Slaughtering Rents

Put simply (and in economic terms), a Rent is any stream of income that is unearned (for example: patents, c©yrights, Trademarks™, and basically anything that tends to appear on a financial balance sheet labeled as 'Goodwill' -- i.e. stuff that's hard to explain away in a rational manner; but then, perhaps I overstep in this last).

To confuse matters, payments for the use of Real Property are, also, known as 'Rents', but that is not what this rant is about. Oh, I'll make it easy for you to pigeonhole me as a radical by saying that Rents for Land should be done away with, as well (as they are only made possible by governmental support; and so, there is no reason why any subset of the population should benefit to the exclusion of others), but that's not what is currently on my mind.

Instead, I am just going to talk about Trademarks™.

The sole purpose of a Trademark™ is to to prevent anyone else but the holder from trading in goods bearing that particular mark; and so, in the truest sense, Trademarks™ are designed to restrict trade.

This is self evident to me. And if this point cannot be granted, well then, we simply do not exist on the same mental plane and further discussion will likely be of little benefit.

However, even if we agree that Trademarks™ restrict trade, we may disagree on whether this is a good thing or not.

I hold that any restriction on trade beyond that which is necessary (and not just convenient) to uphold the Moral Good (whatever in blazes that might mean) is to be avoided.

Others may not feel this way. And although this means that they are wrong, such is their right.

God bless them.

We have the Moral Good (handily undefined) and it's opposite (i.e. Evil), about which, I can say little, other than it includes unwarranted restraints on personal liberties (you know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

At root, I am a cold-hearted capitalist. I enjoy a materialistic lifestyle full of decadent splendor. And anything that gets in the way of that is to be avoided.

Clearly, restrictions on trade drive costs up; and so, are to be avoided.

If only one company can sell Pepsi™, you can bet they are going to charge more for that most delightful of beverages (far better than Coca Cola™ in my opinion) than if everyone and anyone were allowed to market a beverage with the same or similar name.

The good of allowing open competition is, therefor, obvious (more and cheaper Pepsi™). The bad, well, some believe quality would suffer, because, after all, how could we tell the good (Pepsi™) from the bad (Coca Cola™) if anyone could label their product however they desire (you know, if, say Coca Cola™ -- Evil, have I mentioned this -- were to rebrand their swill as Pepsi™ -- and try to pass it off as the good stuff)?

In short (and as the theory goes), without Trademarks™, the whole thing would be needlessly confusing (as some might think, is my writing).

Have I mentioned that I prefer Pepsi™?

Of course, I much prefer Milk, so no real loss of business to Coca Cola™ (the soft drink of choice of my youth).

Anyway, I've done the taste test and I find Pepsi™ to be the smoother and sweeter alternative.

Oddly, other folks have been known to prefer Coca Cola™, because it's a bit fizzier and not as sweet, so go figure.

Whatever!

Back on point!

The counter-argument goes (the argument I am arguing against is) that we (as a society) need some way of differentiating between different products; and so, Trademarks™.

But there is no need, as we already have a way of differentiating between different products: the product I sell, the product you sell, and that crappy product that other guy sells (wow, talk about crap, that crappy seller of crappy products, the crap that other guy sells); and that method of product differentiation is (and yes, the differentiation of products without resorting to Trademarks™ is still what we are talking about, same sentence, so the focus has not shifted from the fairly obvious solution of) using the proper name of the seller.

Did you get all that?

Brett Paufler's Website.

Brett Paufler's Soda.

Brett Paufler's version of Slaughter Quest.

And all the rest.

I am Brett Paufler (just in case that wasn't clear, egotistical bastard that I am) and whatever I might be hawking can be easily identified as Whatever Brett Paufler is Hawking™.

Actually, no ™ is needed, but you know what? Frick & Frack them!

I'm just going to move on.

I'm pretty sure my (full) name is unique in the world (and others might not be so lucky, the unlucky sods). But this is a minor point. Anyone can add a second (or third or fourth) middle name in order to create a unique identifier (we did it for emails, after all -- look at me, I'm SexyBrett69@ficticiousemailaccount).

And since it's clear I've long since flipped over into Full Rant Mode™ (patent pending, all rights reserved), that's a wrap.

There are over two million registered Trademarks™ in America.

For those of you who can't read (please note the irony), that's something like 2,000,000 registered Trademarks™.

And it's simply too many... mostly for worthless groupings of words, for ideas and phrases, which nobody knows, and nobody cares about, and that somebody (usually a different somebody from the first two nobodies, but not always) who came up with the idea after about as much thought as I put into a typical rant (hint: not very much).

Ergo Sum: There is no reason to protect Trademarks™.

And believe it or not, abolishing Trademarks™ (patents, copyrights, and even ownership of private real estate, after all, a well designed property tax can serve the same purpose) would not mark the end of capitalism; but rather, would herald its beginning.