Andrew Joseph Galambos (born Ifj. Galambos Jozsef Andras, 1924, in Hungary; died April 10, 1997) created a theory of freedom. He was most famous for his strict stances on intellectual property rights.[1] Galambos distinguished his theory from that of Ludwig von Mises (1949), Human Action, subscribing to the same 'subjective theory of value' in economics but deriving it from his own definition of property.[2]
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Galambos moved to Los Angeles in 1952 to work for North American Aviation. Later, in 1958, he worked for Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, which later became TRW Space Technology Laboratories.[3]
Around 1960, Galambos left the aerospace industry to teach at Whittier College. In 1961, Galambos met with Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Murray Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt in New York. He also established The Free Enterprise Institute that year, which gave for-pay lectures on freedom and capitalism.[3]
Galambos felt that intellectual property owners should have primary control over their own ideas and over how others might secondarily use those ideas. According to Galambos, all forms of property came from a combination of "primordial property" (a person's life)[4] and "primary property" (a person's own ideas).[5] By using the natural resources available in the physical universe, individuals use their primordial property, guided by primary property (actions, guided by ideas, respectively) to create "secondary property".[6][7] That which Galambos denotes as "secondary property" are the well-known, established, goods and services which individuals trade, use, and consume as they live their lives. But Galambos notes that before those well-known goods and services became established, they had to be first conceived, discovered, or recognized by their primary owners. These acts of conception, discovery, or recognition Galambos denotes as the "primary property" of the individual, original owners.
Some of Galambos' students were required to acknowledge a "proprietary notice" which asked those students to give credit (both intellectually and financially) for the information gleaned from his courses; later he required that all participants in his lectures sign a non-disclosure agreement to prevent publication of his ideas before he published them himself. Students were allowed to take notes for their private use and most lectures were taped. Course V-50T (the "T" was for Tape) was transcribed and published as Sic Itur Ad Astra (see below). Another course, V-201, which focused on mechanisms for intellectual property protection for inventors, also had a taped version, which is expected to be transcribed into future volumes.
V-50T and V-201T are occasionally offered as taped courses by The Free Enterprise Institute.
In 1998, volume one of Sic Itur Ad Astra ("This is the Way to the Stars") (ISBN 0-88078-004-5) was first published. The book is based on a course entitled "Course V-50, The Theory of Volition," Galambos gave at The Free Enterprise Institute in 1968. In the lectures which form the basis for the book, Galambos laid out his two postulates of volitional science,
Galambos equates immoral action with coercion[10][11] and defines freedom as "the societal condition wherein every individual has one hundred percent control over his own property",[12][13] Galambos derives his theory from these postulates. The remainder of the course (and the book) consists of Galambos' elaboration of the theory and his application of that science to solve the problems of modern society.
Galambos always took care to acknowledge his sources such as Thomas Paine's writings, as typified by article 4 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen -- "4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.".
Originally a Republican supporting Barry Goldwater, Galambos later became a classical liberal.[14] He supported private protection and defense, the absolute rights of the owner of private property, and was opposed to political voting and other forms of political activism.
In the 1980s, Galambos was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and was institutionalized in 1990. He died on April 10, 1997.