The latest Progress Shapshot is an explanation why Intellectual Property, the Endangered Species Act, and the Property Rights Alliance, three topics not usually linked in one's thoughts, are inextricably intertwined.

The dispute over the ESA provides a fine example of another analytic tool (besides Prisoner's Dilemma) that is used too little in policy discourse or legal analysis -- the concept of Rational Ignorance, which is:

[A] term most often found in economics, particularly public choice theory, but also used in other disciplines which study rationality and choice, including philosophy (epistemology) and game theory.

Ignorance about an issue is said to be "rational" when the cost of educating oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste time doing so.

Political and journalistic elites are constantly bleating about the need for "an informed public," which actually means a public that is paying attention to the elites. In the real world, people are rationally ignorant on most issues, precisely for the reasons set forth in the definition. The cost of educating oneself is too great to be worthwhile, considering the limited impact one has on a particular issue.

However, propagandists know this full well. Their art is to get ignorant people sufficiently exercised to exert political influence, but not so involved as to become non-ignorant.

The ESA presents a case in point: A placard on a 14th Street bus shelter shows an eagle with red ink smeared over the image. The copy says: "Destroying the Endangered Species Act is defacing America."

In fact, the ESA has very little to do with saving eagles, and much to do with using the presence of various less attractive species as a weapon against productive uses of land. In addition, even if one does think that every species should be preserved no matter what the cost, the ESA is about a method of financing this effort by shifting the costs to individual land owners rather than paying for it with public funds. The law is a serious breach of the principle that is supposed to govern compensation for regulatory takings of property in that it "forc[es] some people alone to bear burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole."

Because people in the great urban centers of America are at no risk of having their property impressed into the crusade to save the Arroyo Toad, et. al., they remain rationally ignorant of the problems and injustices, and the hope of the placard writers is that they will remain so.

So what has this to do with IP? Simple -- the political stars have shifted, and it is no longer rational for people in the content industry to remain ignorant of the real ESA issues. So learn, if you value your right to control your own creative property. This impressment thing is catching on (See H.R. 1201), and you are in the cross-hairs. Besides, if you don't help the people who are at risk from the ESA, one guess as to how they will react when you come around seeking their help to defend your property rights.