While he was addressing a larger problem, several points in Victor Davis Hanson’s article Is the West Dead Yet? resonate in the context of the assaults on our intellectual property system:
But as in mid-fifth-century Athens and late-republican Rome, there are signs that the West is eroding — and fast. The common Western malady is age-old and cyclical…In the case of modern America, Britain, and Europe, the sheer material bounty spawned by free-market capitalism and legally protected private property, combined with the freedom of the individual, creates a sort of ennui. Boredom is the logical result of that lethal mix of affluence and leisure (emphasis added)…
