Category: Biopolitics
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By Gordon Hull In a 1998 paper, Thomas W. Merrill argues that the presence of the right to exclude others is the necessary and sufficient condition for the presence of a property right. In this, he views himself as arguing against a “nominalist” interpretation of the right. This nominalist interpretation, associated with legal realism and…
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By Gordon Hull Yesterday, a group of very rich and influential corporations – Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase – announced that they would be teaming up to form an independent healthcare company for their employees. From the NYT: “The alliance was a sign of just how frustrated American businesses are with the state of…
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By Gordon Hull In “Intellectual Property’s Leviathan,” Amy Kapczynski argues that both advocates of strong IP protection, and critics from the creative-commons (CC) side tend to view the state in the same way: “both those who defend robust private IP law and their most prominent critics … typically describe the state in its first instance…
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By Gordon Hull As I suggested last time, the current neoliberal expansion of IP hinges on the acceptance of monopolies, and the relation between deadweight loss (as advanced by Arrow) and incentives theory (as advanced by Demsetz) is accordingly essential to understanding it. Here I want to expand on that point, and then say something…
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By Gordon Hull In rereading Philip Mirowski’s critique of Foucault on neoliberalism (as it’s presented in Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, his book on the 2008 financial crisis), I noticed a limit in Foucault’s analysis that I hadn’t really thought about before. Although Foucault correctly sees that a key (if not they…
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By Gordon Hull Ajit Pai is the Marie Antoinette of the Trump Administration. How else can you explain his decision to do a little skit last week, in which he pretends that his chairmanship of the FCC is a part of a plot by his former employer, Verizon, to ensure full regulatory capture of the…
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By Gordon Hull It has seemed to me for a long time that one helpful theoretical lens through which to look at neoliberalism is to understand it as a phase (or perhaps a dispositive) of biopower. This is because neoliberalism does not generally rely on juridical rules (or tried to colonize the judiciary), it pushes…
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By Gordon Hull This sounds like a trick question, but it’s not. It’s also currently before the Supreme Court, about which more in a moment. First, however, let me summarize the case for why IP isn’t really “property” in the ordinary sense, even if we use the word. In a paper from a little more…
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By Gordon Hull As our tin-pot “President” continues his inexorable slide into narcissistic authoritarianism, it is worth noting recent events that establish beyond any residual doubt that radical white terrorism is now official policy. When historians look at the Trump presidency, assuming we all survive long enough for there to be historians, I suspect last…
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