I provided my own review of Dale Halling’s Source of Economic Growth. I am also pleased to provide this guest review by my friend, ObjectiveAnalyst:
Source of Economic Growth
Author, Dale B. Halling ISBN 9781511829687 100 pages
The primary thesis of the book is an under-appreciated and often overlooked driver of prosperity and improvement of the general welfare. That is Intellectual property rights. Without the protection and capacity to profit from one’s innovations there would be little incentive to share labor saving devices with one’s fellow man. These devices, which are the product of one’s mind have been protected, thus fostering the dissemination, manufacturing and widespread implementation.
In order that a society have an improving standard of living and avoid subsistence living, or worse, it is critical that one profit from not only the labor of one’s hands but also of their mind. It is the innovations of man that have thus far fostered the increased supply of goods and reduction of costs to the consumer. This has improved the real world wealth and quality of living for all. The capacity to protect one’s innovations and profit from them has been the incentive to invent, improve, manufacture and share.
Imagine a world without modern agricultural equipment or information age technology we all take for granted today. It would be impossible to sustain the present population and those of us that did live would live hand to mouth; except of course our feudal lords who would live well at the expense of others. That is the world we would return to.
The book is well written, contains historical data correlating and supporting the premise that the nation with the highest degree of protection for property of all kinds, with an emphasis on intellectual property has the advantage over other nations when it comes to the prosperity of its citizens. The arguments of the detractors are addressed with convincing counter arguments and examples. The author, himself an expert in the field, has gathered together the data and conclusions of other experts to demonstrate with exacting clarity the importance and value of a strong patent and copyright system to human advancement.
There is no other path. We must move forward with innovation. We must protect it and foster it, or we as a race will be reduced to a primitive time caught in the Malthusian trap. It is only our unequaled capacity to be tool makers and inventors that has allowed us to move beyond it. Despite all the outcry of unequal distribution of wealth the poor are not as poor as they would be if we did not encourage the entrepreneur and inventor. It is the promise of profit from one’s mental labor that has done this. The man whose work is honorable, but only manual, such as pulling a few levers of a machine repeatedly on a factory floor owes a greater debt for his job and prosperity to all of those that made the machine possible. It is not the other way around.
I enjoyed this quick read and consider it a handy and invaluable reference book in my library. I hope you will also.
Happy reading,
O.A.
To buy this book, click for the paperback version or Kindle version below:
Paperback: Source of Economic Growth
Kindle: Source of Economic Growth
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