As best as I can trace back, this tale was first told by libertarian humorist Jerome Tuccille. I think Tuccille was trying to be humorous when he told the tale. I believe others may not have caught the humor, as I have seen the tale repeated many times as fact.
I recently linked to a recorded Galambos lecture series. The lectures are hours long and Galambos mentions Paine and uses the word liberty many times, yet, not once do I hear Galambos tossing a coin into any bowl.
A tale about Galambos was told in a more serious manner by Harry Browne. He wrote:
[Galambos] required every student entering one of his courses to sign a contract agreeing not to divulge any of the course ideas without permission from Galambos — and not even to use the ideas, in business or elsewhere, without permission. In effect, the course tuition bought you the right to become aware of the ideas, but not to use them or even to talk about them to outsiders.This certainly makes Galambos look nuts. But Galambosian Charles Terry has emailed me and writes:
The reason Galambos required his students to sign a non-disclosure agreement is because he didn't want information from his courses given out of sequence. You can't explain V50 in a short few minutes. If you take V50 in its correct sequence and entirety you will understand why. If you have just a little information you will make yourself look like a fool [...] to those of us who have taken and understand the course.So there you have it, a tale from a jokester, and someone who clearly had a love-hate relationship with Galambos, paint Galambos as a very odd character. Yet, he seems pretty sane during the recorded lecture.
Walter Block is right, you really don't own your reputation. Galambos might agree with the thought.
The most often told tale is that when Galambos gave a lecture, he would set down a bowl and toss a nickel in the bowl every time he said the word "liberty," as a royalty payment to Thomas Paine, who he claimed invented the word liberty.
ReplyDeleteWhy is this humorous? Isn't this the IP position carried out honestly? Paine's works have great value to some. I assume we haven't seen Mr. Wenzel's book on IP because he is still searching for a Gutenberg descendant.
You obviously didn't fully understand the debate on IP between him and Kinsella.
DeleteWenzel pitched a CONRACTUAL framework for IP(suggested by Rothbard) under which two parties respect IP as an agreement.
He drove the point home via a type of "EULA" for his Drudge formula and it looks like no one had the balls to violate his EULA and send out his Drudge formula to everyone for "free", demonstrating that for a period of time ideas are scarce and can be monetized via contract until the owner of said IP decides or has to relinquish it(via death for example or someone else engaged in self discovery).
I personally like the theory of property surrounding IP as put forth by Bastiat as I feel it addresses the issues surrounding IP and even it's eventual movement into the "public domain" in which the given idea is no longer truly scarce.
Anyway, your example falters on that basis and others.