Dakota Hensley

A Prize System as a Solution to Drug Patents

by Dakota Hensley | Aug 10, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles

Drugs are expensive. A vial of insulin can be up to $250 and a pack of pens can be up to $500. Every month, many families decide between life and food. For a country as rich as ours this is a disgrace and a moral crime. The culprit is the pharmaceutical monopoly. With a drug patent, a pharmaceutical company can block other companies from selling a much cheaper generic version. Preventing competition, these patents lead to medicines like the heart disease drug Lipitor costing over $270 for a packet of 100 tablets back when it was patented. The best way to lower these prices is to abolish...

The Patent, an Enemy of Innovation

by Dakota Hensley | Jul 21, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles

The foundation of our economy is the patent. If you invent something, you need a patent. We assume that without patent law, society would be stuck in an economic malaise. We'd be stuck in the Dark Ages. However, that isn't true. The opposite is. Patents hold our society back and keep us stuck in economic malaise. We are in the Dark Ages compared to what we could be. There is no evidence that they increase innovation and productivity. In fact, they do the opposite. Patents can inhibit innovation by reducing its profitability. No one wants to innovate because there's no reward for doing so....

Dakota Hensley is a native of Kentucky who identifies as a left-Rothbardian. He's written for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, The Federalist, and The American Conservative, among others.

Podcasts

Shop Our Books

Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

by Gary Vogler

From the Foreword by Lawrence B. Wilkerson: “[T]he debate over whether oil was a principal reason for the 2003 invasion has waxed and waned, with one camp arguing that it absolutely was, while the other argues the precise opposite.” “Mr. Vogler, himself a former...

Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism

by Keith Knight

Imagine the Catholic Church (or any person or group of people) doing what the government does every day: Everyone who doesn’t give the Catholic Church 25% of his annual income every year will be put in jail. If he resists the Jesuit officer, the officer has the right...

Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

FOREWORD BY JAY BHATTACHARYA, MD, PHD Diary of a Psychosis is different from all other books on Covid: it traces the development of the government response as it happened, bit by bit, and subjects it to relentless scrutiny: did any of it do any good? It thereby...

« Older Entries