If I gave you a million dollars to invent a better mousetrap, and told you that if you succeeded you could keep any and all profits associated with the invention, you’d probably consider that a pretty good deal.

But if I gave your neighbor Bob a million dollars of YOUR money to invent that mousetrap, on the same conditions, you’d probably take issue with the idea.

Even if you were interested in investing in mousetrap innovation, you’d probably want a return on your investment.

And even if I described Bob’s enterprise as a “non-profit,” you’d likely at least want the better mousetrap design made freely available for anyone to use,  instead of enriching Bob above and beyond whatever stipend he paid himself while working on the invention.

If the hypothetical Bob above is a tax-funded university, though, you’d just be out of luck. Billions of dollars of government research funding goes to universities every year, but once the research produces results, those universities often take the resulting profits for themselves rather than refunding even the original startup money to taxpayers.

An example from my own neck of the woods:

In 2020, the University of Florida knocked down more than $900 million in research funding, up 45% from 2011. Nearly $640 million of that funding came from federal government grants and another $43 million from state and local governments.

The university’s research foundation also received 140 patents on the products of that research and signed a record 132 licenses and options on its “intellectual property.” It claims around half a billion dollars in license revenues from 2008-18.

Why should taxpayers fund research just so that taxpayer-funded institutions can keep the money for themselves … and keep demanding more money for more research?

And what’s the additional “social cost” of funding research, then letting the results be trapped in patent protection rather than put in the public domain?

Suppose the US government spends a billion dollars funding research into a cure for cancer, and such a cure is found.

Hooray! Cancer is cured!

Except that the university where it was developed won’t just release the recipe so that any drug maker can turn out the cure for a dollar a pill. They’ll patent the recipe, then license it exclusively to one drug maker, who will sell it for $5,000 a pill.

The university picks your pocket on the front end, Big Pharma mugs you at gunpoint on the back end.

If we’re going to tolerate the fiction of “intellectual property” in inventions — really just a state-granted monopoly on ideas to the first persons to fill out some paperwork — we should at least insist that tax-funded research results be treated as “works for hire,” and that we, not our employees, be considered their “owners.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“We’ve laid out for the leadership of Iran what we’re willing to accept in order to get back into the JCPOA” US president Joe Biden said at a press conference in Jerusalem on July 14. “We’re waiting for their response. When that will come, I’m not certain, but we’re not going to wait forever.”

That’s an odd way of putting things, seeing as how it’s Joe Biden who’s spent the last year hemming, hawing, and finding new excuses to avoid “getting back into” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran nuclear deal,” while the Iranians have continually indicated that they’ll gladly “get back into” the deal any time the US does.

The history, briefly:

After a decade of the aforementioned US hemming, hawing, and finding new excuses to back out every time Iran said “yes,” the JCPOA was finally agreed to, signed, and ratified as a United Nations Security Council resolution in 2015.

It was an easy deal for the Iranians to accept, since all it did was forbid them to develop nuclear weapons, which they were already bound not to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and by a clerical fatwa declaring such development a sin against Islam, and which, according to both the US and Israeli intelligence communities, they hadn’t been doing.

The US, though, immediately started defaulting on its own obligations under the JCPOA, which involved lifting sanctions on Iran. And in 2018, US president Donald Trump announced that the US was henceforth going to just openly violate the deal. He characterized the violation policy as “withdrawal,” but the only way to “withdraw” from a UN Security Council resolution is to withdraw from the UN itself, which the US has not done.

Only since then, at a careful, slow pace, have the Iranians begun enriching uranium to higher levels than the deal allows for. Not to weapons or even NPT-violating level. Just enough to make the point that if the US won’t keep the deal, they won’t either.

Biden, meanwhile, pledged during his 2020 presidential campaign to return the US to meeting its obligations under the deal, but always with caveats and “what ifs.” And since actually becoming president, he’s worked overtime to avoid either a new deal or following through on the old one … all while blaming the Iranians.

The Iranians don’t seem to have, want, or be working on getting nukes. But for some reason, Biden seems bound and determined to poke and push at them until they decide heck, why not get nukes?

Why? Two reasons.

First, the US has effectively been at war with Iran for four decades, since the revolution that overthrew the US-puppet, CIA-installed Shah. Iran is an evergreen excuse for meddling in the Middle East and shoveling money at the US military-industrial complex.

Second, the Israeli lobby, which enjoys considerable influence in US politics, uses the fake “nuclear Iran” threat to keep US aid checks coming.

Biden should get off the dime and re-implement the original deal, or stop pretending he’s interested.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In June, the European Union passed legislation requiring all mobile devices to use one specific port type (USB-C) for re-charging their batteries.

US Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) , Ed Markey (D-MA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) think that’s a great idea, and that the US should adopt it as well. They’ve asked Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to come up with a “comprehensive strategy” to take charge of how you charge your phones, tablets, etc.

“Consumers shouldn’t have to keep buying new chargers all the time for different devices,” Warren tweeted on July 7. “We can clear things up with uniform standards — for less expense, less hassle, and less waste.”

Looking to government for “less expense, less hassle, and less waste” is like looking to your favorite local buffet restaurant for fewer dishes and smaller portions. Expense, hassle, and waste is pretty much the dictionary definition of what government does. This case is no exception.

Let’s take this astoundingly stupid idea from the top on those three metrics.

Expense: At present, we’re all free to choose the devices we buy and, if we’re worried about the expense of chargers and cables, choose devices which are compatible with each other. If your phone with a micro-USB port dies, you can buy a new phone that’s compatible with the chargers and cables you already have instead of having to buy new USB-C cables.

Hassle: Right now, you can walk into pretty much any electronics, department, or even convenience store and find a cable to fit your needs. A government-imposed standard will, over time, result in older types of cables becoming “specialty” items that are harder to find.

Waste: Right now, you can re-use your existing cables with new devices. A uniformity requirement will eventually put those existing cables in landfills as you move on to new devices which are, by law, forbidden to use them.

And all that’s just on your end. How much cost, hassle, and waste will the proposed standard impose on manufacturers whose current devices come with now-illegal ports? Those devices will have to be re-designed. The factories that make them will have to be re-tooled, workers re-trained.

Let’s add a fourth item to the list of reasons legally required uniformity is a bad idea: It will slow down technological innovation.

Suppose the government requires all devices to come with USB-C ports. Who’s going to spend the money to develop USB-D or some other new port technology, even if that technology would likely prove much more efficient, reliable, etc.?

The regulatory delays and expenses in getting better charging devices to market would make innovation much less profitable … until and unless the government REQUIRED the new port, which would put you right back in the same expense/hassle/waste position as when the first requirement was imposed.

If 1880s legislators had imposed “uniform standards” on transportation, we’d all still be staring at the rear ends of horses from our wagons. And spending proportionally more of our time and money to get from hither to yon.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY