I’ve long been fascinated by C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures“ (excerpts) thesis, which concerns misunderstandings between the sciences, and the humanities. But it always seemed ... incomplete. To be missing something.

Those who wish to use government power to redistribute income in directions they choose (almost everyone, today) must abuse others’ rights, because, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “To take from one...to spare to others...is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

An individual who earns more money per week is obviously in a position to spend more in buying consumers’ goods than is an individual who earns less money per week. For example, a man who makes $1,000 per week has the ability to spend $1,000 per week, while a man who makes only $900 per week has the ability to spend only $900 per week. (For the sake of simplicity, we’re ignoring such possibilities as going into debt or using up savings, and assuming that the individuals both want to live within their incomes.)

It seems to me that many small/medium companies live in fear of a big patent lawsuit. Even if they had their own IP, I suspect many companies would gladly give up forever their right to sue for patent infringement, in exchange for some kind of immunity from patent liability--at least, if they could eliminate the threat of an injunction, so that the worst penalty they might face is some kind of mandatory royalty. Surely IBM et al. would not take this deal, but I bet a lot of other companies would.

It is often the case that the great intellects advance ideas so rich and prescient that they anticipate, in however embryonic form, ideas that are more fully developed later on. One of my favorite examples is Hans Hoppe’s monumental argumentation ethics defense of libertarian rights, where Hoppe gives credit to Rothbard for recognizing, in a brief passage, the insights that Hoppe builds on more systematically: As Hoppe writes: