October 2009 -- Michael Heller’s Gridlock Economy popularizes a concept
that Heller has developed over nearly two decades of
influential academic writing: the notion that, when it
comes to property rights, too many rights-endowed cooks
really can spoil the broth. I was asked in this conference
to apply Heller’s insight to the Google Book Search
project, and the request at first seemed natural. Heller
himself has suggested that Google Book Search might be an
apt poster child for the gridlock phenomenon; and Google
likewise can often be heard to complain, in Heller-esque
tones, that the only way to build a comprehensive search
engine for books is to take the books without asking. My
Essay, however, ultimately rejects both Google’s claim and
Heller’s use of the example. The problem on both counts
arises from a mistake in how gridlock is being
conceptualized. Gridlock is not simply a catch-all for
situations where a large number of permissions are in play.
(Big itself is not necessarily bad.) Gridlock is instead
more narrowly a reference to situations where a large
number of permissions are in play, and those permissions
intertwine. Heller’s book bears this out. When he writes
about gridlock, Heller almost invariably describes
situations where permissions interact, such that (say) a
single missed permission would render worthless a dozen
permissions properly acquired, or the last permission
received is of disproportionate value simply by virtue of
its being last. This is a necessary component of Heller’s
gridlock theory. In the Google example, however, it is
conspicuously absent.
Citation
"Google Book Search in the Gridlock Economy" by Doug Lichtman, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
Related Scholarship
"Tragedy T.V.: Rights Fragmentation and the Junk Band Problem" by Thomas Hazlett, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
"Heller's Gridlock Economy In Perspective" by Richard Epstein, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
"The Wasteland: Anticommons, White Spaces, and the Fallacy of Spectrum" by Kevin Werbach, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
"Google Book Search in the Gridlock Economy" by Doug Lichtman, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
"Autonomy and Independence: The Normative Face of Transaction Costs" by Robert Merges, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
"On Being Misled by Transaction Cost Economics: Externalities, Commons, and Gridlocks" by Harold Demsetz, October 2, 2009, Quick Links: Gridlock Economy Conference
