Considered in this paper , mentioned by Tyler Cowen at marginal revolution .

The author evidently accepts the idea of a natural right in ideas. Does he consider that the market can provide an appropriation mechanism which is sufficient to stimulate the innovations that would be elicited by prizes?

Of course, prizes are part of the market insofar as they are privately funded.

Here is Tyler Cowen's recent talk at Google, in which he discussed prizes vs. grants.

The current prize is the suspension of liberty (a monopoly) that the prize winner can commercially exploit.

Now, perhaps recognising that it's not particularly fair, let alone ethical, to suspend liberty, the proposal is to tax the populace instead in order to award financial grants or prizes.

If the government are supposedly the representatives of the people, why not simply let the people represent themselves in a free market?

Instead of a rather clumsy mechanism whereby representation is supposedly achieved via a vote, and funds are obtained via taxation, why not cut out the middleman and let the people vote with their wallets directly?

You simply need a market in which large numbers of people can each contribute a small amount to an ultimately large reward for a particular innovation say.

That way the people (via a market) get to put their money where they feel it's best put.

And then it's not so much a prize, but a simple offer to exchange money for technology, just as once upon a time we might offer to exchange a few baskets for an axe (or a lesson in how to make one).

And that's what I'm working on, a market where the masses can exchange money for IP, i.e. The Contingency Market.

Are you advocating complete anarchy? That has two glaring flaws: 1. The poor will be underserved and genuine public goods underproduced. 2. The latter includes whatever defense and policing would be required to prevent someone accumulating enough de-facto power so as to establish a monopoly on the use of force, i.e. become a warlord and conquer, and to prevent an outside invasion conquering. There goes your anarchy, whichever happens first. Anarchy is an unstable state.

OK, what happened to my neat and tidy paragraphs? :P

Did you leave a blank line between your neat and tidy paragraphs?

It is worrying that you associate advocacy against commercial monopolies with advocacy for anarchy.

As I've said before, I'm a staunch supporter of intellectual property rights and support the law to properly recognise and protect them. What I don't support is the assimilation of erstwhile temporary commercial monopolies over IP as both permanent and superior to common law. Instead, I support the abolition of copyright and patent, and a return to the exchange of IP in a free market.

There was a newline before and after each element in the numbered list.

Crosbie, I think you are confused. Particularly when in a *single paragraph* you say first "I'm a staunch supporter of intellectual property rights" and later "I support the abolition of copyright and patent". What "intellectual property rights" do you support, then? Just no-plagiarism and trademarks? (Arguably both can be folded into existing anti-fraud law anyway.) Copylefts such as the GPL?

As for anarchy, I imputed your support of it from this:

"If the government are supposedly the representatives of the people, why not simply let the people represent themselves in a free market?

Instead of a rather clumsy mechanism whereby representation is supposedly achieved via a vote, and funds are obtained via taxation, why not cut out the middleman and let the people vote with their wallets directly?"

It's difficult to interpret this as suggesting anything other than the abolition of government and replacement of all currently government-provided services with private business. This has so many faults that listing them all would probably run the againstmonopoly.org server out of disk space. :P For starters, though, every basic service would instantly develop a user fee and thereby shut the lower income brackets out. I, for example, have a fairly low income and no car. Privatize the city I'm in and in a few weeks I'm up to my neck in garbage because I no longer have any means of getting rid of it -- I can't pay to have it hauled away by the usual people because I can barely make ends meet as it is, and I can't haul it away myself since I have no car and there'd be far too much bulk and weight to carry any great distance on foot (and transporting it by bicycle would be out of the question). That's just for starters, even with just replacing every function of *municipal* government with direct transactions with private businesses. To approximate the effect upon the poor one can simply suppose the tax structure was replaced with a flat income tax, which obviously means it goes down for the rich and up for the poor. Uh-oh. Increased efficiency lowers it somewhat, and obviously user fees fall more heavily on the heavier users too, which modifies it in less predictable ways, but it's easy to see that the lowest brackets will still suffer under an increase in the cost of living.

Without getting into the debate over anarchy, the poor typically get screwed by government more than the rich, who generally have the means to insulate themselves from government depredation to a greater degree. As I recall, there was a book published in the 50s called "Why the Poor Pay More."

If you have no car, that means you don't have to pay the expenses of operating a car, including gas and oil, maintenance and repair fees, insurance, license plate fees, etc., and in a place like New York City, possibly several hundred dollars a month to garage it. I'm guessing your transportation costs are less than if you had a car.

As for a flat income tax, who pays what would depend on the rate. If we opt for a Biblical 10 per cent, or better still, 5 per cent, the poor would be better off, at least those working poor who earn above the amount at which the earned income tax credit kicks in.

Regarding your allusion to the cost of living, the key culprit in the increasing cost of such is the monopoly Federal Reserve and its cheap(er) dollar policy. Of course, that benefits you if you're if you're selling (i.e., exporting) goods/services to foreigners, like retailers who are selling to Canadians and others taking advantage of the cheap(er) dollar. If you're an American traveling to Euroland, England, or Japan, rotsa ruck. If you're a foreigner going to Disneyland, you hit the jackpot.

Noyb, I am talking about a free market for science, technology and the arts (IP) - not national infrastructure.

So, such a free market operates instead of the alternatives of monopoly or taxation funded prizes.

I have already argued at length on this site concerning intellectual property and related rights (distinct from the privileges of copyright and patent). Suffice it to say that intellectual property should be treated just like material property.

Re: the poor and working classes -> sophistry won't change the simple numbers. Don't have money + everything's private business = can't get anything. No government -> no welfare -> no money means you starve. You can't buy even the cheapest, most efficiently produced food with $0. Plus you've misinterpreted "flat tax" as a fixed percentage instead of a fixed actual amount. User fees everywhere is better approximated by the latter. The car's costs are exactly why I have none, but the point I'd been making was that just changing the city from a government to a private for-profit corporation would have me up to my neck in garbage I couldn't a) haul myself (can't afford car costs) or b) have hauled (can't afford to start paying to have it removed either). And I'm working-class, not destitute. Of course there's also the issue that without government antitrust regulation the market would tend to devolve into monopolies, and prices would skyrocket. Ultimately the company with the most clout in the "physical security" sector would get big enough with a big enough army of feared thugs and goons to start taking over everything else through coercion. After a short time you have no longer got an anarchy; that company is now the government, and probably not a very nice one either.

Re: Crosbie -&> So you meant to "scope" that statement to just the "IP" areas? OTOH, now you say "intellectual property should be treated just like material property" which is exactly the kind of thing MPAA lawyers say when they push for DRM and artificially making information behave like a physical good that can only be in one place at one time and can be moved but not easily copied. (And often they don't even want it to be easily moved. They want it to emulate heavy furniture rather than, say, a plastic disc!) And of course that means no fair use too.

If instead you mean that copying it should be like copying, say, a chair -- I can't take yours away from you without permission, but if I make an exact copy, then that's my own business and none of yours -- then I'd agree.

IP being like material property means you can't take my property without my permission, nor can you manufacture a copy without my permission. However, if I give/sell you my property (whether copy or original), then it's yours to do with as you want, including making unlimited copies or derivatives thereof.

That's how IP naturally works when there isn't a monopoly (copyright or patent).

And without monopolies, we have a free and fair market in IP.

Which also means we don't need taxation funded alternative mechanisms as equivalent substitutes for the monopolies that are now self-evidently ineffective (despite fining single mum's over $200,000).