Was Jefferson a Kinsella-ite?
April 4, 2005
From Mr. Jefferson, by Albert Jay Nock (1883 paperback ed., p. 42):
“[Mr. Jefferson] found leisure to work out several devices of his own, but never patented one of them, ‘never having thought of monopolizing by patent any useful idea which happens to offer itself to me.'”
“On the contrary, whenever he devised anything useful, he always published a description of it. Of his hemp beater, for example, he says, ‘As soon as I can speak of its effect with certainty I shall probably describe it anonymously in the public papers, in order to forestall the prevention of its use by some interloping patentee.'”
“For himself . . . he would have nothing to do with patents. He had no taste for money made out of any form of monopoly.”
Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo [send him mail] is a former professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland and a longtime member of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books including The Real Lincoln; How Capitalism Saved America; Lincoln Unmasked; Hamilton's Curse; Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government; The Problem with Socialism; and The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Economics.
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