 That is a really cool pipe, by the way. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Introduce yourself. Yeah. So I'm Isaac Funderbark. I'm a student, economic student over here in Tennessee. I've been getting into Austrian economics and libertarian theory recently. So, kind of started with the Mises Institute since they have a lot of connections that are very academic organizations that have been branching out from there. So I've been calling around different leaders have called Dr. Walter Block, Patrick Newman, David Friedman, and now you. So I've been calling around different people who are specialties in these fields and. Mostly libertarians. Yes, they're mostly libertarians right now. And then I'll be starting there branching out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Your name. By the way, is your name common because I used to know a Funderbark. One of the law firms. I can't remember if it was Houston or. Philadelphia. I think her name was Ruthanne Funderbark. She was like the office manager for the whole firm. On my dead side, there's a tiny town in Louisiana that has like half the town is Funderbark's, but I haven't met anybody outside of that. Well, it's either Houston or Philly, but I've come across one before. Yeah. All right. So, so, so you say you're a student. I'm still a student. Yes. And economics over here at each issue. It's Tennessee State University. So. I do enroll before rolling officially in college and I was doing online. So I didn't know it at the time, but my professor there was Jonathan Newman, who is also with the, with Mises Institute. And then now my professor of economics is. Joseph Newhart, who's actually published a couple of times in the libertarian papers. So got to know him pretty well. And so both, both of my professors so far in economics have been very libertarian slash anarcho capital. Which has been quite amusing. I was just hoping not to get a socialist. So I've enjoyed that. And then been watching a lot of the lectures and reading stuff. In economics specifically. I think I watched all of Mises you for 2020 and 2021. Just been binging that recently. And then so I've been calling around different people and to get your advice more generally as a young guy going into this field. What advice would you have? And then maybe dig into that. Some of the specific intellectual property or other, other contract theory stuff. So if you have time, I'd like to ask a few of those questions. Yeah, I got, let's say 30 minutes. We can chat. Okay. So I'm going to. A college. Over here. It's pretty heavily left-leaning. There is a conservative group there in our, in the business school has more conservatives. Or maybe maybe not conservatives more conservative. Free market people. But overall it is a fairly left-leaning college. How would you recommend someone who is a libertarian. To try to appeal both to both sides and walking that line. And that college has mostly left leaning. Do you have any advice specifically for that situation? Well, what's your, what's your goal? Yeah. And that's part of the question as well right now. I don't think I want to get involved in the student government. That just sounds like a big headache at the moment. I am, I just recently signed on as an editorial writer for the student newspaper. So I'll be able to talk about some opinion and stuff there and start practicing writing. That was one thing that David Friedman recommended was to get a column in the student newspaper. So I'll be working on that. But I mean, what's your ultimate goal? Like you going to graduate? I mean, my current goal is to get to just get a bachelor's in economics. And then the end goal, what I would love to do is be an advisor for a congressman or for think tank. Okay. So you want to get one degree? You want to say you're thinking about grad school then? It's a possibility right now. I think the cost of going to grad school is just not the investment there's just not worth it. So I'll be working on that. But I mean, what's your ultimate goal? Like you want to graduate with a BA economics. My current goals to get to just get a bachelor's in economics. It's just not worth it. I'd rather go into more practical side of things and organization and management for in the libertarian movement, but the PhD is still an option on the table. Okay. So you want to do as well as you can in your current. BA. To get to have opportunities so you can do something with it when you graduate, right? That's your basic, it's your basic goal right now. And what's the university? What is it Tennessee? East Tennessee State University. Yes, sir. Okay. Is that a fairly well known mid-sized public university? Or what is it? It's a mid-sized public university. I think, you know, top, top four in our state, top four or five probably. It's mostly known for medical. They got a lot of medical stuff here in the area. So it has a larger nursing program, but. Well, let me ask you a question. What's the better schools in your state or around the region? Probably Vanderbilt and UT Knoxville, probably the better schools in our region, but I'm applying to several ones around here. What do you mean you're applying? So are you, are you in college? This one or not? So it's complicated. I am a homeschooled. So you get complicated with a lot of credits there. I'm technically still in high school, but I've been doing rolling for the past full time for the past two years. So effectively I've been in college. Wait, how old are you? I'm 18. Okay. So you're, basically almost ready to graduate from high school and officially enter college soon. Is that, is that what you're saying? I could have, I could have graduated high school last year. Got it. I mean. So you're not at this. Fourth tier college yet. Officially. I am taking full-time classes from there, but I'm not officially enrolled. I mean, why wouldn't you want to go to a school with a better. You know, better credentials. Because this is supposed to home and I get it free. I would be able to get a free ride. Okay. Okay. Okay. So it's a money thing. So, I mean, my first thought is. Whatever college you go to, especially if it's not a Harvard or Yale or whatever. I mean, your college is going to be known regionally. But beyond that. To be known and to be accepted. I think the best thing is to score extremely high on your, on your grades. Like, so you have to graduate. So your goals should be to graduate near the top of your class. That's, that's my first thinking, like wherever you go. So I would go to the best college you can go to that you can afford. And if it's this one, that's fine. But then you want to, you want to be at the top of your class. Right. So that's your goal. So your goal is not to, it's not to. Turn people to libertarians. What are there is to score is to, is to do well in school. Now, to get your name out there, you can publish and you can do things like David Friedman recommended. And being a libertarian in Austrian can sometimes help you because we're kind of a lone voice. And sometimes we're a fresh voice. You got to be careful because sometimes it can hurt you. But I mean, I see no, no problem with that, but I would use it strategically in, in. In pursuing the ultimate goal which would be to graduate near the top of your class. And in your field. So that would be my first goal I would think. For you, right? I'm not saying take the easy classes to get the easy A's, but I think you, you want to excel and be the top 10%, 5%, 2% if you can. Of your class, because then you'll stand out even if it's like a mediocre, you know, reputation college, because it's not easy to be the top 2% of your class anywhere. Does that make sense? So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So is that what you're thinking? Right. So I've heard different things from different people as to what the most valuable thing is to focus on in college. I've heard some people say that get decent grades, but if, as long as, if you're not assuming you're not a genius and it's easy to really get A's, you just get decent grades and then try to focus on internships and. Yes. I mean, I think you need to focus on the career stuff and that will be more beneficial than pushing the grades. Yeah, I agree. And I wouldn't say do one to these loose the other, but I would say one goal would be to try to score as high as you can. But yes, I think internships, practical experience, any kind of independent achievements you do, any businesses you start, any kind of movements you start a part of, any columns or articles you write. If you get a peer reviewed paper accepted while you're an undergraduate, you can really help. Right. So I have some, I know your background is in law and I have a couple of friends who are going to law school. Do you have any advice for them? So I'm a patent lawyer, which means I was an engineer first. So my engineering undergrad, the whole way we approach that is different than what you're facing because you're more. It's less of a narrowly defined profession, but it's less of a narrowly defined profession. It's less of a narrowly defined profession. It's less of a narrowly defined profession. It's less of a narrowly defined profession. So my advice there is limited by just what I know, but not my own experience for law school. It's similar to what I would say it's even more. Even more the case. For what I earlier said, for law school, I would pick the best law school that you can, that you can get into and afford. And within that law school. And I wouldn't go to a law school that's so down the rankings that everyone writes it off because it's a waste of time. But you know, if it's a mediocre law school to nice law school, that's fine. And again, in law school, I would try to be on law review, which means top 10% of your class or however, however that school gets people there. So you need to be in the top 10% of your class in law school. I always tell people when they want to go to law, like there's only two reasons you should go to law school. And that is because we have a lot of lawyers, like I think there's a surplus of oversupply of lawyers. So you should be a lawyer. If it's always been your dream and you're going to do it, no matter what, you don't care about the money. So like you're hyper rich or you don't mind being a pauper and as long as you can defend the indigent or whatever your little project is, which is, you know, a small subset of people. Or if you're pretty confident, you can be in the top 10% of your class, because if you're in the top 10% of your class at a reasonably good law school, then you are in the, you know, you have a better shot at getting into a big law firm. So, you know, most fields have this kind of Gaussian curve of distribution of like careers and salary and all that. Law is sort of like a double camel hump thing. I think if you look it up, you'll see as a double camel hump. So like the first tier is like government jobs, public defenders, public service things of think tanks. I mean, you're making 30, 40, 50,000 a year, something like that. And then the second hump would be the law firms, the medium to big size law firms, which are making, you know, 150 to 200,000 a year. I don't know if they're right now. I've lost track of the salaries, but it's a completely different area. And a lot of people hate the law firm thing because they're not cut out for it or because they're so cynical about it. Even a lot of libertarians, because they're not advancing the mission of liberty. My thinking is it's like boot camp, you know, like sometimes you have this kid that's like, well, it's like boot camp. Like if you go to law, if you get a job in a big law firm out of law school, yeah, you're going to be working 70, 80 hours a week. And a lot of people whine and complain about that. But to me, that's like, you're, you're looking at it the wrong way. It's, you're getting free training, basically. Like you're being thrown into it. And if you're smart enough not to be married too early and have kids too early, you're, you're either single or you're married and you're, you don't have kids. You have the time to do, that's the time you'll have to do that. Like for, for five, seven, eight, 10 years, you're thrown into that. And it's great experience. I mean, if you're working 80 hours a week, it's like, yeah, it's not fun exactly. Although I thought it was fun. But you, but think how much you're, you're learning twice as much. If you're working 40, I mean, you're learning your, everything you do, you're learning, you're making contacts, you're making connections with lawyers at your firm, with clients, with business people, with the community, and you're learning things. So that's it, but it's hard to get into the, the media, the medium to big, big south law firms, but unless you have a really good academic credential, that's why I think if you go to law school, you should try to do as well as you can get on law review, get the type 10% forget about your video games, forget about your partying for the three years in law school, focus on being in the top 5% or whatever your class. That's my advice. Okay. You mentioned earlier, well, that it would be a good idea kind of for credentials to, if possible, start getting published even as an undergrad. I know you ran libertarian papers for a long time. What advice would you have for somebody, young person for getting published both in the writing, constructing a writing paper and then the actual publishing process. I mean, I guess I think that publishing helps you primarily, primarily two different areas. Number one would be if you're going to be a scholar or an academic or an intellectual, right? So if you want to go into that kind of work, starting to be published can help with that. I mean, honestly, if you want to have a real career as an academic, you're going to be a professor with a PhD, and that's your main credential. But publish, and by the time you get your PhD, you're going to be publishing a little bit anyway. So undergraduate publishing is fine. The reason I did it was just an attempt to do something different. So it teaches you how to write like you learn by trial and error. But now in law school, it can help you be seen as an expert in a certain field. So I can help you with clients or the job. But for scholarly things, I think you can help you there. But honestly, I would think if I was an undergraduate, I would wait until I was in my junior year to start publishing because anything you publish when you're a freshman or sophomore, you're going to later regret or change your mind on. You think you're going to look back on it like Jesus Christ. By the time you're a junior, at least you might have some solid ideas and something to contribute to the field. But it's always fun to, I mean, there's another reason, like if you publish in the student newspaper, it's a way to make connections, you know, and you can go to the student newspaper office and all that. Libertarian papers for me was a learning experience, but I did that as an advanced professional and I didn't really have anything to gain by it. I could have made it work, but I couldn't have done it when I was younger when I could have worked in that way. So I couldn't have done that when I was 25 years old. You know, who's going to take that seriously. So, and I suppose, being a research assistant for some professor, who's really smart, could end up resulting in you, he could steer you to some publishing opportunities or maybe even co-authors some things with him, if you help him out a lot. That's one way to do it. So I'm totally in favor of publishing because I did it, but I did it personally for different reasons than most people would do it. Like I did it. Well, as a lawyer, so as a lawyer, I did it because if you publish law related things, like every lawyer at a small, medium, big size law firm, you're expected to do what's called client development. And that can involve schmoozing, networking, speaking, or writing, right. So that was the one thing I had, I could write. So I wrote. Now, most of your fellow colleagues won't read what you write. They just see the title and they know that you're right. So they assume you're smart and they assume that clients are saying it. So it's a good way to just get your name out there. Like if you're at a big law firm and you want to make partner, one way to make partners to bring in a lot of business. Okay. Another way is to like distinguish yourself from all the other associates in the law firm, like make sure all the partners who are making the partnership decision, they know your name. So you do something to stand out. And in my case, that was publishing and being very outspoken in certain intellectual fields. They didn't understand them, but they knew that Consola was this guy who did this. And also I opened up their, like one law firm I was with in Philadelphia. I moved to Houston and instead of quitting, I proposed to them I open up the Houston office. So they let me do it because they were expanding. So here you have this brash young senior associate. But every partner in the firm knew of me because I was the guy that opened up their Houston office. So of course they made me partner. So maybe it was a cheat, but it's always a cheat, like how you have a good partner. So you have to like keep your eyes open and see what the landscape of this firm is. But looking back on it, I can see that there's lots of things I could have done. More intelligently and more strategically. If I had had my, my mind set on it, but you never know these things until your 40 or 50. I just happened to do them, some of them by instinct. Like, because I had a natural interest. If I went back and did it now, I'll be trying to do it strategic strategically. And maybe I'd do a better job, maybe a worse job, because I'd be more smart about what to do. But I would be less sincere and passionate. Like back then I was just a naive guy interested in everything and go to all the partners meetings and all the, all the cocktail parties in the law firm. And just, that's an aside. Anyway, I'm almost trapped, but go ahead, continue with your questions. Do you have any, what mistakes do you see college students making that you, you would yell at them to avoid? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I think one mistake is going to college in the first place, like a lot of people go to college because they think it's expected or they don't know what else to do or their, their parents expect them to, and they're just not interested in learning. Like they just, they're going through the motions. And these are the people that they either hate college because they shouldn't be there or they love it, but for the wrong reasons, like the end of the frat parties and all that stuff. So I guess I would say it's not about party. Yes. It's about having fun and making relationships and networking and making lifelong friends and contacts and all that. And you should do that. But I think really you got to focus on grades and focus on. Look, I would recommend taking a class if it's harder, if you're interested, even if you're going to make a worse grade, you know, some people are hyper, hyper strategic about this, you know, they'll take the mediocre classes to make their grade point average higher. I couldn't do that because I couldn't bear to be in school doing that because I want to take something. I mean, if I want to take, you know, graduate level astronomy or whatever, even if I'm going to make a B plus in it instead of an A minus, I'll do that. But you have to have, you have to really love college and love learning and take advantage of the look. Also, I think realize what's coming after, what's coming after as a job, a mortgage, a wife, kids, a whole different set of limitations on your life, which I'm not cynical and negative about, but that's the reality. So you have this unique time in your life when you can really explore, figure out who you are. I would also say, you know, at most colleges, if you decide to change your major halfway through and it costs you another semester or two, just do it because you will never regret in the future having more education. And, you know, you might regret sticking with a certain field because you started and then you realize that or on, you should have done something different. So be willing to change. So like the first couple of years of college, I'd say, you know, steer in some direction. But if you realize halfway through it that you should be in something different or at a different college, do it because now's the time to do that. So I know you have to go in a few minutes. So one last question. I guess more time. Go ahead. I'll give you 15, 20 minutes is fine. So actually, if I have that time, then I have a few questions on the intellectual property stuff that I was listening to some of your lectures and podcasts and had a few questions from that. You mentioned that, you know, intellectual property is essentially a monopoly on information that's artificially created by the government. Assuming that you got what you wanted in copyright, and patent laws were revoked. How do you think businesses would compensate for that? How do you think they would try to protect their information using without government monopolies? Oh, that's interesting. Well, so it's naive and dishonest to pretend that the abolition of a given law that we oppose would have no, we'll say victims, but no one will be detrimentally affected. Some people will be detrimentally affected. Like if we get rid of Social Security tomorrow, which we should, or the quasi-socialized medical system, some people will lose because they're, right now they're benefiting from basically a wealth transfer. Right? If you cut the military budget and have tomorrow, some defense contractors are going to lose money, right? Some billionaires will become half billionaires, you know, whatever. Right. So some people will suffer from the elimination of an unjust or bad policy or law or system or program. But to me, the more people that suffer, that's just an indication of the damage that has been done because of the program all along, right? So it's a good sign that some people are hurt. It means that, you know, undoing the law does some good because it restores us back to the natural order. So the same thing is true of copyright. If we got rid of copyright, it would definitely change things. If it didn't change things, that means that the law is doing nothing and we have no reason to oppose it. The only reason that we libertarians oppose some laws is because they have an effect, which, which means that if you get rid of the law, the effect would cease, which means that things would change. So things will change. So the whole landscape of publishing movies, the way companies protect their information would change. So can we predict exactly what they would do? We can't predict exactly what they would do. We have some ideas. I have some ideas. I don't like to guarantee them because that's like saying, I will get rid of, you know, welfare if you promise and guarantee that private charity or, or I will, I will agree to get rid of public education. If you promise and guarantee that the private Catholic school system will make sure everyone gets a free education. It's like, well, I can't promise that. Then they say, well, then I'm not going to get rid of public schools because I want to guarantee. And I'm like, well, but you don't have, you don't give a guarantee either because the government's about to go bankrupt. So like, so security, public schools, you know, the healthcare, it's all about to go bankrupt. So you're a little socialist system, which is inefficient and unjust and horrible and inhumane. Even that's not a guarantee because that's going to go bust anyway. So there's no guarantee. So no, I can't guarantee it. So, but we can make some predictions. So one thing like one way you can think about it is to think about the reasoning of people who advocated for the patent system. So one argument for the patent system in the U.S. and the West is that without the patent system, what companies tend to do is they try to keep their little proprietary ideas. They try to keep them from becoming public as long as possible so that they can maintain their advantage over their competitors. And they do it with something called trade secrets, like they just keep it secret. Like the formula for Coca Cola, right? Or how the process of some chemical plant for making a new chemical, like you don't know how to make it. All you know is they sell this product like gasoline with an additive or Tylenol made a certain way in a gel pill, whatever. The consumer sees the end product, but you don't see the process that makes it. So these companies keep their stuff secret by trade secrets. This has always been the way of the world. Like you keep as much secret as you can, but you have to reveal some of it to the world to sell your product or your service. And that's the cost of doing business. Like, you know, eventually your competitors will figure out more or less what you're doing and they're going to compete with you. And then when they compete, it's harder to make the earlier profit margin you were making. So you have to keep innovating. And that's just the way through the free marketing competition. So the criticism was that it's the criticism of these market failure types like the Chicago types and the planner types is that it's inefficient and unnatural for companies to have to do that to have to resort to these trade secret mechanisms because that impedes the spread of knowledge. They keep things to their vest that they shouldn't have to keep and all that. They're only doing it to keep their monopoly position a little bit longer. So instead, let's do this. Let's give them a patent. Let's give them a legally protected monopoly on this idea for 17 years. But to get to get that, they have to reveal their idea to the public in the form of a patent written enabling patent disclosure. So every patent is a public document that tells the world how I did this. So it spreads the knowledge so you can't keep a secret. But in exchange, you get a monopoly for 17 years. So the whole idea behind the patent system is to induce people to stop keeping things secret in exchange for a temporary monopoly. So if you got rid of that, then it would go back to the way it was, which was people. And by the way, people keep things secret still. So like right now the calculus is, okay, without a patent system, the calculus of business basis is how much of this idea can I keep secret while still selling the product? Because like if you come up with a new way, like let's say the Blackberry was the main phone in 2005, right? The main, it wasn't even a smartphone, but it was like the main popular phone they could do texting and that stuff. So Apple thought of a small phone, which had a touchscreen with no keyboard, which had some disadvantage, but it had so many advantages, right? Like you got 3G connectivity, you could have apps, you could have reconfigurable dynamic keyboards, you could have touchscreen interface. Like it just, the smartphone idea that Apple had was revolutionary in an innovation and business sense. Okay, but as soon as they start selling this iPhone, everyone else is going to realize, oh, that's a great idea. Everyone loves it. So let's start making androids and galaxies and you know, whatever. So the only way they could make money off of this new brilliant idea was to sell it, but to sell it, they have to reveal their secret. It's no way that you can't keep, it's not a process like making a chemical. Like you have to sell the product, you have, in fact, they're going to advertise it. They're going to say, oh, we have a revolutionary new phone with rounded corners and a smart screen and blah, blah. They're going to tell everyone what their innovation is. So the cost of making a profit is to introduce the product to the world, which is to reveal its secrets, which is the trade-off you have to make. Right. Which means you invite competition and then you have to stand on top of your game, et cetera. So in our system now you have a different calculus. The calculus is, hmm, I can patent it and reveal it to the world. Or I can still keep its secret if it's possible and not get a patent on it. So like the entire argument for patents is not that they incentivize innovation. That's the economic justification. But if you look at the patent law, the so-called patent bargain is if you reveal the information to the world, then we will give you a monopoly. So the motivation behind patent law is not to encourage innovation. It's to encourage dissemination of information. Right. So the question is, does it do this? And the answer is no, because if you're a company that has one of the one hundredth of the inventions out there that is of the type where you can keep the idea secret and still make a profit, like a process. So like a way of, I don't know, like, let's say you come up with a new candy, a new candy bar. It's an amazing confection, but you achieved it by mixing or ice cream, whatever. You achieved it by a certain process of mixing the ingredients at your factory. So when you sell the ice cream bar or the candy, the consumer doesn't see how it's made. So the secret is not revealed in the sale of the device, unlike a new mousetrap or the iPhone. So for those types of things, the company is probably going to keep it as a trade secret anyway. They're not going to patent it because they don't need to. And because the trade secret can last for decades, whereas the patent expires in 17 years. So the only time the patent system works is when you would have to reveal the secret anyway. So it's actually not inducing you to reveal any secrets. So the whole patent system is a failure just by design. Like it basically hurts the public by restricting inventions because of the monopoly, but it doesn't give them anything because the information they get from the patent filings is what they would have gotten anyway. When the guy sold the like, like with Apple sold the iPhone, people learned that it's possible to have a smartphone with a touchscreen without having a patent filing. They just got it from the sale of the product. So what I think would happen is that companies would be, they would find it harder, slightly harder to keep their innovations secret. And in fact, in today's world, most companies have an international distribution and fabrication system. So like Apple, if you notice you buy an Apple product and it says designed in California, assembled in China, like they're forced by the FTC to put the country of origin on there. Like it's a way of protectionism. It's a way of protecting domestic industries from competition by at least making their foreign competitors say that it's made in China. Right. So they think that'll stop consumers who go to Walmart and want to buy American, you know, whatever. You know, it's a way of hurting. But in the end, it doesn't hurt too much because in the end, consumers are driven by quality and price. So, you know, in the 80s and 70s, you might remember there was a buy American thing for cars. So you had to. I don't remember actually. Okay. That was a thing. You know, the fact that you don't remember is the fact that it disappeared like it was about a 15 year thing. And it just disappeared because this. Stupid ostracism pressure. Like a politician couldn't drive to a town hall meeting in a, in a Toyota, because that would be like buying Japanese or Mercedes because you would, you know, or you had to have a forward or GM or Chevy or whatever. That's almost gone now. No one gives a shit because over time, economic pressures, you know, went out. I forgot where she's going with this, but the point is, the point is I think that. The natural way of the world is for human civilization to progress by knowledge being developed and successful ideas to be spread and emulated. This is what societal progress has always been driven by. That's what it's about. The reason we're richer now than our ancestors, 200 years ago or. Or a thousand years ago or 2000 years ago in Rome and Greece is not because we're smarter because we're no smarter than them. We may be stupider. If you see nidiocracy, you'll see, you know what I mean. It's because we just have more technological knowledge at our disposal. And the reason we have that is because time goes forward and we accumulate knowledge. So when someone comes up with another way to solve a problem, if it works, people learn about that. And they adopted emulated. That's why China was able to come out of poverty the last 25 years because they had a lot of low hanging fruit. They were able to adopt the methods of the western capitalist world, which the stupid West calls IP theft for some reason is ridiculous. I mean, they didn't steal anything. So. I think that the idea of being able to keep your knowledge secret is always a difficult and vanishingly small thing. It's just, it's like information is something that wants to be free. It can't be bottled up. So when you have the international distribution system, Apple is making iPhones in China. You know, the reason we always know what the new iPhone is going to look like is because some employee over there is going to leak it. And it's not because they don't respect that piece. It's because information is the type of thing that can be copied and leaked and known. And all you need is one person to leak it. Right. So, you know, it's like if some guy, I have this example of my against IP thing. If some guy discovers there's oil under his property. As soon as he tells one person. The knowledge will spread and then all the oil speculators and all the nearby landowners, everyone now knows there's oil under this land. And that changes the way. Business deals will be done going forward. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It does make it more challenging for, for businesses to make a profit because it's easier to make a profit. If you have a monopoly position. If you have a monopoly position, which means you're the only one who could make this product in the region. It's easier to sell it at a higher price and to make profits more comfortable. You can sit back and rest, but the more competition we have, the more dynamic the free market is, then the harder it is to compete and the more competition you have and the harder it is to maintain a monopoly and initial higher price. And with informational products like we have increasingly in the West and in this, in this century. More and more products have a value that is related to the informational component, which means that the competitor finds it easier to compete with you. Because if I have a new restaurant or a new factory making jet engines, it's not easy for someone to make a duplicate factory to start competing with me. It takes investment, real estate, time, capital. It takes five, 10, 20 years maybe. So in the meantime, the first guy can sit back and collect his kind of higher prices. But if your product is a book or a movie, which in the internet digital age can be easily instantly copied. Or if it's a new pharmaceutical drug, which can be copied pretty easily. Because once you know the formula, you can make a copy. Which by the way, sort of the myth, but I'll just go with it for a second. Because it's not that easy to, it's not that easy to set up. Like if patent law was abolished tomorrow, you and I couldn't just set up Pfizer number two or Moderna number two. I mean, we wouldn't be selling drugs tomorrow, you know, but the point is the more products are able to be emulated because their value is based upon a copyable pattern, like a book. In an age where it's easy to copy books, like not 300 years ago, but now, then that means it's harder to make a higher profit on selling a book. Because as soon as you sell it, people can copy it and make copies of it. That's the way. But that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing for the world because information spreads more easily. Consumers are more satisfied. It does change the business model faced by producers of informational goods. But you know what? I mean, there's this, there's this saying which I like, which is your failed business model is not my problem. I mean, people say, how would I make a profit in your world? And I'm like, I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't. But to me, that question is equivalent to saying, if we abolish slavery, who would pick the cotton? I mean, I have an idea who would pick the cotton. But my real answer is, I don't know, and I don't care. I mean, maybe no one picked cotton. Maybe cotton, cotton plantations are not economically efficient. And they were only efficient because we had a slave population to do the labor. I mean, it's like saying, who's going to build the pyramids in Egypt if we don't have a slave population? Hey, maybe no one's going to build pyramids. Or it's like saying, who's going to land the Apollo missions on the moon in 1969 if we don't have a citizenry that we're able to tax to support this stupid project of landing dead hunks of metal on the moon? Maybe no one. But I mean, if your ultimate goal in life is to land hunks of metal on the moon or to have a cotton plantation, then maybe you would favor slavery to get there. Because if that's your ultimate end, then any means necessary to do it is what you're going to favor. But for libertarians, our ultimate end is liberty and justice and property rights. So ultimately my answer is, I don't know and I don't care. Now, the truth is I have some ideas, but I don't want to give a guarantee because if you give a guarantee, they're going to want you to sign on the dotted line. And it's just a replacement for the welfare system that they favor, which is what the copyright system is. It's a welfare system because it's a transfer, it's a redistribution of wealth from certain people to other people to support some end goal, which is innovation or artistic creativity or whatever. Yeah, I would say looking around in the media and book space, it seems to be far too flooded, at least in my opinion, looking at it as an economist, there are thousands of books published every year and a very small amount of them actually get read. And I would say a lot of that is because they're getting protected by monopolies. And so by IP monopolies. And so in the case where IP was no longer an issue, only the very top would have the viewership needed in order to sustain it even without that monopoly, which would bring the equilibrium back. Yeah, and not only that, I mean, people say that without copyright, like we need copyright to incentivize artistic creation, which the implication of that is without copyright, we would have an underproduction of, say novels and books and things like in movies. But in today's world in 2021, yeah, we officially have copyright, but we also have the internet, which means piracy is completely rampant. So basically the minute you publish a new song or a book or even a movie, people can get a free copy online instantly. So basically copyright has already been eviscerated. So we live in a world where there basically is no copyright. And yet we have more work being published than ever, more songs, more music, more movies of all types of all across the economic spectrum from blockbusters to independent and more novels and nonfiction books being published independently published forever. So like, like there's a counterfactual here, like we don't have copyright now and we have more work being created than ever. So it's apparently not necessary for creativity for there to be copyrighted because we basically don't have copyright right now. What we have is we have a selectively enforced system that applies to the institutions and can be applied on a random basis to some occasional guy you want to make an example out of, you know, like some guy copies, puts the Wolverine movie online, he goes to jail, federal prison for a year. Okay. So his life is ruined. He's an example is made out of him. And so that when the FBI forces movies to put this morning at the beginning of all their DVDs or Blu-rays, that copying this is a federal crime, people sort of believe it because they hear stories about the Wolverine guy going to prison. So, but it's all just security theater, like you really can't stop copying, which is a good thing. What do you think about brand names, like Nike or Apple, people copying the brand names and the image built up behind those. So the two things we've talked about so far is trademark and patent, I mean, sorry, copyright and patent, which is basically monopoly control of patterns of information, artistic and creative works in the case of copyright, like novels and movies and paintings. And that lasts for 100 plus years or inventions in the case of patents, which lasts for roughly 17 years. So trademark is another field of IP law, which is not nearly as harmful, but it is still bad. So I actually believe in a free market and in any society, reputation is a huge factor in any civilization. People know who you are, they know what your name is, they know what you do, they know what you're reputed to do, which is what reputation means. Reputation for being upstanding and reliable and all this kind of stuff. But that's a natural phenomenon that it's sort of like roads or a natural phenomenon and the government has monopolized it and they've ruined it or education of your kids is a natural thing. Everyone's going to educate their kids to some degree, but the government has monopolized education in public schools. So now everyone associates education with government education and they associate roads with the way the government runs the roads, right? And same thing with money and other institutions of the state gradually monopolizes. Sorry, what was the analogy I was making? Were you trying to relate this to trademark? So in the free market, you're going to have reputation. People will have, they will have names, brand name, product names and reputations. But the government has stepped in and said, oh, that's going to be protected by trademark law. So now everyone associates that with trademark. So if you say, well, I'm against trademark, they say, oh, you're, you're against reputations. Like, well, no, if I'm against government schools, doesn't mean I'm against education. If I'm against the drug war or government prisons, doesn't mean I'm against law and order and justice and courts. You know, if I'm against government roads, doesn't mean I'm against roads. And likewise, if I'm against trademark, it doesn't mean I'm against reputations and brand names. You're free to use brand name, which people do and would do and have done. A good way to see this is think about human names, like people name their kids different names, right? For different reasons. And there is no trademark system for names, really. Not exactly. And so, like, for example, my son, he named him Ethan 18 years ago. And I thought that was a relatively unpopular name, but it turns out that was like the third most popular name that year. And that's why I named him that. But the point is there's a natural feedback. So like, like that year I said, I don't want to name my kid John because that's a popular name. So if everyone's named John, like you go to some of these countries, like, I don't know. Some of these Asian countries where everyone's last name is the freaking same. I was like, what's the, what's the point of having a last name? If everyone's got the same last name, it doesn't help distinguish anything, right? Everyone's named John. You know, when your kid's born, you might say, I'm going to name my kid Ralph, you know, right? But you don't need a lot of do that. And if two, if two kids are named John Smith. Which happens, people have the exact same identical name. People have to figure it out. I mean, you know, but people naturally avoid that when they can, because it becomes, it becomes inconvenient. Like here in Houston, there's a restaurant called Karabas. It's an Italian restaurant. I think it was started here. And then they franchised it years ago, but they made a special deal where like the original Karabas is called the original Karabas. And all the chains around the country are Karabas. And if you go on the website on the internet, there's, there's Karabas.com. There's original Karabas. And they have the same name. It's a little bit confusing, but people figure it out. The same thing with Neen. Like there's some Mexican chain here in town. So this happens from time to time. It's like these people imagine that without trademark wall, McDonald's comes along and pioneers and new fast food distribution system. And you have like a thousand restaurants crop up that are pirate McDonald's restaurants. Well, if that happened, then, I mean, people can learn information without trademark wall. So people would learn that, that the restaurant at the corner of A and B street in Houston, Texas, which calls us up McDonald's is really just a rogue operation not sanctioned by the mother ship in California. And either they have good hamburgers or they have shit burgers. If they have good hamburgers, then what's really the problem? If they have bad hamburgers, then people are going to say, this is just some half ass rogue operation. And they're either defrauding their customers or they're going to get a bad reputation and people are going to stop going there. This is why this never happens. Like there's no copyright on the Bible. Because it's so old. So it's actually legal for you and I to publish or you know, you know, there's plenty of such years plays or, you know, cons, cons philosophical works or Spinoza or whatever, you and I could publish those right now on Amazon. Either in the original author's name or at our name, you can do whatever you want, because there's no copyright. Why, why don't, why don't you go on Facebook and see. Isaac Thunder Burks, Romeo and Juliet. Because no one would buy it because they all know that Romeo it was written by Shakespeare, you know, I mean, it's just not a real problem in the world. It doesn't happen. So there's no problem to solve. Interesting, nice. Well, I've taken you for almost an hour now and I'll have to go sign off to do something as well. But I appreciate you talking to me. I found this fascinating. All right, Isaac enjoyed it and we can talk later if you need to, but good luck. I'm sure I'll have more questions. Okay, thanks. All right, bye.