PP propaganda

 Meanwhile, the government itself can vest businesses with market power, both by setting the rules of the marketplace and creating temporary intellectual property monopolies. Perhaps the most clear-cut example of the way that policies can create market power is intellectual property rights, or IPRs—the government-enforced monopoly on the right
to prot from an innovation. Well-being
generated by innovation relies on two points:
rst, innovators need appropriate incentives
and resources; second, innovations should be distributed widely throughout the population so
that people benet from technological advances.
IPRs—patents and copyrights—in theory provide incentives for innovators by offering monopoly returns from their innovations for a limited period of time. However, in the words of economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, “there is no empirical evidence that [IPRs] serve to increase innovation and productivity.”
9
 Other research by Petra Moser examining the long-run economic history of IPRs and innovation draws a similar conclusion.
10
 Part of the reason
for this is that it is not just nancial incentives
that matter to innovators. Among the most important discoveries are those that are part of the advancement of science, from the discovery of DNA to the mathematical insights that led to
THE CURRENT RULES

26
REWRITING THE RULES OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY:
 AN AGENDA FOR SHARED PROSPERITY
the computer (the Turing machine), rather than
those made for primarily nancial gain.
 Strong IPRs, perversely, can actually impede innovation in the economy by limiting the spillover of knowledge critical to fueling additional innovations.
11
Though IPRs might not have much positive impact on innovation, they do have the effect of raising the prices paid to owners of intellectual properties (who often may not be the same people as those doing the innovating). Such IPRs effectively redistribute money from consumers to IPR owners—not because the latter are any more innovative or productive, but because government affords them greater legal protection against market competition.
Articially raising prices has the effect of
shutting some people out from enjoying the
benets of innovation. This is particularly
disturbing in the case of medicines, where our poorly designed IPR system, combined with a poorly designed health care system, have condemned large numbers of people to unnecessary deaths and morbidities.
1