Property Rights – Page 4 – artdiamondblog.com

Hamilton Thought “Contracts Formed the Basis of Public and Private Morality”

(p. 297) Hamilton argued that the security of liberty and property were inseparable and that governments should honor their debts because contracts formed the basis of public and private morality: “States, like individuals, who observe their engagements are respected and trusted, while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.” The proper handling of government debt would permit America to borrow at affordable interest rates and would also act as a tonic to the economy. Used as loan collateral, government bonds could function as money–and it was the scarcity of money, Hamilton observed, that had crippled the economy and resulted in severe deflation in the value of land. America was a young country rich in opportunity. It lacked only liquid capital, and government debt could supply that gaping deficiency.
The secret of managing government debt was to fund it properly by setting aside revenues at regular intervals to service interest and pay off principal. Hamilton refuted charges that his funding scheme would feed speculation. Quite the contrary: if investors knew for sure that government bonds would be paid off, the prices would not fluctuate wildly, depriving speculators of opportunities to exploit. What mattered was that people trusted the government to make good on repayment: “In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it and this is affected by appearances as well as realities.” Hamilton intuited that public relations and confidence building were to be the special burdens of every future treasury secretary.

Source:
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

TransCanada Plans to Use Eminent Domain to Build the Keystone Pipeline

I am not opposed to the Keystone Pipeline on environmental grounds. But I have long believed that property rights should be defended, and that we too readily allow the violation of property rights through eminent domain.
If the Keystone Pipeline can be built without eminent domain, then I am in favor of allowing it. If it can only be built by violating landowners’ property rights, then I oppose it.

(p. 1A) LINCOLN — As the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate pledged quick approval of the Keystone XL pipeline early next year, final offers were landing Tuesday in dozens of Nebraska mailboxes.

TransCanada Corp. said it mailed new offers of right-of-way payments this week to more than 100 Nebraska landowners who have refused to sign an easement contract.
The letters also say the company will pursue eminent domain against landowners who don’t agree to terms by Jan. 16. The company says Nebraska law requires condemnation proceedings to start within two years of the state’s approval of the pipeline route, which occurred Jan. 22, 2013.

For the full story, see:
Joe Duggan. “TransCanada sends final offers to 100-plus Nebraska landowners.” Omaha World-Herald (Weds., DECEMBER 17, 2014): 1A & 3A.
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Keystone XL pipeline: TransCanada sends final offers to 100-plus Nebraska landowners.”)

Property Rights Increase Oyster Farming

(p. A14) Oyster farming, also known as aquaculture, is one of the few growing businesses here on the western shore of Maryland, a sleepy outpost best known for the sunburned watermen who have pulled crabs and fish from bays like Chesapeake and Calvert for generations. Recent changes to state policy and a growing national affection for oysters (sprinkled with lemon juice only, please) have brought back the shellfish, once as much a staple to Maryland as corn is to Iowa. In the past few years, the state has issued 111 oyster farming leases across 2,240 acres of waters; scores more are pending.
. . .
Oyster farmers — a mélange of scientists, businesspeople, new-career seekers and others — argue that by recreating oyster reefs, they are helping to clean the area’s bays, stimulate the very ecosystem that sustains crab and fish populations and return a tradition to the region.
. . .
[In 2010], Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the Shellfish Aquaculture Leasing bill, removing many impediments to shellfish aquaculture, including prohibitions on leasing in many county waters, making them available for the first time to nonresidents and corporations, and ending restrictions on the amount of space that could be leased. Oyster farming immediately took off in various regions of coastal Maryland.
Farmed oysters, like their wild kin, serve as filters for the water — one oyster can suck down and spit out 50 gallons of water a day — but are less prone to disease.

For the full story, see:
JENNIFER STEINHAUER. “A New Bounty of Oysters, but There Is a Snag.” The New York Times (Fri., NOV. 7, 2014): A14 & A18.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 6, 2014, and has the title “A New Bounty of Oysters in Maryland, but There Is a Snag.”)

Marxist Publisher Supports Justice of Intellectual Property Rights

(p. A1) The Marxist Internet Archive, a website devoted to radical writers and thinkers, recently received an email: It must take down hundreds of works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels or face legal consequences.
The warning didn’t come from a multinational media conglomerate but from a small, leftist publisher, Lawrence & Wishart, which asserted copyright ownership over the 50-volume, English-language edition of Marx’s and Engels’s writings.
To some, it was “uncomradely” that fellow radicals would deploy the capitalist tool of intellectual property law to keep Marx’s and Engels’s writings off the Internet. And it wasn’t lost on the archive’s supporters that the deadline for complying with the order came on the eve of May 1, International Workers’ Day.
. . .
(p. A4) . . . the libertarian Cato Institute enjoyed teasing its ideological adversaries with an I-told-you-so blog post titled, “Because Property Rights Are Important.”
. . .
The publisher . . . tried to turn the tables on its critics, questioning whether it was indeed radical to believe that there is no ownership of content produced through hard work, like the mammoth translation and annotation of Marx’s and Engels’s work, a project initially directed by the Soviet Union in the late 1960s that took some 30 years of collaboration among scholars across the world.
In a note on its site, Lawrence & Wishart said its critics were not carrying on the socialist and communist traditions, but reflecting a “consumer culture which expects cultural content to be delivered free to consumers, leaving cultural workers such as publishers, editors and writers unpaid, while the large publishing and other media conglomerates and aggregators continue to enrich themselves through advertising and data-mining revenues.”

For the full story, see:
NOAM COHEN. “Claiming a Marx Copyright? How Uncomradely.” The New York Times (Mon., May 1, 2014): A1 & A4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 30, 2014, and has the title “Claiming a Copyright on Marx? How Uncomradely.”)

In France “‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’ Means that What’s Yours Should Be Mine”

Guillaume Santacruz is among many French entrepreneurs now using London as their base. He said of his native France, “The economy is not going well, and if you want to get ahead or run your own business, the environment is not good.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) Guillaume Santacruz, an aspiring French entrepreneur, brushed the rain from his black sweater and skinny jeans and headed down to a cavernous basement inside Campus London, a seven-story hive run by Google in the city’s East End.
. . .
A year earlier, Mr. Santacruz, who has two degrees in finance, was living in Paris near the Place de la Madeleine, working in a boutique finance firm. He had taken that job after his attempt to start a business in Marseille foundered under a pile of government regulations and a seemingly endless parade of taxes. The episode left him wary of starting any new projects in France. Yet he still hungered to be his own boss.
He decided that he would try again. Just not in his own country.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Why would you ever leave France?’ ” Mr. Santacruz said. “I’ll tell you. France has a lot of problems. There’s a feeling of gloom that seems to be growing deeper. The economy is not going well, and if you want to get ahead or run your own business, the environment is not good.”
. . .
(p. 5) “Making it” is almost never easy, but Mr. Santacruz found the French bureaucracy to be an unbridgeable moat around his ambitions. Having received his master’s in finance at the University of Nottingham in England, he returned to France to work with a friend’s father to open dental clinics in Marseille. “But the French administration turned it into a herculean effort,” he said.
A one-month wait for a license turned into three months, then six. They tried simplifying the corporate structure but were stymied by regulatory hurdles. Hiring was delayed, partly because of social taxes that companies pay on salaries. In France, the share of nonwage costs for employers to fund unemployment benefits, education, health care and pensions is more than 33 percent. In Britain, it is around 20 percent.
“Every week, more tax letters would come,” Mr. Santacruz recalled.
. . .
Diane Segalen, an executive recruiter for many of France’s biggest companies who recently moved most of her practice, Segalen & Associés, to London from Paris, says the competitiveness gap is easy to see just by reading the newspapers. “In Britain, you read about all the deals going on here,” Ms. Segalen said. “In the French papers, you read about taxes, more taxes, economic problems and the state’s involvement in everything.”
. . .
“It is a French cultural characteristic that goes back to almost the revolution and Robespierre, where there’s a deep-rooted feeling that you don’t show that you make money,” Ms. Segalen, the recruiter, said. “There is this sense that ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ means that what’s yours should be mine. It’s more like, if someone has something I can’t have, I’d rather deprive this person from having it than trying to work hard to get it myself. That’s a very French state of mind. But it’s a race to the bottom.”

For the full story, see:
LIZ ALDERMAN. “Au Revoir, Entrepreneurs.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., MARCH 23, 2014): 1 & 5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 22, 2014.)

‘Diane Segalen moved most of her executive recruiting practice to London from Paris. In France, she says, “there is this sense that ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ means that what’s yours should be mine.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Fair Use Doctrine Allows Copying for Educational Purposes

(p. 23) I am a public-school teacher with a limited budget for supplies. Is it unethical to illegally download copyrighted instructional materials for use in my class? BEN L., BROOKLYN
It is not. In fact, it’s sometimes not even illegal. In 1976, Congress created copyright exceptions for educational purposes. Copyright law allows “face-to-face” exhibition and presentation of a copyrighted work, assuming the purpose is academic. There is also the doctrine of fair use, which states that copies “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
Now, it’s worth acknowledging that these guidelines were implemented before downloading a textbook was even possible. And even in an educational setting, using an entire copyrighted work, and thereby diminishing its market potential, might constitute a violation of fair use. But in my opinion, the principles are the same, even if you do violate copyright law: If your sole motive for downloading material is educational (and there is no free or low-cost equivalent that serves your purposes equally well), there should be no problem.

For the full commentary, see:
Chuck Klosterman. “THE ETHICIST; Piracy 101.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., MARCH 30, 2014): 23.
(Note: italics and bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 28, 2014.)

“It’s a Very Simple Rule — If You Clean It, It’s Yours”

A bar stool is used to claim a shoveled-out parking space in Boston. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A8) BOSTON — It is a time-honored winter tradition here: Shovel out your car, and guard your newly cleared parking spot with whatever you have handy — a traffic cone, a potted plant, a bust of Elvis.

And so it was on Thursday, after the snowstorm that paralyzed parts of the South had found its way to Boston, that the cones and more personal items, known as space savers, began to appear.
“It’s a very simple rule — if you clean it, it’s yours,” said David Skirkey, 56, a guard at the Museum of Fine Arts, who cleared his wife’s parking spot in South Boston on Thursday afternoon, leaving buckets as his marker.
And while the practice appears to be alive and well in South Boston, which is believed to be the cradle of space saving in the city, another neighborhood, the historic South End, this week moved to ban it. Space savers are not unique to Boston. The practice has long been common in Pittsburgh and Chicago, and in Philadelphia, . . .

For the full story, see:
JESS BIDGOOD. “Efforts to Mark Turf When Snowstorms Hit Endure Despite Critics.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 15, 2014): A8 & A12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 14, 2014.)

“Government Takes What It Wants”

“Mike Campbell, 76, challenged Zimbabwe’s land redistribution law. He and his son-in-law, Ben Freeth, 38, were beaten by a gang.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) CHEGUTU, Zimbabwe — Edna Madzongwe, president of the Senate and a powerful member of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, began showing up uninvited at the Etheredges’ farm here last year, at times still dressed up after a day in Parliament.

And she made her intentions clear, the Etheredges say: she wanted their farm and intended to get it through the government’s land redistribution program.
The farm is a beautiful spread, with three roomy farm houses and a lush, 55,000-tree orange orchard that generates $4 million a year in exports. The Etheredges, outraged by what they saw as her attempt to steal the farm, secretly taped their exchanges with her.
“Are you really serious to tell me that I cannot take up residence because of what it does to you?” she asked Richard Etheredge, 72, whose father bought the farm in 1947. “Government takes what it wants.”
He dryly replied, “That we don’t deny,” according to a transcript of the tapes.

For the full story, see:
CELIA W. DUGGER. “White Farmers Confront Mugabe in a Legal Battle.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., December 28, 2008): 1 & 10.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date December 27, 2008 and has the title “White Farmers Confront Mugabe in a Legal Battle.”)

“Mr. Freeth circulated photographs of his injuries online after the invasion of his farm.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Companies Do Less R&D in Countries that Steal Intellectual Property

The conclusions of Gupta and Wang, quoted below, are consistent with research done many years ago by economist Edwin Mansfield.

(p. A15) China’s indigenous innovation program, launched in 2006, has alarmed the world’s technology giants more than any other policy measure since the start of economic reforms in 1978. A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce even went so far as to call this program “a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has not seen before.”
. . .
A comparison with India is illustrative. India has no equivalent to indigenous innovation rules. The government also is content to allow companies to set up R&D facilities without any rules about sharing technology with local partners or the like.
These policy differences appear to have a significant influence on corporate behavior. Consider the top 10 U.S.-based technology giants that received the most patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between 2006 and 2010: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Micron, GE, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Broadcom and Honeywell.
Half of these companies appear not to be doing any significant R&D work in China. Between 2006 and 2010, the U.S. PTO did not award a single patent to any China-based units of five out of the 10 companies. In contrast, only one of the 10 did not receive a patent for an innovation developed in India.

For the full commentary, see:
Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang. “How Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., September 1, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.”)

Mansfield’s relevant paper is:
Mansfield, Edwin. “Unauthorized Use of Intellectual Property: Effects on Investment, Technology Transfer, and Innovation.” In Global Dimensions of Intellectual Property Rights in Science and Technology, edited by M. E. Mogee M. B. Wallerstein, and R. A. Schoen. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993, pp. 107-45.

Mansfield’s research on this issue is discussed on pp. 1611-1612 of:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “Edwin Mansfield’s Contributions to the Economics of Technology.” Research Policy 32, no. 9 (Oct. 2003): 1607-17.

Steve Jobs Felt Betrayed by Google’s Page and Brin

(p. 221) From all accounts, Jobs prided himself as a canny observer not only of business but also of human character, and he did not want to admit– especially to himself–that he had been betrayed by the two young men he had been attempting to mentor. He felt the trust between the two companies had been violated. After increasingly contentious phone calls, in the summer of 2008, Jobs ventured to Mountain View to see the Android phone and personally judge the extent of the violation. He was reportedly furious. Not only did he believe that Google had performed a bait and switch on him, replacing a noncompeting phone with one that was very much in the iPhone mode, but he also felt that Google had stolen Apple’s intellectual property to do so, appropriating features for which Apple had current or pending patents.
While Jobs could not stop Google from developing the Dream version of Android, he apparently was successful, at least in the first version of the Google phone, in halting its implementation of some of the multitouch gestures that Apple had pioneered. Jobs believed that Apple’s patents gave it exclusive rights to certain on-screen gestures–the pinch and the swipe, for example. According to one insider, Jobs demanded that Google remove support of those gestures from Android phones. Google complied, even though those gestures, which allowed users to resize images, were tremendously useful for viewing web pages on handheld devices.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.