What makes an idea valuable? What turns it into a product that can be bought, sold, or rented? Ideas turn into capital assets thanks to our system of intellectual property rights. But understanding IP isn’t simply a matter of learning what a trademark or patent is, and then learning how to leverage it to create wealth. To truly understand intellectual property, we need to under property—what it is and why it exists—first.

In this episode, I explore the origins of our conception of private property, why we’ve coded intellectual property rights into law, and how one business owner—Jenny Blake—licenses her IP to companies to generate (relatively) passive income. 

Footnotes:

• Jenny Blake’s Free Time
• Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• “Coding Land and Ideas | The Laws of Capitalism” featuring Katharina Pistor via the Institute for New Economic Thinking
• “Enclosure” on Wikipedia
• “Legal Evil” featuring Katharina Pistor via the Institute for New Economic Thinking
• “How to Unf★ck Intellectual Property” featuring Dean Baker via the Institute for New Economic Thinking
• Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy and Who Pays for It? by Brett Christophers
• Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

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If you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and rebuilding a structure for work-life that works.