KOL468 | Haman Nature Hn _: Tabarrok on Patents and Drug Reimportation

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 468.

See background info below.

• Tabarrok, Cowen, and Douglass North on Patents
• Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance: Statism, not renaissance
• Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin⁷
• $30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The “Progressive-Libertarian” Solution
• Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund
• What’s Worse: $80 Billion or $30 Million?
• Software Patents Bad, Pharmaceutical Patents Good?: confused “libertarian” “opponents” of state monopoly privileges

Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?

***This is my appearance on Adam Haman’s podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack), episode HN 119, “Stephan Kinsella Expounds on Philosophy And The Life Well Lived” (recorded Feb. 6, 2025—just before the Tom Woods cruise). We discussed philosophy and rights; my legal and libertarian careers (see Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story), and so on. Shownotes, links, grok summary, and transcript below.

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Background and Relevant Links:

• Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?
• The Problem with Intellectual Property
• Mark Lemley: The Very Basis Of Our Patent System… Is A Myth
• Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy
• The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright

Tabarrok seems to be generally pro-free market and an Austrian or fellow traveler. However, although he sometimes criticizes existing IP law, he is not opposed to intellectual property (IP), unlike all the cool Austro-libertarians. ¹ And he often proposes changes to IP law—sometimes outrageously goofy ones, such as his truly insane idea of replacing the patent system with $3.5 trillion worth of taxpayer subsidies (if you take his logic for a taxpayer funded “medical innovation price fund” to its limit apply it to all forms of patented innovation and other forms of IP like copyright) ² or based on simplistic assertions or confusions like the idea that we can empirically know that we are on the “wrong side” of the optimal patent term length on his ridiculous “Tabarrok Curve.” ³

So even though he’s not against IP and thus not a very good libertarian, and he’s not a Misesian since he seems to think utility is cardinal, measurable, and knowable, (( “The Problem with Intellectual Property” (2025), Part III.B.2. )

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1. The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism. [↩]
2. $30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The “Progressive-Libertarian” Solution; Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund; What’s Worse: $80 Billion or $30 Million?. [↩]
3. Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin; The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length. [↩]