Words of wisdom, apropos of enforcement of IP rights and numerous other topics:

[W]hile what would happen in a world of zero transaction costs can give us valuable insights, these insights are, in my view, without value except as steps on the way to the analysis of the real world of positive transaction costs. We do not do well to devote ourselves to a detailed study of the world of zero transaction costs, like augers divining the future by the minute inspection of the entrails of a goose.

-- Ronald Coase, "The Coase Theorem and the Empty Core: A Comment," 24 Journal of Law & Economics 183, 187 (1981)