KOL491 | Trying to Persuade Paul Cwik of the Case Against IP

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 491.

https://youtu.be/lfjpoKCWBDA

I've known Paul Cwik, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Mount Olive and fellow of the Mises Institute since I started attending the Austrian Scholars Conference in 1995. He is an Austrian and libertarian of sorts but had some qualms with my anti-IP writing so presented a paper "Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics?" at the Austrian Scholars Conference in 2008, which I attended and commented on. After 18 years we finally decided to get around to talking about this. I had planned on an hour but we ended up talking for 3. It turns out we were old friends but not that close; we didn't know much about each other. So the first 30-50 minutes or so is more preliminary discussion.

To his credit, he read a good deal of the huge deluge of material I sent to read up on and asked many very good questions. He did not engage in intentional equivocation that is characteristic of many on the pro-IP side, and he was reasonable in conceding many of my points and was willing to ponder my push back.

I was hoping to get him to see the light, since I have in person seen many people change their minds on IP after a long discussion but have never had it happen while recording. We did not resolve the issue, partly because we just didn't have enough time to keep going, but I think we made some progress. Maybe we will have a Part 2 later. Who knows.

For now, some relevant links pertaining to some of the topics discussed. I will organize this better later.

(Not to be confused with Bryan Cwik, who also has opinions on IP: “Good Ideas is Pretty Scarce”; Bryan Cwik, "Property Rights in Non‐rival Goods" (2, 3, 4); "Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights" (2; 3); Gamrot, Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights: Against Cwik.)

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Types of Intellectual Property

It is impossible to own ideas

Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes

The “Ontology” Mistake of Libertarian Creationists