I've noted before this nutty purported idea of hyper-IPer Andrew Galambos (see Galambos and Other Nuts; Against Intellectual Property, p. 27): Galambos

took his own ideas to ridiculous lengths dropping a nickel in a fund box every time he used the word "liberty" as a royalty to the descendants of Thomas Paine, the alleged "inventor" of the word "liberty"; and changing his original name from Joseph Andrew Galambos (Jr., presumably) to Andrew Joseph Galambos, to avoid infringing his identically-named father's rights to the name.

Now, this seems quite sensible. Galambos is right: every time you use "liberty," you should drop a nickel in the Thomas Paine Descendant Royalty box.

But I realized this the other day that since this nickel-depositing was Galambos's idea, then when you drop your nickel, you now must compensate Galambos himself. 15% seems like a reasonable commission; so in addition to the nickel for Paine, you better drop 2.25 cents in a box for Galambos's heirs.

But there's one more snag. The idea of recognizing that Galambos should be rewarded for his idea of rewarding word-coiners is my idea. So in addition to the 17.25 cents above, you need to send me an extra 0.3375 cents each time you pay Galambos's heirs their 2.25 cents.

[stephankinsella.com crosspost]

Why only a nickel? Did Gambolos do the necessary research and discover that $0.05 in today's dollars is what Thomas Paine actually considered fair compensation, or did he just decide that 5 cents seemed right, much the same way that a music pirate decides 0 cents per track seems right?

The decreasing returns on the idea contribution additions make it seem more like a pyramid scheme than a recursion. Are you going to register a trademark for this MLM? ;) Also, 15% of a nickel is .75 cents, so 2.25 cents must be for the three instances for the 'l' word in your post, so the part right before the 2.25 number should read "in addition to the three nickels for Paine". I want a dollar if you copy the correction back into your post, or for any use of "the 'l' word" in any medium, other than basic cable.

woops, there was a math mistake. But you get the point.