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  • Posted by dbhalling 12 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Lucky I am intimately familiar with the thoughts of Kinsella. His idea that property rights are a social construct designed to deal with scarcity is nonsense. This is not the historical basis of property rights, logically it fails to explain why any particular person owns any specific property, and it is just wrong that patents and copyrights are not subject to scarcity. Kinsella is an intellectual fraud.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 12 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Thanks for the paper, I will look it up. I have had a number of fights with Austrians.

    When I finish the paper I will be happy to post it here. I have written somewhat related posts on my blog.

    I am not quite sure about your question. I divide all human creations into those with an objective result (repeatable, scientifically objective) and a subjective result (art). For instance, an incandescent light bulb always puts out light when electricity of a certain voltage and current is applied - objective result. The effect of the novel Atlas Shrugged may be nothing, may spur people to action, may inspire disgust - subjective result. Only inventions result in real per capita increases in wealth. For instance, if I work longer/harder there is a limit to the time in a day and the endurance of my body. The increase is bounded and relatively small. On the other hand the year before the cotton gin was created the US produced about 4000 bales of cotton a year. Ten years later the US was producing 400000 bales of cotton a year and almost all of that was the result of the invention of the cotton gin. Only inventions can give you that sort of increase in wealth.
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  • Posted by Lucky 12 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    db- I hope you will make that paper available, eg by a link from here.
    Are you familiar with the 2008 paper of Paul Cwik 'Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics' ?
    It is nearly as long as Kelly's. (I have an attention span of 2.5 pages and 4 minutes).
    Going back to your theme 'all real per capita increases in income are the result of increasing levels of technology', will you be considering working harder, working smarter, managerial effectiveness, operations research, motivation and training?
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