Some progressives expressed dismay last week to discover that Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, doesn’t favor a policy of open immigration. While such a policy would undoubtedly allow billions of people in the developing world to improve their lives, there are not many people in the United States who relish the idea of the country’s population tripling or quadrupling over the next three or four decades.
It is hard to justify people in the United States living so much better and longer lives than people in places like Bangladesh or Burundi, just like it’s hard to justify the children of the rich and privileged in the United States living so much better and longer lives than their poorer counterparts, but there is not a plausible story where this inequality will be addressed by mass immigration. There are, however, more serious ways to think about addressing global inequality.
One of the main reasons that workers in the United States get much higher wages than workers in the developing world is that they have more capital to work with. They also are much better educated on average. The same policy can help to address both gaps. Specifically, we can make our “intellectual property” freely available to the rest of the world at the cost of transferring it, which will generally be close to zero.
We can accomplish this by exempting the developing world from intellectual property (IP) claims in the form of patent and copyright protection. This would mean that poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America would be able to get drugs for what it costs to manufacture them. There would no longer be any issues with drugs costing tens of thousands of dollars a year. Nearly all of them would sell for just a few dollars per prescription. The same would apply to chemicals used in agriculture, also to newly designed crops that use land or water more efficiently. The operating systems and software on computers and cell phones would also be available at no cost, as would be various programs applications in research and business.
To get an idea of how significant this would be, the Commerce Department estimated the value of the stock of the intellectual property held by the private sector at $2.4 trillion at the end of 2013, roughly 12 percent of the total capital stock. It is also the fastest growing portion of the capital stock. In real terms the value of intellectual property products increased 40 percent more rapidly than the total capital stock over the last two decades.
While not all of what is counted as intellectual property can be easily transferred, since it depends on trained personnel who may not be available in some developing countries, there is also much intellectual property embedded in the value of physical capital. If developing countries could produce equipment without having to pay licensing fees for using various types of processes, it would substantially reduce the cost of building up their own capital stocks.
The education aspect of this story would also benefit from ending IP claims in the developing world. If schools and training facilities in the developing world all could gain access to books, computer software, online lectures and other educational material at zero cost, it would substantially reduce the cost of education. In short, a substantial portion of the benefits of the wealth can be transferred to the developing world simply by changing IP rules.
Of course if current IP laws are not enforced in the developing world, it may be difficult to enforce them in the US also. If drugs costing $100,000 a year in the US can be purchased in Africa or India for a few hundred dollars, it will be difficult to sustain the US price. This would mean a need for different mechanisms to finance research.
Fortunately Senator Sanders has already been thinking along these lines. Back in 2011 he proposed two bills that would replace patent monopolies with more modern mechanisms for financing drug research. His specific proposals may not be the best financing method, but they are at least a serious effort to move away from the anachronistic patent system.
Unfortunately, US trade policy has been moving in the opposite direction. In 1993, the Clinton administration put the TRIPS provisions into the Uruguay Round at the last minute. These provisions essentially required developing countries to adopt US style patent law if they wanted to be part of the WTO. Since this was very late in the negotiating process and countries did not want to be excluded from the world trading system, developing countries had to accept TRIPS before they even had time to analyze its implications.
Subsequent US trade pacts have consistently sought to make patents and other protections longer and stronger. One of the major sticking points in finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the strong patent protection the United States is demanding for prescription drugs.
This is another area where there may be major differences between the candidates. Regardless of which president gets elected in 2016, we are not going to see any movement towards open borders. However, there is at least one candidate who may support policies that will make it easier for people in developing countries to benefit from the knowledge the world has accumulated over many thousands of years. This can make a huge difference in their lives.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.