America: Protecting Intellectual Property or Kicking Away the Ladder?

The recent Romney campaign ad that we viewed in class raises the issue of China’s assault on American intellectual property rights. The ad, which portrays blueprints for aircraft and computers being transferred between the countries, argues that American lost two million jobs as a result of this “cheating.” Undoubtedly, over the next several weeks, the two camps will continue to battle back and forth over who can be tougher on China; however, viewing American development from a broader historical perspective, we might just be, as Stiglitz suggests, kicking away the ladder that brought us to the top.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, America was a newborn nation. This was especially true with regard to its economic development. However, thanks to pioneering capitalists like Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell, the country would soon begin an industrial revolution. Slater, a British machinist, established textile mills in Rhode Island during the 1790s. Lowell, a merchant, brought similar technology to Massachusetts. More than simply establishing factories, these men laid the foundations of American industrialization.

These two American champions of progress, however, were considered traitors (in Slater’s case, at least, since he was a Brit) and thieves. Great Britain, recognizing its industrial monopoly, had prohibited the removal of any plans, models, blueprints, etc. from the country. This attempt to protect intellectual property failed because the two men mentioned in this post carried their acquired knowledge and skills of the British manufacturing system to the United States. They transferred intellectual property in its purest sense, and in so doing established the foundation of America’s early nineteenth century economic progress.  

Intellectual property is difficult to design. At what point does a system lose the value of its originality and become simply a collection of parts and machinery that can be replicated? Or, as Wen stated in class on Tuesday, when is a computer simply a square with rounded edges? If America outlines intellectual property too broadly, it risks undermining the basis of its original economic progression. Perhaps, some will say, but what does that matter? History can’t be changed, but the future can. Establishing future standards that are incongruent with those to which we have held ourselves to in the past, however, is certainly an example of how we are kicking out the ladder once we have made it to the top.