How to Slow Economic Progress - Stephan Kinsella - Mises Daily
a significant clarification on the issue of intellectual property, I thought, the relative scarcity/non-scarcity of ideas and material things is important - what I would question is how this would apply to a case like copies of Microsoft Windows being sold on the street in Asia? because the economic aggression occurs as soon as the buyer begins using the software, other users of the software who paid full price are hurt - are we saying that once Windows has been released to market anyone can make copies for sale? or make copies using a different name? I am not understanding how software as a business model is a product of state decreed monopoly, unless perhaps the IBM-MS relationship is seen in terms of IBM's near-monopoly position at the time being a product of progressive era fiat, which in turn enabled MS to establish a near-monopoly in PCs
the whole issue dates to the very genesis of secrecy, as the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world was captured by war, and subsequently taken "off-market" so to speak or, taken to market for profit as best suited the imperial state, whereas the earliest accumulations of knowledge were voluntarily funded by the society and whatever was of praxeological value or "consequential knowledge" was available to all, the post-war old theocracy world became deprived of its' intellectual fountains but still clings as hard as it can to the spiritual and moral compass of that era - it turns out the centralization of the knowledge, required at that time to enable the best minds from geographically diverse places to work together on elevating quality, was also the Achilles' heel of the old theocracy
a market may in theory develop for ideas that are valuable, but the nature of entrepreneurial ideas is such that they are rarely a "sure thing", so it takes a leap of faith for an entrepreneur and investor to have a go at it, the idea's value is only realized after it has come to market in physical form, that is my personal hunch why a marketplace for ideas has not developed beyond the entrepreneur-investor framework
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