Securing competitive order sometimes led neoliberals to oppose property rights in ideas

Evidence

Neoliberals were—and are—far from IP fundamentalists in the sense of propagating a reflexive extension of property rights in perpetuity to intangible entities. The overarching goal of securing a capitalist competitive order has sometimes led them to support property rights in ideas and sometimes to oppose them. While a host of Chicago School economists and MPS members including Harold Demsetz, Steven Cheung, and Richard A. Epstein were indeed key figures in shifting the US legal consensus away from antitrust since the 1980s, not all neoliberals took the “shift on patents” tracked by scholars. As alternatives, this chapter looks at the heterodox Austrian approaches of Hayek and his contemporary Fritz Machlup, coiner of both the terms “knowledge economy” and “production of knowledge” and an understudied member of the Mont Pèlerin cohort. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 166

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that an overarching efficiency goal, not ideology, drove the variable neoliberal stance on IP — a useful definitional distinction against the caricature.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberal economists were not united behind aggressive intellectual property rights — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 165; For most neoliberals, property rights are contingent instruments for competitive order, not absolutes — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194; Within neoliberal thought itself there is a recognized danger of too much property. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 175 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• For most neoliberals, property rights are contingent instruments for competitive order, not absolutes #expands (0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194