An old-time socialist cliche in favor of socialized medicine is that private companies profit from people’s sickness, which is supposed to be unconscionable. Actually the best way to meet people’s needs is through a system that permits profitability as a sign of success and efficiency, just as it makes sense that farmers should profit from people’s hunger or builders should profit from people’s need for shelter etc.
And yet, reading about how drug companies are using the state to prohibit the production of life-saving drugs in poor countries, solely to extract monopoly rents, the phrase does seem to make some degree of sense — as this passionate lefty here points out.
A student at the Mises University, who is surrounded by some of the smartest young lefty students in the country, told me last week that there is no question in his mind that the injustices done in the name of “intellectual property” are not only driving young people away from the idea of property rights in general but are actually inspiring a re-embrace of socialism.
This is why the intellectual stakes are so high. It is urgent that believers in real capitalism separate themselves completely from this false notion of “intellectual property” so that it not permanently discredit the cause of property property, free markets, and capitalism generally. To save the idea of private property, it must be completely severed from impostor forms.
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Without getting into the issue of the justness of intellectual property, the referred to leftist students are using intellectual property as an excuse to reject all private property in the means of production. These individuals have little or no regard for private property, and intellectual property is a convenient cover for a fundamental statist philosophy.
As an analogy, now that Obama is president, where has all the anti-war left gone? With a few exceptions, they are not anti-war in principle, but only so regarding the Iraq War, which was Bush’s War. The anti-war left conveniently used the Iraq War to elect a Democrat as president. Rhetoric aside, under Obama the U.S. is de facto just as imperialistic and militaristic as under Bush. Little, if anything, of importance has changed.
As an avowed independent centrist politically, I have always felt that freedom of ownership of any sort must be tempered by the attained qualifications and work ethics of those who profress it, balanced against it’s strategic role in America’s totality of being. Neither the world of Adam Smith, nor “Obama Smith” should come to pass if there is anything worthy of our inter-relational existences. Poor nations of the world should be directed to get their collective acts together in all ways if they wish to have the successful nations help them in meaningful ways so that they tend to become more self-sufficient.
“As an avowed independent centrist politically, I have always felt that freedom of ownership of any sort must be tempered by the attained qualifications and work ethics of those who profress it, balanced against it’s strategic role in America’s totality of being. Neither the world of Adam Smith, nor “Obama Smith” should come to pass if there is anything worthy of our inter-relational existences. Poor nations of the world should be directed to get their collective acts together in all ways if they wish to have the successful nations help them in meaningful ways so that they tend to become more self-sufficient.”
what is this i dont even
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