All Posts Tagged With: "patent"

Intellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?

Imagine a land recently seized from a foreign power where there is little law and a lot of gold. Since nature abhors a vacuum, prospectors quickly adopt the conventions of private property: Whoever is first to put four stakes in the ground is the proud owner of the land and any gold beneath. This would [...]

22Dec2010 | David K. Levine | 33 comments | Continued

The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives

Without private property rights, people have incentives to overuse an asset. Conflicting private property rights, on the other hand, create a “tragedy of the anti-commons” in which resources are underused, according to Michael Heller. In The Gridlock Economy, he treats the reader to a compelling array of examples of the tragedy of the anti-commons in [...]

19Aug2009 | Art Carden | 0 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

Two Libertarianisms To the Editor: Jim Peron, in “Are There Two Libertarianisms?” (June 2001), sees moralism and consequentialism as two sides of a coin. He writes, “A free society is not only right but it works.” Surely there is mutual support between them. Nonetheless, there is a fundamental divide as to primacy. Moralism aims at [...]

1Oct2001 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

Opportunity Cost and Hidden Inventions

Few people think about opportunity cost as systematically as economists do, but all of us are constantly guided by the opportunity costs we face. If, as you are reading this article, you learn that someone a few blocks away is giving $1,000 to anyone who comes by, I predict with confidence that you will quickly [...]

1Apr1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | Continued

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