> "Propertizing things" is, again, a wrong way of looking at it: a patent is not a "thing" or even a resource.
Why do we only have to propertize "things"? That is to say, why should the motivating principles that lead us to allow propertization of land not be generalized to the propertization of drug formula or MP3s?
Looking at whether something is a "thing" or "not" is not a particularly useful basis for deciding what kinds of things should be turned into property. The rational thing to do is look at the economic properties of various kinds of things, and grant property rights based on economic phenomena.
Why do we grant patents in land? We do so to order economic activity--allow people to develop land without others free-riding on their efforts. We create incentives for people to say clear a plot of land and sell it to a farmer, a market transaction which is not possible without a patent on the land. The same principles generalize easily to many other scenarios in which it is possible to gain the benefits of someone's work without engaging in a market transaction with them.
> Looking at whether something is a "thing" or "not" is not a particularly useful basis for deciding what kinds of things should be turned into property.
But that is not the criterion now. The criterion is resource. That's why bandwidth is a property, and can be bought, sold or utilized just like a piece of land.
> The rational thing to do is look at the economic properties of various kinds of things, and grant property rights based on economic phenomena.
That is one of the many approaches. "Rational" has nothing to do with it. It depends on what principles you are deriving your rationality from. Starting with my own principles, what you proposed is not rational. Quite apart from that, you do agree that laws and regulations have economic properties too, right? Why can't we buy and sell those?
I'm fairly confident the Kinsella article that @icebraining linked to covers the basis of rights and patents. I can't confirm it because the document is not loading at the moment.
> Quite apart from that, you do agree that laws and regulations have economic properties too, right? Why can't we buy and sell those?
I'm not sure if you get my point. It's not the fact that patentable subject matter has economic properties that warrants protection, it's what those properties happen to be. Things like drug design are susceptible to the free-rider problem, an propertization is a legal tool that can address that problem. Vast swaths of the law can be seen as basically existing to address various economic problems that undermine markets, and the free-rider problem is a common one and propertization is a typical solution.
There are economic issues created by laws and regulations (regulatory capture, etc), but they are not the kind of problems amenable to being solved by propertization.
Why do we only have to propertize "things"? That is to say, why should the motivating principles that lead us to allow propertization of land not be generalized to the propertization of drug formula or MP3s?
Looking at whether something is a "thing" or "not" is not a particularly useful basis for deciding what kinds of things should be turned into property. The rational thing to do is look at the economic properties of various kinds of things, and grant property rights based on economic phenomena.
Why do we grant patents in land? We do so to order economic activity--allow people to develop land without others free-riding on their efforts. We create incentives for people to say clear a plot of land and sell it to a farmer, a market transaction which is not possible without a patent on the land. The same principles generalize easily to many other scenarios in which it is possible to gain the benefits of someone's work without engaging in a market transaction with them.