You are right. I was saying that with tongue in cheek. I think it would be great to live in Utopia with group hugging and kumbaya galore, but if and only if none of the bad stuff that you say would happen would happen. Of course, any Utopia as defined by the group hugging/kumbaya crowd would necessarily be a place where there would be no peace or happiness for the reasons you state, among others. I think those of us who are realists know that if you disassociate benefits from individuals efforts nothing good would or could come of it.

Thanks for reading. I hope all is well.

-Gene

You state:

“While it would be nice to dream of a world where we all work together in harmony and without care for what’s in it for me, that type of Utopia does not exist, at least not on earth.”

I disagree with your statement for two reasons. One is that removing market mechanisms would result in severe misallocation of resources, unless all the participants were omniscient. Two by removing market mechanisms the system would result in unjust distribution of the benefits of the inventive and productive efforts. Our criminal laws and economic system are based on the idea that people own themselves and therefore own the product of their labor (physical and mental). Whenever people believe that the benefits of their efforts are distributed arbitrarily, they start to adhere to a form of legal realism. Specifically, they subscribe to the rule that he who has the guns makes the rules. This inevitably leads to brutal dictators to fill the morality gap, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Moa. So, no I do not wish for a Utopia that destroys the connection between individual efforts and benefits.

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Technology Diffusion: There is absolutely no evidence that a lack of patent rights will increase the diffusion of technology. Those countries with the strongest patent laws have the strongest technology diffusion. The most likely reason for this is that marketing, sales, and education are expensive and necessary for technology diffusion.

Monopoly: According to Wikipedia “in economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a “de jure monopoly”) is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement.” Alternatively, Wikipedia defines “a legal monopoly, statutory monopoly, or de jure monopoly is a monopoly that is protected by law from competition. A statutory monopoly may take the form of a government monopoly where the state owns the particular means of production or government-granted monopoly where a private interest is protected from competition such as being granted exclusive rights to offer a particular service in a specific region while agreeing to have their policies and prices regulated.” Patents are government granted (legal, statutory) so this is appropriate definition. However a patent does not provide a “private individual or firm” the exclusive right to offer a good or service. Patent are not monopolies, they are property rights.

There are some economists that argue that all property rights provides some monopoly power. This definition of a monopoly is inconsistent with the historical definition of a monopoly and becomes a circular argument that and provides no useful insights. Economists who adhere to the point of view that property rights confer monopoly power are pushing a socialist political agenda instead of acting like a scientist trying to understand the economy.