Gates taking a seat in your den:
Q: In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?
A: No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.
Be sure not to read, Against Intellectual Property or any of the articles listed here.
So to reflect, Austrian economists are: extreme liberals, knee-jerk conservatives, greedy capitalists, heartless sycophants for Big Business, Quixotic theorists, peacenik philanderers, reactionaries from a backwards past and now communists. At least Austrians are not apologists for liberty.
