National Ethos as a Quasi-Private Good: Culture, Religion and Identity as Forms of Collective Intellectual Property

Given today’s so-called “cultural war”, an economic addressing of the issues surrounding it seems more useful than ever. This paper features a Libertarian analysis – of the institutional economics genre – regarding certain elements constituting the political lines this “war” is fought across – the cultural, spiritual and ethnic identities of a nation – its ethos. We begin by accepting two hypotheses: (1) collective property – currently named “public property” – is a valid form of private property and, as such, there are identifiable individuals – the said collective – who enjoy and are entitled to defending it from trespass; and (2) intellectual property is yet another form of valid private property whose owners ought to defend. By combining them, a third statement results – that “collective intellectual property“ is an economically viable concept worth contextualising within today‘s political climate. Our focus regarding the available scientific literature has been on both economic takes on concepts like natural rights, as well as more elaborate Austro-Hoppean writings on issues like immigration. We aim to fill the gap between the aforementioned issues and their concrete applications to today‘s political challenges by answering the following research question: “What is the appropriate position political decision-makers should adopt in relation to immigration, political correctness and forced mixing, under a freedom-orientated framework?”. We hope that the research results will prove useful, both for the satisfaction of intellectual curiosities, as well as for potentially guiding much-needed policy change/consolidation with regards to the addressed issues.