We'll take this in two stages. In our book, we have two sections. One is the objections of economists. The second is the objections of stockbrokers. And we find that they are extremely different.
Stockbrokers object because they want to sell shares.
And the objections that stockbrokers raise are, by and large, laughable. The idea that intellectual property has any aggregate value, as opposed to individual value to companies, was dismissed years ago, provided you are talking about a competitive economy. If you want me to explain that, I think that I'd like to take an example of an industry like pharmaceuticals, where quite clearly there is a lot of intellectual property around but which is also a competitive industry. If you are fortunate, you will have value from your research, and your company will be worth more than its asset value because you will be getting an above-average return. However, if you are not fortunate, you will be making less money because your research will not be paying off, and you will be worth less than your net asset value because you will be having a negative return.