:42 corporate America which I understand but if they’re suspicious of them why don’t they also challenge the 57:49 prevailing idea that the patent system is there to help the little guy i mean 57:54 that’s just not true the one of the reasons we have these large oligopolized 57:59 industries and very large corporations like say Microsoft and the pharmaceutical industry is because they 58:05 have patents i mean Microsoft was built on the combination of copyright and 58:11 patent i mean one of the reasons Bill Gates is so rich is because of patent and copyright law patents and copyrights 58:18 don’t help the little guy they help create monopolies huge corporations i’m 58:24 not a left libertarian but I can see the critique that in a in a free in a real free market you would have you might not 58:30 have as many giant corporations and a lot of their giant test is caused because of patent and copyrights um and 58:37 the other thing to point out is that so so I would say that if you if you’re defending patent and copyright 58:44 because you think it’s the last thing we need to we we have to have for the little guy to defend themselves against 58:49 the big guy you don’t understand that the role these things have played in creating these big guy big guys in the 58:55 first place it really benefits the big guys that’s the whole point i mean the 59:01 biggest lobbyists for patents and copyrights are the pharmaceutical 59:06 industry for pharmaceutical patents and the FDA system which also allows them to charge more um and and Hollywood which 59:15 depends upon copyright and the music industry which depends upon copyright those three industries are all huge 59:22 industries that screw over authors and the publishing industry too it screws over authors and musicians and 59:29 independent filmmakers and documentary makers and um and and and home remedies 59:35 for for drugs this is all tending in the direction of big crony capital crony 59:42 capitalist or crony capitalist as Jean Epstein would say um so if you’re on the 59:48 side of the little guy you should be opposed to these laws it would level the playing field to get rid of them 59:53 um and and the other thing to to point out is that unlike 59:58 other critics of intellectual property which are not principled usually but 1:00:04 they sort of have an instinctive you know they’re for they’re for open source and they’re sort of for copy left this 1:00:10 kind of stuff my argument against patent and copyright is not based upon 1:00:17 hostility towards uh uh the importance of 1:00:23 ideas or or or innovation or innovative freedom it’s because I am a capitalist 1:00:32 in the in the pure in the pure sense and because I believe in the individual and property rights and the free market and 1:00:39 because I believe in innovation and the importance of the mind these are the reasons why we should oppose patent and 1:00:45 copyright is because patented copyright are complete uh obliterations of all 1:00:52 these things if you and it’s hard to understand that because the propaganda around it leads people to think that 1:00:58 that that patent and copyright law and IP law goes handinhand with favoring 1:01:04 innovation and artistic creation they because that’s how it’s sold but that’s 1:01:09 not how it used to be sold and these things copyright and patent were were statutory monopoly grants copyrights 1:01:16 came about because the government didn’t want people to print to get books that the government and the church didn’t 1:01:22 approve right because the printing press started ruining their monopoly over what what books you could get and so the 1:01:30 government put a monopoly on that for about 100 or 200 years in England and when that expired they gave the right 1:01:37 they came up with a copyright system in the statute of which which gave looked like it gave rights to the authors but 1:01:44 of course the authors could only publish a book by going to the publishing guilds so they 1:01:50 had to assign their copyrights to the guilds so you only changed the name of the gatekeeper the gatekeeper was still 1:01:57 the guilds the publishing companies the church and the state all were together 1:02:03 as gatekeepers of what thought could be transmitted that’s the whole purpose of copyright and it’s lasted that way until 1:02:08 about 15 years ago when finally technology and Amazon and Kindle and all 1:02:14 that and and podcasting and doing your own music finally has started allowing 1:02:19 people to be their own um u publishers and escape escape the system and by the 1:02:27 way someone I think you said earlier Jim or someone said that we’re not going to get rid of IP anytime soon i think 1:02:33 that’s true because of the pervasive misunderstanding of the nature of property rights and the nature of IP 1:02:38 laws however I think copyright is mostly dead because it’s impossible to enforce it on a on a large scale you can’t stop 1:02:46 pirating you can’t stop encryption so even today all these people complaining about um the proposals to abolish 1:02:54 copyright they’re living in a world where copyright law is almost a dead letter just like the drug war can’t be enforced copyright law can’t be enforced 1:03:02 so right now today if you’re going to make money from selling books or selling your music you’re doing it in a world 1:03:08 where you’re facing competition already because there’s widespread piracy so you have to come up with business models and 1:03:13 ways to make money despite that like per you know do live performances or had merch or have add-on add-on stuff 1:03:20 whatever this already the world we’re living in so it’s a good thing in my view that it’s easy to evade copyright 1:03:26 law right now so it’s becoming a dead letter and patents are not the same thing because it’s not as easy to evade 1:03:33 patents but my hope is that someday it will be if 3D printing ever matures to 1:03:38 the point to where there’s there’s just easy you know 3D printing of of of a of 1:03:45 of gadgets and machines that are very sophisticated i mean imagine 30 years from now just being able to to print a 1:03:52 computer um you you won’t or a car you won’t need permission from anyone to do 1:03:57 it um and the patent won’t be able to stop you so hopefully technology will allow us to escape both of these and at 1:04:04 a certain point in time people will just they’ll realize the whole thing was was was pointless just like we realize now 1:04:10 that COVID lockdowns were were a huge mistake and a mass a mass hysteria except that IP hysteria is going to be 1:04:16 something that will have lasted for you know hundreds of years 1:04:26 i think I’ll take a couple more questions but I think we should stop at about 10 minutes if unless we’re done now but if anyone has any 1:04:33 questions feel free to raise your 1:04:39 hands hi Steph it’s Matt can you hear me hi yeah um I mean 1:04:47 not so much a question but more kind of a prompt which I think might be a good way for you to kind of sum up this this 1:04:53 issue for people um because the way I see it it kind of breaks down into two areas there’s the principal element like 1:04:59 is IP valid from a property rights point of view which I think you you know demonstrated that it isn’t but then 1:05:06 there’s also the pragmatic question which is I think what drives people more 1:05:11 obviously they concerned about you know like you said earlier it’s a bit like the who will build the roads thing or who will pick the cotton thing it’s who 1:05:18 will invent all our inventions thing um and I think people just think that um 1:05:24 that the incentives are in the wrong place without IP law which I personally 1:05:29 think is a misunderstanding because I think IP does in you know it does um 1:05:34 more to stifle innovation and creation in the way that it hinders people from copying each other and working from each 1:05:40 other’s ideas and sharing and and and and you know kind of interferes with that whole process um which I think 1:05:47 would you know lead to more innovations and creations so I think but I think that’s the two kind of elements that 1:05:52 people look at this from there is the kind of property rights argument which is you know is it valid property from a 1:05:58 property rights point of view but then there’s the pragmatic thing which is where I think obviously people certainly 1:06:04 people that aren’t libertarians are obviously that’s where their concerns mainly focused it’s like well what’s the 1:06:09 world going to look like who will build the roads you know who will pick the cotton it’s it’s that age-old problem where because it’s a change but the 1:06:16 thing is I think one thing they don’t appreciate is the fact that the reason why we don’t have the market al 1:06:21 solutions to you know the alternatives to these systems right now is because we’ve got IP law you know what I mean so 1:06:28 it’s not driving the market alternatives because you know it’s like if for example getting rid of IP law had some 1:06:36 kind of negative effect on some level of creation somewhere like people stop making music or whatever it is um you 1:06:42 know the need for that is going to then drive other ways of rewarding creators and encouraging creators to do that 1:06:48 because we want music and it’s like all the other things that we do you know we don’t just have to um doesn’t just have 1:06:54 to be a simple profit driven business you know we can subsidize things voluntarily that we want in society it 1:07:00 doesn’t always have to be about the force of law and coercion and perverting law to try to you know um right or wrong 1:07:07 and as I say I think IP fails in that pragmatic point as well of of actually you know protecting because you know 1:07:13 create we have that problem of creators being um um not getting the rewards for their contributions anyway even with IP 1:07:20 laws but I think that’s the biggest concern people have is without IP laws you know um are we going to be able to 1:07:27 foster the creation we want in our society sorry I went on a bit there 1:07:32 yeah no that’s that’s a good point um it’s one thing I don’t usually like one thing I usually point 1:07:38 is that okay most people have a very pragmatic consequentialist even 1:07:44 utilitarian sort of in intuition about this um and they just want a system that 1:07:52 will that that they’re comfortable they that they that they believe will result in lots of good ideas and lots of good 1:08:00 art they they want that um and I always point out well the 1:08:06 there’s no studies by the economists showing that that that you need it and 1:08:12 there’s no studies showing that it has that the patent system has generated more innovation like there’s I go 1:08:18 through this all the time and people’s eyes lose over and they don’t want to hear it and I think the reason is it’s not really that they’re they’re really 1:08:25 have a sophisticated utilitarian argument they don’t think that they have evidence uh they they no one tries to 1:08:31 point to me well Canella you you’ve found you you you’ve pointed to 15 or or 1:08:38 50 studies that are all inconclusive and they just don’t prove that it’s good but here’s one that proves it no one ever 1:08:44 does that they never say “Well here’s a good study that finally proved once and for all that patents make us richer.” No 1:08:50 no one does that um because there are none but but instead I think I think really you’re right i think they’re 1:08:57 they’re just afraid of change they’re ultimately conservative they’re terrified of change and they’re suspicious of people that want to change 1:09:03 it like they think I’m I don’t know i don’t know what they think about a patent lawyer who wants to get rid of it 1:09:09 but they must think you know Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey are billionaires they don’t trust them right they must have 1:09:16 something nefarious up their sleeves so it’s this hostility towards it’s it’s 1:09:21 this it’s this it’s this um this conservative preference for the status quo that makes them resistant to change 1:09:28 and then they just come up with with with with scary scenarios like well if you get rid of IP we’re not going to 1:09:34 have any but they don’t have any evidence for it so they and they’ll come up with bad arguments like well here’s my evidence america and the and Europe 1:09:41 were very are very rich and they had a patent system for the last 200 years like that’s their entire argument is 1:09:48 that the industrial revolution happened and America had patent law so that must 1:09:53 be the cause of our wealth that we had a patent system that’s it that’s that’s the extent of their sophisticated 1:09:59 analysis but really I think it’s just because they just want a comfortable reason to dismiss any attempt to change 1:10:06 things yeah no I agree and I think I mean it’s 1:10:11 like the problem is is we can’t show them the alternative world where copyright wasn’t practiced for the last 1:10:18 200 years to show them how things would have potentially been better without it and it’s a little bit like but I think a 1:10:25 lot people miss that in a lot of examples i see people will point to like some medical research and say well do 1:10:30 you think they would really do that research if they didn’t have the IP and patents to protect them and I’m like well yeah but if they didn’t have that 1:10:37 other people could step in and do the research if they didn’t want to do it you know what I mean and and could learn from and perhaps improve it in ways that 1:10:44 they’re not capable of but because they’ve got the patent on it they’re the only ones that are allowed to you know 1:10:49 to work with it and stuff and then you get into other issues like you know like when people talk about which you touched 1:10:54 on earlier about um you know like um pharmaceutical companies ripping off 1:10:59 patients with v you know ridiculously high drug prices well that’s only because they’ve got the patent and the 1:11:05 IP law allowing them the monopoly to you know so preventing competition from undercutting them and bringing the price 1:11:11 down there’s a reason why aspirin is dirt cheap you know what I mean because there’s no patent on it anymore so 1:11:17 anyone can make it you know what I mean it’s kind of like that um so yeah I think I think people miss that element 1:11:23 of it a lot i think they they look at they think oh well look at that research that was done and that was done under the paradigm of copyright so that must 1:11:29 be the only way research is going to be done with under the paradigm of you know of these patents and stuff and it’s like 1:11:35 well no if you think about it without those things that research is the research is more free because people 1:11:42 aren’t going to be worrying about infringing on other people’s patents and copyright and intellectual stuff it’s 1:11:47 just going to be about you know creation and innovation and it will be a bit of a free-for-all and if people are worried 1:11:52 about how we’re going to reward those creators at the root level because 1:11:57 they’re not getting their just rewards for their initial contribution and as being like the original person then we 1:12:04 can look at ways to address that we can look at ways at rewarding that whether it’s someone who was the original writer 1:12:09 of a song who doesn’t get as much sales on his album or tour as well as someone that covered it later on you know what I 1:12:15 mean it’s like well we can still do what we want to do you know so sorry I went on a bit there but I think that’s another issue where people get a 1:12:21 misconception over where the pragmatic problem lies yeah yeah i think it’s a it’s a combination of this inherent 1:12:28 conservativism this distrust of experts and people wanting change this this 1:12:34 paranoia almost uh the suspicion and so this leading to an inher and then the 1:12:39 fact that we we it’s a counterfactual we can’t tell them what the world’s 1:12:45 necessarily going to look like that’s why they look for guarantees they they want you have to guarantee them that the 1:12:50 poor will be taken care of just as good so they’re so they just say “Well I’m going to stick with the system that I 1:12:56 know.” Um in in in a way it’s so because the state has monopolized and dominated 1:13:03 and changed things they have foreclosed the alternatives we could point to 1:13:08 because IP is there’s no country that doesn’t have IP because the US and has been so successful in having and in 1:13:14 Western Europe and getting these IP treaties spread across the whole world where every country has it even even 1:13:20 North Korea and China have IP law i mean it’s not like there’s a there’s a a 1:13:28 laboratory we can look at to say “Oh here’s what it looks like when there’s no IP.” In a way it’s like a 1:13:33 sophisticated or a complicated or or sort of subtle application of the law of 1:13:39 of that Hasllett or or is it Bastiat talks about like this the idea of this the seen and the unseen it’s like if you 1:13:47 have a government policy that builds a bridge or something you see the bridge 1:13:53 so people think that’s good but what they don’t see is the projects that were 1:13:58 not undertaken because people had their t they were taxed and they don’t have 1:14:04 enough extra money left over to engage in things that would have been built so you’re comparing the unseen versus the 1:14:11 seen but the un the unseen is here and now and the and the scene is here and now the unseen we don’t know what it 1:14:17 would have been it’s like a counterfactual so it’s it’s a little bit like that we we don’t know what market 1:14:22 mechanisms and what social customs would have would have emerged in a world that was free which is why the libertarian 1:14:29 inclination is you have to have a little bit of faith in human nature you have to basically want be willing to try liberty 1:14:36 like like the answer is to live a principled life to favor things that you you know are good and just and to to be 1:14:43 willing to take a chance on liberty right so the answer is I’m not sure what the system would look like but because I 1:14:49 favor justice and property rights I I’m willing to make a change because the 1:14:55 current system is is evil and even though I don’t know exactly what freedom will look like I want to try liberty i 1:15:02 want to try freedom i mean that’s how I look at it but that problem is that’s appealing to an inherent 1:15:10 anti-conservative radical idea a willingness to make changes that will be 1:15:16 uncomfortable for some people because it’s a new world uh even though it seems to be better on 1:15:22 paper um I think we probably should stop now because I’ve gone a little long next 1:15:28 time I do this I will try to have a better technological uh start and maybe 1:15:33 get a little help but um I appreciate everyone joining in and if anyone like this or wants some more we can talk 1:15:40 about it on Twitter thanks everybody
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Kinsella profile-head - 1Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His  publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), and International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020).

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