Monopoly and Competition

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Blog09/24/2007Karen De Coster

Lew Rockwell on unions. One of my favorite lines from people is the one that goes, "Well, nowadays unions are awful, but the early intentions were good." The early intentions of unions were the same as the modern goals: to...

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Another Patent Tax

Taxes and SpendingInterventionismMonopoly and Competition

Blog09/20/2007Stephan Kinsella

Just when you thought taxes and patents could not get any worse: Bush's Top Economist Seeks Patent on His Own Tax Strategy (9/13/2007) reports on a patent application for a...

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Open Source Patents

Legal SystemMonopoly and Competition

Blog09/11/2007Stephan Kinsella

Some companies are engaging in very creative maneuvering around the omnipresent threat of patents. The Open Invention Network (OIN), for example (Wiki entry), is a type of...

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Sacrificing Workers on the Competition Altar

Monopoly and CompetitionProduction Theory

Blog09/04/2007Skip Oliva

The recent Whole Foods victory over the Federal Trade Commission may obscure the harsh truth that when antitrust regulators challenge a merger, the companies involved usually surrender, not fight. Among the "routine" merger reviews is...

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The Truth About Labor Day

InterventionismMonopoly and CompetitionProduction Theory

Blog09/03/2007Gary Galles

Labor Day is supposed to honor all American workers. And every year, union Labor Day rhetoric does just that. Unfortunately, it then makes the false leap to the claim that unions advance the interests of all American working men and women, not just their members. In fact, despite unions' pro-...

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Let's Bring Back the Good Old Days of English Patents

Legal SystemWorld HistoryMonopoly and Competition

Blog08/31/2007Stephan Kinsella

It's somewhat striking that modern libertarian advocates of patent rights seem blithely unaware of the utterly monopolistic, completely unlibertarian origin of "patent grants" by English monarchs. At the very least, they ought to be a...

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Who owns the copyright to cut-up jeans or low-rise pants?

Legal SystemMonopoly and Competition

Blog08/30/2007Jeffrey A. Tucker

Or better yet, what do the fashion and dining industries have in common?

Neither has traditionally been protected via IP laws.

Yet while conventional wisdom suggests that IP regimes are a necessary condition for both invention and innovation, the fashion and dining industries thrive...

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Chicken-Salad Chick Shut Down

Big GovernmentInterventionismMonopoly and Competition

Blog08/29/2007Jeffrey A. Tucker

Last night, a lady from my neighborhood just delivered her last pint of chicken salad to my door. Her chicken salad—made by "The Chicken Salad Chick"—has been all the rage, with everyone in the neighborhood forking over for this stuff.

It's a classic case of a suburban food hysteria. But...

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Ignorance of patents is no excuse!

Legal SystemMonopoly and Competition

Blog08/24/2007Stephan Kinsella

France to Ratify London Agreement on Patent Language notes that France is about to ratify the evil London Agreement.

Currently,...

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Is the Open Source Movement Libertarian?

Legal SystemMonopoly and CompetitionValue and Exchange

Blog08/24/2007Justin M. Ptak

Yesterday the president of the Open Source Initiative attempted to show how the philosophy underscoring the open-source movement and libertarianism are best pals.

But can they even be enemies?

The problem with his argument, along with...