An Objectivist IP Argument for Taxation

Objectivists say they are against taxation; they say that you can fund a state by some kind of contract fee or lottery system. Obviously, you can’t, not without the state compelling membership or outlawing competitors, which permits them to charge monopoly prices which amounts to a tax.

But Objectivists are strongly pro-intellectual property (see Why Objectivists Hate Anarchy; IP: The Objectivists Strike Back!). They believe you deserve to be rewarded for creative, innovative, inventive action. But note that they also are extremely fond of the American Constitution and Founders; they believe the Constitution is a great achievement of the intellect–this corresponds with their belief that a proper state, such as the original American state, is a great value to man. Well, put two and two together: the Founders gave us a great creation: the Constitution, and our system of government. We all benefit from it. It’s only fair that the Founders charge us a royalty for our use of their creation–and naturally, the state itself is the agency as the natural successor to its parent-creators, the Framers and Founders, to inherit and manage this royalty-collecting right. Don’t call it a tax–call it a royalty.

See also the following post from the Mises Blog (Oct. 18, 2010)

A Thought Experiment about Patents and Taxes In Reducing the Cost of IP Law, I argued that one improvement to the patent system (short of abolition) would be to eliminate injunctions and provie for a compulsory licensing system. As I noted there, the compulsory licensing approach is not new. Some countries impose compulsory licensing on patentees who do not adequately “work” the patent. I discussed provisions in US patent law that do permit compulsory licenses already in some situations. I was reminded of this when discussing with some friends a comment to this blogpost, Pirated Software Could Bring Down Predator Drones. The commentor stated: “Just declare the IP a state secret. The market value is then zero, as the company cant sell it legally. Buy it from the company for 1 cent. Then classify the contract as top secret. If the company complains, send the people to jail or gitmo.” As I noted in the previous posts, the feds have the authority to license third parties to manufacture patented articles, without patent infringement liability; this was threatened in the Cipro anthrax drug a couple years ago. The feds then have to pay “compensation” to the patent holder. Something similar happens if the some federal agency issues a “secrecy order” for military or other reasons for a pending patent. It occurs to me that the very notion of a compulsory license for IP can help to illustrate how IP is an obvious transfer of wealth. Consider: under current law, the state grants a patent monopoly to some applicant. Then, the state can declare a compulsory monopoly (or issue a secrecy order), and pay you some compensation for this “taking”. Obviously this payment comes from tax payers. So the IP step can be seen as just an intermediate step to justify transferring money from everyone else to the patentee. It’s as if you tell the state you have an idea and the state takes money from others and gives it to you. Come to think of it, this is exactly the idea behind proposals for tax-funded “innovation” awards–proposed even by some libertarians (!). The point is that even when the state does not issue the compulsory license, they are simply deputizing the patentee to go out and extort the money himself; it’s like taxation. (Incidentally, in An Objectivist IP Argument for Taxation, I provide another argument for why IP could be used to justify taxes.)

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