The pending reform of US patent law that has “inventors” and the IP bar all upset (even though it only makes modest changes to the law) is welcome by India and China, at least. See, e.g., this Indian newspaper article arguing that the patent reform measures being considered by Congress will make it easier for India’s patent holders to enter the U.S.
In the comments of my post on the mortgage mess, “Jake” linked to this fantastic piece by Peter Schiff. He makes the obvious point—that I somehow missed!—that the bailout will only further depress home prices in the medium to long term, since fewer people will qualify for loans. It’s really amazing how politicians screw up a part of the market and then kick it while it’s down.
In a recent press briefing given by him and his colleagues, the Deputy MD of the mission-starved IMF was positively drooling over the prospect that the next round of Climate-camouflaged tax transfers from the pockets of the developed world’s citizens will trigger a veritable host of ‘adjustment’ problems and hence offer this institutional dinosaur a whole new rationale for ill-judged economic meddling. In the Q&A which followed, one member of the audience wondered:-
Following the biblical narration, the Tower of Babel was said to have been the culmination of a widespread mortal desire to revolt against the creator. Instead what was to result was a crumbling of the foundation of Babylonian civilization, causing exchange to come to a screeching halt and mass unrest which left behind an uncompleted tower to serve as a monumental testament to the perils of reckless capital consumption.
Murray Rothbard writes: Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a “conspiracy theory of history,” “paranoid,” “economic determinist,” and even “Marxist.” These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such realistic analyses can be, and have been, made from any and all parts of the economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party. The most common label is “conspiracy theorist,” almost always leveled as a hostile epithet rather than adopted by the “conspiracy theorist” himself. It is no wonder that usually these realistic analyses are spelled out by various “extremists” who are outside the Establishment consensus. For it is vital to the continued rule of the State apparatus that it have legitimacy and even sanctity in the eyes of the public, and it is vital to that sanctity that our politicians and bureaucrats be deemed to be disembodied spirits solely devoted to the “public good.”
Gold fund manager John Embry writes in Investors Digest of Canada, Gold Gleams as Influence of Central Bankers Wanes. Embry cites another analyst, Leonard Kaplan, who asks, why should gold cost $700 when an ounce can be mined for $350? Embry counters with
The world, at least in the long run, is governed by ideas, writes Murray Rothbard, and it seems clear that libertarianism is only likely to triumph if the ideas spread to and are adopted by a significantly large number of people. And so “education” becomes a necessary condition for the victory of liberty — all sorts of education, from the most abstract systematic theories down to attention-catching devices that will attract the interest of potential converts. Education, indeed, is the characteristic strategic theory of classical liberalism.
I received an impressive inquiry from a high school senior: “I am contacting you to ask if I can interview you for my senior project paper, which is a persuasive paper about why copyrights are invalid and impractical. I will have between 5-10 questions regarding intellectual property for you to answer.” I said sure; and she sent on her questions, which were:
