I have a new working paper with Bart Wilson titled: “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car: Moral Intuition for Intellectual Property.” 

The title of this post, “everyone take copies,” comes from a conversation between the human subjects in an experiment in our lab, on which the paper is based. The experiment was studying how and when people take resources from one another. 

The people in the game each control a round avatar in a virtual environment, as you can see in this screenshot below. 

In the experiment, “seeds” represent a rivalrous resource, meaning multiple people can’t possess and use them at once. In other words, they operate like most physical goods. If the Almond colored player in the picture takes a seed from the Blue player, then Blue will be deprived of the seed, in the same way that if someone’s car is stolen, they don’t have it anymore. 

Thus, it is unsurprising that the players called the taking of seeds “stealing,” as you can see from the speech bubble in the picture. This result was expected, and it is in line with Bart Wilson’s previous work on the origins of physical property.

Our research question considers whether similar claims will emerge after the taking of non-rivalrous goods that we call “discs.” Non-rivalrous goods are goods that can be used by multiple people without any loss to the other users. If participants exercise the ability to take a disc, then the original disc holder still has a disc and can still consume the full value of it. 

The human subjects are not forced to interact via the chat function, but they often choose to form a community and use language to try to obtain the available surplus in the environment. The following quote from our paper indicates that the subjects do not label or conceptualize the taking of digital goods (discs) as “stealing.” 

In our paper, we write:

We encourage you to read the manuscript if you are interested in the details of how we set up the environment and mechanisms of exchange. We conclude that, contrary to the desired comparison in the “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” advertising campaign attempted by the Motion Picture Association of America in the early 2000s, people do not intuitively view piracy as a crime. 

Humans can state that digital piracy is illegal and take measures to prevent it. However, it will be difficult to cause an individual engaging in piracy to feel guilty as they do when they believe they are directly harming another human. 

This has implications for how the modern information economy will be structured. Consider the model recently labeled “the subscription economy.” Increasingly, consumers pay recurring fees for ongoing access to products/services (like Netflix, Adobe software) instead of one-time purchases. Gen Z has been complaining on TikTok that they feel trapped with so many recurring payments and lack a sense of ownership. 

In a recent interview on a talk show called The Stream, I speculated that part of the reason companies are moving to the subscription model is that they do not trust consumers with “ownership” of digital goods. People will share copies of songs and software, if given the opportunity, to the point where creators cannot monetize their work by selling the full rights to digital goods anymore. “Everyone take copies.”

A feature of our experimental design is that, when a disc was shared, even though the creator was rarely compensated directly, the attribution of who originally created the disc was secure. A disc made by the Blue player is blue, so all can see who gets credit for providing it. The reason for this design choice was to allow the Blue player to easily see their work being passed around. 

A recent development in information technology, that of large language models, means that many idea creators are not getting credit when their original work informs the answers users are getting from tools like ChatGPT. In a recent settlement, Anthropic agreed to pay for some of the written training material that went into making Claude. The way in which human creators are (or are not) compensated for providing inputs to AI models will shape the future ideas landscape. Understanding how people think about those inputs illuminates our thinking about that process. 

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… is from pages 178-179 of Thomas Sowell’s Compassion Versus Guilt, a 1987 collection of some of his popular essays; specifically, it’s from Sowell’s May 31st, 1985, column titled “Staff Infection”:

People in many occupations serve the public: grocers, doctors, bus-drivers, telephone repairmen. Indirectly, so do farmers, factory workers, and in fact everybody who produces a good or service that others use. But when the deep thinkers speak of going into “public service,” with that special unction in their voice, they mean becoming a bureaucrat or politician.

The vision that is unfurled to the departing graduates is one of self-sacrifice for the common good. This is contrasted with going into the grubby world of business to make money for yourself.

Why it is nobler to seek power over others rather than be a producing part of the economy is never really explained.

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The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal warns of ill consequences to come if the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to restrict the power of the president of the executive branch to remove Federal Reserve governors. Two slices:

In 1913 Congress established the Fed to maintain a stable currency and financial system. Modeled on the quasi-private First and Second Banks of the U.S., it was structured to be insulated from political winds. Board member terms run for 14 years. The Fed draws its funding from regional reserve banks and open-market operations rather than Congressional appropriations.

Congress in 1935 removed executive-branch officials from the board and instituted removal protections for its members. The Federal Reserve Act lets a President fire governors “for cause,” though it doesn’t define the term, unlike other statutes with removal restrictions. The Federal Trade Commission Act defines “cause” as “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The Administration says the Fed law’s broad language grants the President sweeping authority to fire board members. “Congress chose to allow removal ‘for cause,’ without specifying required causes. That gives the President discretion so long as he identifies a cause (which excludes policy disagreement),” Justice says.

Under its argument, there are no constraints in practice on a President’s removal authority. That’s because the Administration also argues that Article III courts cannot stop the President from removing Fed officers. If the President can fire Ms. Cook based on mere allegations of misconduct without judicial review, the for-cause restriction is meaningless.

…..

But regarding the Fed, America’s framers sought to prevent the nation’s currency from being manipulated by the executive because they understood the risks of political control over monetary policy. This is wisdom born out in countless examples across the world.

The Fed has made many mistakes and taken on more executive power than it should over financial regulation. Congress can address both if it wishes. But handing Presidents control over monetary policy is more power over money in one man’s hands than the framers wrote into the Constitution.

Jim Geraghty – appalled by Trump’s childish message to Norway’s Prime Minister – decries Trump tearing NATO apart “over a trinket.” Three slices:

The president’s diatribe is unhinged, false, or bonkers in at least ten ways.

One: The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Peace Prize; the Nobel committee does; its members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament; current members of the Norwegian government or parliament are barred from serving on the committee.

…..

Three: Trump has not “stopped 8 wars plus.” Let’s give him credit for Israel and Hamas, and Israel and Iran. Everything else is an exaggeration, either about the intensity of the conflict or the U.S. role in ameliorating it. Trump’s persistent boast that he ended the shooting war between India and Pakistan is a serious, and entirely unnecessary, irritant to the Indian government.

…..

Nine: Trump contends, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

As many have observed, up until Trump took office, the U.S. and Denmark largely agreed on their roles protecting the island. I hate to disrupt a good controversy with facts, but the U.S. already plays a significant role in the national defense and economy of Greenland. The island is the location of the Pentagon’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base (pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK”), formerly known as Thule Air Base.

Ten: Trump sounds like an angry toddler throwing a tantrum; in his recent interview with the New York Times, Trump emphasized that his priority is to own Greenland because of his feelings, and ownership is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success.”

Here are some other National Review staffers on “Trump’s ‘manic’ Greenland pursuit”:

“If the United States genuinely believes,” Charlie [Cooke] says, “that the acquisition of Greenland is necessary for its national security — and that’s an argument that Trump has started to make in fits and starts — then it can advance that case without, for example, sending missives to the Danish authorities complaining that the president didn’t receive a Nobel Peace Prize, without randomly threatening tariffs on the United Kingdom, on France.”

“He’s unfocused, and he’s wild. I don’t know if it warrants the 25th Amendment, but we ought not to downplay how capricious and manic he seems.”

Noah [Rothman] agrees, saying, “This whole enterprise is impossibly stupid. This administration privileges and is very sensitive toward the intangible aspects of statecraft. They are really obsessed with honor and respect and prestige, and they are very sensitive to violations perceived or otherwise of that. But totally dismissive of any other country that might privilege the same intangibles as they do, and they mete out embarrassment after embarrassment, provocation after provocation, and expect no response.”

George Will, of course, offers wise thoughts on Trump’s quest for Greenland. A slice:

Trying to imagine the unimaginable is a useful mental calisthenic. So, suppose Vladimir Putin faced this choice: He could assuage his fury about the Soviet Union’s disintegration by conquering Ukraine. Or he could destroy the cause of that collapse — NATO. Now, imagine that he might not need to choose, because of the American president’s obsession with seizing a possession of Denmark.

Averse to using a scalpel when there is a machete at hand, the president threatens Greenland with military conquest if Denmark will not sell the island. Were Congress to refuse funds for this purchase, he would declare a national emergency and “repurpose” money appropriated for other uses.

Using chest-thumping mob-speak, he says, “If we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.” If NATO, history’s most successful collective security instrument, perishes, he might consider that a bonus.

And here’s Holman Jenkins on the Greenland calamity. A slice:

If Donald Trump’s foolishness over Greenland gets out of hand, recall the U.S. Senate has ratified numerous treaties codifying U.S. duties under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which under the U.S. Constitution are now the “supreme law of the land.” NATO’s Article 1, for instance, makes it illegal for the U.S. to exercise the “threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

The U.N. Charter, adopted by the Senate 89-2 in 1945, giving it also the force of U.S. law, bans the U.S. from issuing the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity” of a nonoffending member state. In 2023, for the benefit of any adjudicating judge, Congress further expressed its will by preventing a president from withdrawing from NATO without a two-thirds Senate vote.

This isn’t international law, MAGA types, it’s U.S. law. A Trump order to occupy an otherwise peaceful and unthreatened Greenland would likely be illegal six ways from Sunday. The U.S. military wouldn’t obey it. The Supreme Court would enjoin it.Congress might promptly remove such a president through impeachment.

These realities, widely unmentioned in the current moment, probably aren’t lost on Mr. Trump. The whole kerfuffle fits better under the heading: Why is he throwing his presidency away? Look at his tariff and immigration overkill, his sagging approval ratings, likely GOP defeat in the House midterms, his probable impeachment soon after.

Jack Nicastro is correct: “Trump threatens NATO members with tariffs paid almost entirely by Americans.”

Also correct is Eric Boehm: “America’s large and growing national debt is not just a budgetary liability, but increasingly a geopolitical one too.”

My Mercatus Center colleague Alden Abbott is no fan of the Department of Justice’s antitrust prosecution of Visa. A slice:

The government isn’t alleging collusion, price-fixing, or output restrictions. Instead, it takes aim at Visa’s use of volume discounts and contractual incentives that encourage banks to route debit transactions over its network—standard tools firms use to win business.

The DOJ recasts these arrangements as “de facto exclusivity,” claiming they prevent rivals from reaching efficient scale. But that framing stretches antitrust law past its limits, treating price competition and customer loyalty as exclusionary conduct and risking the mistake of condemning success in the market rather than harm to competition.

Yuval Levin reflects on America’s founding. A slice:

The founding generation of our nation was trying to do something we are also trying to do: enable a vast, diverse, complicated society full of dynamic, crazy, freedom-loving people to live together and address common problems while taking the truths about the human condition seriously. In some respects, they did it better than we could. George Washington was a better natural leader than any of us. James Madison thought more deeply about institutional design than any of us. We should preserve and reinforce what they built.

In other respects, they failed terribly to live up to their own standards and to ours. Washington and Madison both held other human beings in bondage. We should not excuse that. We should learn from it about the human temptation to avert our eyes from plain injustice—a temptation to which we are far from immune today.

A mature patriotism can hold these truths together. The founders were neither superhuman heroes nor subhuman villains. They were human beings confronting human problems, and they left us institutions and lessons of incalculable value. We can be grateful, clear-eyed, and reverent all at once—rooted in the knowledge that we did not earn the gift they bequeathed to us, but confident that we can earn it now by handing it down improved to our children.

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… is from page 258 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:

Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of “entitlement” programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the “entitlement” mentality and all the social problems that go with it.

DBx: Yep.

And those today with this malignant entitlement mentality are not only people who want what are conventionally thought of as government handouts – handouts such as welfare checks, “free” health care, and student-loan “forgiveness.” Also suffering this malignant entitlement mentality are those owners of American firms and their workers who demand protection from foreign competition. These people believe that they are entitled to a large chunk of their fellow Americans’ incomes – so entitled that, if their fellow Americans choose to buy more imports than these entitled owners and workers think proper, these owners and workers demand that the government force their fellow Americans to change the ways in which they spend their incomes.

It cannot be said too often that, except for the rare legitimate exception of national defense, protectionism is selfish thuggery masquerading as selfless patriotism. It is embraced only by the greedy and the economically ignorant.

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Walker Wright makes clear that “free trade is fairer than you think.” Here’s his conclusion:

Unfairness is one of the most common criticisms leveled against commercial society, often accompanied by claims that it undermines democracy and fosters partiality. The evidence presented here suggests the opposite. Engaging in trade and market exchange teaches us to treat others more generously and impartially. The natural outcome of these values is the institutional protection of certain rights. Fair treatment for all becomes the name of the game. We begin to trust one another’s choices and to believe in our shared ability to build society together.

Norbert Michel debunks Trump’s assertion that globalization has “failed” Americans.

Scott Lincicome tweets:

Just once I’d like protectionists to be asked to reconcile their (contradictory) claims that protectionism DOESN’T raise costs/prices but DOES incentivize domestic investment/production.

It’s magic, apparently.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, decries the Republican Party’s transformation into the Depublican Party – a party now filled with enthusiasts for economic interventions long championed by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other far-left, economically clueless ‘progressives.’ Two slices:

For some years now, conservatives who believe in free markets and limited government have been labeled RINOs—”Republicans in name only”—as GOP liberals or moderates have historically been known. The MAGA movement flings this term as an insult and a signal that respecting the realities of supply and demand instead of endorsing price controls is a character flaw.

But after watching the last few weeks unfold, it’s hard not to ask this: If believing in markets makes you a RINO, what exactly do we call Republicans who now openly embrace ideas lifted from the playbooks of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.)?

How about “Depublicans”?

The gradual transformation has been taking place since around the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term and is now unmistakable. With a few notable exceptions like taxes, deregulations, and the occasional bombing, those in power seem to behave like Democrats in Republican clothing. They have adopted many of their counterparts’ instincts, rhetoric, and policy tools, including industrial policy, trade protectionism, corporate scapegoating, price controls, ownership restrictions, and discretionary federal intervention.

In just the past few weeks, Trump has floated—and senior members of his administration have defended—four policy proposals that would have been loudly denounced as socialist overreach had they come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And for good reason. Progressives champion similar big-government policies.

…..

What makes this moment so revealing is that these ideas are not musings or trial balloons. They’re echoed and defended by the administration, promoted in the Senate by the vice president, touted by legislators like Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and increasingly normalized across the populist right.

Don’t be fooled by the replacement of progressive jargon with nationalist rhetoric. This economic crusade will harm the workers and non-rich it is supposed to help. It will raise prices by restricting supply, reduce market access by imposing controls, and replace opportunity with favoritism and discretion. Worse, it will erode the institutional foundations, capital markets, investment incentives, and predictable rules that enable long-run prosperity.

If believing in free markets makes you a RINO, fine. But let’s at least be honest: The GOP is not becoming more conservative. It’s becoming more comfortable with Democrats’ positions such as bans, controls, and government direction of private economic life. Republicans are becoming Depublicans.

Michael Coon and GMU Econ alum Abby Hall-Blanco reveal the economic flaws of Trump’s proposal to cap interest rates on credit-card balances. A slice:

If credit card interest rates were capped, this would harm the very people such a policy aims to help. Not only would it fail to help borrowers, it would paradoxically make things less affordable. Lenders would only issue new credit cards to people with stellar credit. Those with fair credit would likely see their credit limits fall. And those at the bottom of the credit ladder? Shut out completely or pushed toward payday loans or black-market lending.

If the president were truly serious about helping consumers with affordability, he would do well to eliminate the tariffs he’s imposed his first year in office, which have served to increase the price of goods and services and led to a sluggish economy. The current proposal tries to fix the problems created by the previous policy by doubling down on bad economics.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal criticizes the Trump administration for maintaining Joe Biden’s irresponsible laxity, as the Journal writes, in putting “a pause on the collection of defaulted student debt, Joe Biden-style.” A slice:

Incredibly, only about 26% of some $1.7 trillion in student debt is being repaid. Nearly 20% is delinquent. Most of the rest is in forbearance or deferment. If the Federal Student Aid office were a bank, it would have failed long ago.

Yet when the Trump team reiterated last month that it would begin collecting on defaulted loans, progressive groups said it would harm struggling middle-class Americans. This is what they always say when a government subsidy lapses.

But the endless reprieves have discouraged student borrowers from repaying debt. Now they’re getting another break. The Administration says it is pausing collection to give borrowers more time to rehabilitate defaulted loans while it sets up a new income-based repayment option authorized by the GOP tax bill.

The more honest explanation is that the White House is worried that garnishing wages and tax refunds will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections as the GOP House majority hangs on a thread. But waving away student debt didn’t help Democrats in 2024.

Many Americans who repaid their loans or didn’t go to college will resent serving as collateral for deadbeat borrowers and subsidized colleges—especially when Mr. Trump promised the opposite.

Observing Zohran Mamdani’s first days as mayor of Gotham, the Washington Post‘s Editorial Board rightly reaches this conclusion:

Mamdani is behaving more like an activist at Bowdoin College or an organizer for the Democratic Socialists of America than the leader of a city of more than 8.5 million. Success in this job depends on improving people’s lives. As mayor, it’s Mamdani’s job to help deescalate tensions between businesses and workers and find pathways to compromise. Yet he remains in campaign mode, putting out videos to advertise summer internships and going on ABC’s “The View” to express support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Performative acts of “solidarity” may feel good, but they don’t solve problems.

Pity us Virginians, for the Democrats who just took control in Richmond are about to burden us with “affordability” policies that we cannot afford – as Judge Glock explains.

But despite her focus on affordability, [Gov. Abigail] Spanberger’s plan amounts to a series of expensive mandates that will drive costs higher. Spanberger has provided a disquieting preview of progressives’ affordability agendas elsewhere.

Most of Spanberger’s proposals would drive up expenses for one group of consumers in order to benefit another group deemed more deserving—what economists call “cross-subsidization.” For example, Spanberger supports a bill that will ban health insurers from charging higher premiums to smokers. This will almost certainly raise costs for nonsmokers—as outgoing governor Glenn Youngkin noted in vetoing the bill last year.

Spanberger also wants to limit health insurers’ ability to require prior authorizations for medicines or treatments for people with long-term conditions. Complaints about health insurers are often justified, but these authorizations are one of the few ways they have of limiting expenses. The result of Spanberger’s plan would be to increase health-care spending and thus premiums for others with the same insurance.

Even more surprising for an affordability agenda: Spanberger’s first proposal on the website spelling out her plan includes ensuring that “independent and community pharmacies are fairly reimbursed.” This means requiring that insurers and patients pay more for their medicine to make sure that certain pharmacies get sufficient profit. Whatever the reason for such a proposal, it can’t be affordability.

On energy, Spanberger tries to align progressives’ climate obsessions with the concerns of electricity-cost-burdened households. But one of the main causes of higher electricity prices in Virginia is the state’s Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020. The law requires the states’ utilities to be carbon-free within two decades. Dominion Power last year said that it would need to charge ratepayers $220 billion—about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state—to pay for the long-term costs of renewable energy “certificates” to meet the mandates.

Nonetheless, Spanberger wants to go deeper with expensive climate demands. She supports a bill that would require more battery storage to backstop unreliable renewable power sources. Ratepayers will ultimately have to pay these storage costs. Spanberger also wants to require electric utilities to make low-income houses more energy-efficient. But such energy-efficiency programs bring minimal energy savings and, again, it’s other ratepayers who will have to pay for them.

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