The Economic Consequences of the Reflexivisation of the Concept of Intellectual Property – A Theoretical Approach

Abstract Intellectual property is, from the perspective of economic theory, quite a stand-out. It retains the meritocratic particularities of material property – and, as such, advocating for its validity seems justified to many on the grounds that it helps the economic agent appropriate the benefits of his (in this case, intellectual) labour, while also being, in and of itself, immune to the scarcity which is inherent to “standard”, material property and, therefore, to the so-called “natural laws” governing most laissez-faire moral convictions, seeming to be a rather positive construction instead. Such a peculiar set of attributes is bound to make this concept sensitive to both intellectual differences among its “scientific undertakers” and applicative disturbances. If the praxeological approach of some Austrian School economists, like Stephan Kinsella, renders intellectual property a monopolistic obstacle in the way of proper free market development, other advocates of laissez-faire economics, such as Ayn Rand, fully embrace the notion and even consider it the only valid form of private property in existence (material property being nothing more than one of its sub-categories). This paper features an exclusively theoretical, non-empirical methodological approach, its aim being to analyse the way in which three key psychoanalytical issues of “reflexivisation”, present (also) in the field of economics, affect the concept of intellectual property. These issues are as follows: 1. How the economic agents who directly relate their (intellectual) activity to this concept risk altering some / all of the significance of its interpretative functions; 2. How the “grey area” specific to most “human rights” prevents the proper use of intellectual property rights and fuels the rhetoric used by its opponents; and 3. How some of the theoretical approaches advocating for / being against this concept are unknowingly driven by what psychoanalysis refers to as either neurosis (in the case of its advocates) or psychosis (mostly in the case of its opponents). The aimed result of this research is to provide a proper economic interpretation of the way in which the theoretical conceptual evolution of intellectual property may be affected by its very own “reflexivisation”.