As I noted in Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property, statists used to be much more honest. The federal government used to a Dept. of War. In 1947, its named was chagned to the Dept. of Army of the “New Military Establishment,” and in 1949, to the Department of Defense. Europeans are usually more honest than Americans. Socialists in Europe admit they are socialists, or even communists. In America, they call themselves “conservatives” or “liberals.”
In her latest op-ed piece, Trudy Rubin expresses concern that WikiLeaks may lead to a downgrade in the “hard-won trust between the United States and the leaders of Russia, China and Arab countries.”
Hard-won trust? Downgraded by publishing an exposé of backstabbing behavior? Isn’t that the same as the philanderer blaming the private eye for the inevitable downgrade in marital trust that follows exposure of the latest affair?
Shawn Ritenour is Professor of Economics at Grove City College and adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He earned a B. A. in economics from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa and a Ph.D. in economics from Auburn University. He has held the Ruby Letsch-Roderique Chair of Economics at Southwest Baptist University and has served as visiting professor at the University of Angers in France.
Job creation has become the central theme of the current recession. The focus on job growth is widespread among both conservative (if I may use this term liberally) and left-leaning economists. Furthermore, if you ask the man on the street what the pressing economic problem of the time is, he will certainly respond, “Jobs.”
George Bragues is the head of the business program at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, Canada.
Libertarian and other IP advocates sometimes get miffed when you refer to a patent or copyright as a monopoly privilege granted by the state (see my post Are Patents “Monopolies”?). But some IP proponents are quite forthright about this. Take this explicit opening passage in an article by an ardent IP advocate, Jerome H. Reichman, a law professor at Duke:
Opponents of intellectual property often point out that modern patent and copyright are purely legislated, artificial schemes. For anarcho-libertarians and libertarians opposed to legislation as a means of forming law, this is yet another stake in the heart of IP. (See my post The Mountain of IP Legislation, and my article “Legislation and Law in a Free Society.”)
From article,
Kelli Space, 23, graduated from Northeastern University in 2009 with a bachelor’s in sociology — and a whopping $200,000 in student loan debt. Space, who lives with her parents and works full-time, put up a Web site called TwoHundredThou.com soliciting donations to help meet her debt obligation, which is $891 a month. That number jumps to $1,600 next November.
[This speech was delivered at the offices of the Mises Institute, September 14, 1999, the date on which Human Action was published 50 years ago. The Mises Institute published the pocket paperback edition in November 2010. ]
