Intellectual Property and More on Bitcoin: Richard Falkvinge and the Pirate Party

Richard Falkvinge, who I wrote about yesterday in an admittingly indirect way, is an interesting character. According to Wikipedia he is the founder of the Pirate Party in Sweden. I am not sure anymore if he is actually trying to pump Bitcoin for his own financial profit or for some convoluted political agenda/fantasy. Intellectual Property (IP) rights is an interesting subject, however. Austrian economists point out, and I agree with them, that IP is nothing but the licensing of monopolies by the government. There are a lot of negative externalities associated with the national IP system, and even more on the international level. The usual argument for private IP rights is that businesses won’t be incentivized enough to develop IP without given monopoly licensing my the government. There is scant evidence to support this theory, and there is some evidence that supports the opposite; it may be the case that private IP rights hinder technological innovation, due to the convoluted nature of the patent process and patent law.