Future Techno-Hero

In IP geek circles, Manfred is legendary; he's the guy who patented the business practice of moving your e-business somewhere with a slack intellectual property regime in order to evade licensing encumbrances. He's the guy who patented using genetic algorithms to patent everything they can permutate from an initial description of a problem domain – not just a better mousetrap, but the set of all possible better mousetraps. Roughly a third of his inventions are legal, a third are illegal, an...

 The Laffer Curve

The horizontal axis here is level of taxation, and the vertical axis represents the amount of revenue the government takes in from taxpayers. On the left edge of the graph, the tax rate is 0%; in that case, by definition, the government gets no tax revenue. On the right, the tax rate is 100%; whatever income you have, whether from a business you run or a salary you’re paid, goes straight into Uncle Sam’s bag. Which is empty. Because if the government vacuums up every cent of the wage you...