Bye Bye Willie: The Political Rent-Seeker
2024-01-22
On January 1, 2024, the famous Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. The intellectual property that is the original Mickey Mouse design has been controlled by the Walt Disney Company since 1928. The internet blew up in excitement as a result. Within minutes of the world waking up to the news, horror games were announced based on the design of the famous mouse. The editors of Wikipedia were practically Olympic racers, waiting for the moment it hit midnight to upload the entirety of the cartoon to Wikimedia Commons.
This cartoon, under eight minutes long, and its long-awaited release to the public domain is a perfect example of political rent seeking and corporate protectionism.
American copyright and patent law has a long history that goes back to the colonial period. The 1623 English
The War on Producers and Entrepreneurs Is Based on False Notions of Profits
2024-01-18
The war on the producer is raging on, and the assault on free enterprise and the entrepreneur is hitting an all-time high. Whether it be politicians, academics, or the mainstream media, there’s a relentless effort to paint those who create wealth and prosperity as villains who do nothing but exploit the masses.
This is not just a misguided moral crusade, but it also amounts to an egregious intellectual fraud as it completely ignores fundamental principles of economics and the basic human desire to succeed. It is time to stand up and push back hard against this narrative for the sake of our future as a civilization.
Simply put, producers are the backbone of any economy. Without them, there would be no wealth, no innovation, and no progress. The producer takes risks, invests time and