Steal This Intellectual Property; Reason, March 2020 Issue

Dierdre McCloskey, Reason; Steal This Intellectual Property

"I want you to steal what the lawyers self-interestedly call "intellectual property": Hoffman's book or my books or E=mc² or the Alzheimer's drug that the Food and Drug Administration is "testing" in its usual bogus and unethical fashion. I want the Chinese to steal "our" intellectual property, so that consumers worldwide get stuff cheaply. I want everybody to steal every idea, book, chemical formula, Stephen Foster lyric—all of it. Steal, steal, steal. You have my official economic permission. 

What?! A liberal (in the classical sense) wants people to steal? You bet. Here's why. An idea, after it is produced, has no opportunity cost."