INTANGIBLE PROPERTY AS A TOOL FOR ANALYZING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.

The article focuses on intangible property as a tool for analyzing the relationships between government and private enterprise. Beginning with the radical ideas of the classical economists, government was viewed as an outside force which contributed to the elimination of competitive conditions by grants of special privilege and interference with free exchange. The early classicists implied, and sometimes explicitly stated, that competition was a normal state of human relationships which would largely maintain itself if freed from governmental interference. When it became apparent that competitive markets could be destroyed by private combinations as well as by governmental favor, the view of the government's role changed. Governmental interference with the private economy was now justified and defended as a means of maintaining competitive markets. At the same time there was general agreement that certain areas in the economy could not be maintained feasibly on a competitive basis because of their naturally monopolistic character.