Thoughts on Intellectual "Property"

There are several arguments against things like copyright and patents, known to some as "intellectual property."

One that popped into my head, while listening to Stephen Kinsella's interview on the Tom Woods Show, was the difference between the nature of ideas, and any other type of thing in the world which enters into human action.

Clearly, ideas are not tangible. They can't be measured in any sort of quantitative way. They also, unlike scarce physical resources, don't need to be "economized" in any real sense of the word.

Now, theres much nit-picking that could already be done with the above sentences by the pro IP crowd, delusional, though, they may be.

But I don't want to get into all that here. What I want to show is the difference in the way ideas and property come about.

All property that is currently owned, was created or homesteaded at one point in time, by one person or persons acting as a unit. Whomever owns all the stuff now, land included, it can be traced back to a first owner. Even if it was later sold or stolen, or whatever, the first owner didn't need to buy or steal it.

When it comes to ideas, or technological know-how, or recipes, or however you want to put them, this same logical regression does not hold.

 Im not denying that someone chronologically came up with ideas before others, or that they aren't transferred, person to person. So then, how are they different?

Two separate individuals (not working together), cannot, by definition, homestead the same property. However, with ideas, two or more individuals can homestead the same exact idea, at the same exact time, completely unaware of each other. In fact, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, Carl Menger, was one of three men who independently discovered the idea of marginal utility. It would be nonsensical to say three different men discovered the North Pole.

Ideas are metaphysically different from other means employed by humans in action.

This is yet another hurtle for the pro-IP crowd to try to dance around.