This chapter develops the theoretical framework for the book.Using Foucault, the chapter introduces three models of power: juridical (sovereignty and rights-based), public biopower (promoting the productivity and health of the population in a general way), and neoliberal biopower (same objective as biopower, but working on individuals and treating everything as part of the economy).With neoliberal biopower, the emphasis is on subjectification and the development of homo economicus as a type.I then trace intellectual property (IP) from its emergence at the intersection of classical liberalism and juridical power to the current neoliberal form.My focus is on the contrast between the early, public biopower version of IP with the current, neoliberal one.The earlier version relies on the notion of benefits to an amorphous public and worries about the effects of monopolies; the newer version drops the aversion to monopoly and attempts to use property rights to capture and internalize public benefits, while putting pressure on individuals in the public to view their interaction with culture economically.I then analyze the current, Demsetzian theorization of IP as neoliberal.

This chapter explored the idea of leveraging property rights to enable either better decision making by stakeholders, usually by changing the ex ante information and incentives, or by re-allocating rights as originally suggested by Coase. We explored Hardin’s (in)famous ‘Tragedy of the Commons,’ from the economic perspectives of rivalry (aka subtractability) and excludability. We explored the impacts of observing the three states of rivalrous, non-rivalrous, and anti-rivalrous against both excludable and non-excludable, yielding six types of goods or services. Traditional property concepts, such as rules of first capture or first mover, could lead to inefficient use of resources. Demsetz's theory is that property rights could emerge, sua sponte, internalising externalities that follow from open access; that property rights enable communities to re-balance the impacts of Pigou’s externalities. Demsetz’s theory does not necessarily imply the establishment of private property rights. Again, the issues of rivalry and excludability came into view. Cooter and Ulen advocated that if property rights could be granted for various natural resources, including wildlife, it would benefit the efforts to protect and conserve those resources.