Early MPS economists argued competition, not patents, incentivizes innovation.
Evidence
As he wrote in 1962, “If a public or social good is defined as one that can be used by additional persons without causing any additional cost, then knowledge is such a good of the purest type. To seek knowledge, to create, acquire, transmit, or retrieve knowledge—all these activities are ordinarily associated with effort or sacrifice of some sort; that is, they are not without cost. To use existing knowledge, however, may be costless.” … The guiding belief was that economic actors did not have to be incentivized to innovate as competition would do the incentivizing for them. Keeping or gaining the lead in a crowded field would compel companies onward to fund research and development. In the case of patents, it was weaker rather than stronger property rights that would serve the higher interests of the competitive order. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 183
Categorization
- DEFINE: Machlup’s own definition of knowledge as a pure public good is the crux.
- XREF: Directly contradicts the later Chicago turn and the caricature that all neoliberals maximized property rights; resonates with Mirowski’s ongoing ‘neoliberal thought collective’ disputes. — connects to: Early MPS theorists held that IP rights artificially create scarcity — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 177; Early MPS neoliberals favored weaker patent rights over stronger ones — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 183; Early neoliberals widely saw patent reform as anti-monopoly competition policy — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 181 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Early neoliberals widely saw patent reform as anti-monopoly competition policy
#corroborates(0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 181 - Early MPS neoliberals favored weaker patent rights over stronger ones
#corroborates(0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 183 - Neoliberal economists were not united behind aggressive intellectual property rights
#corroborates(0.88) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 165 - An Austrian economist led early MPS opposition to intellectual property law.
#expands(0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 182