Matt Mason, author of “The Pirates Dilemma,” asserts “America only industrialized as rapidly as it did by counterfeiting European inventions, ignoring global patents and stealing intellectual property wholesale.”
I watched an interesting lecture yesterday afternoon online given by Matt Mason, author of “The Pirates Dilemma.” It’s worth noting because one of his assertions in it concerns the etymology of the word “Yankee,” which describes the very heart and soul of the United States. From the storied “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a patriotic song that has long been synonymous with the US, to the famed New York baseball team, it’s a word with much history and usage yet surprisingly misunderstood.
Why? Because as Mason notes, the “…most likely source is the Dutch name Janke, which means “little Jan” or “little John,” a nickname that can be traced back to the 1680s, when it was used as a slang term for pirates.”
Yes pirates. For he argues that the reason why the United States was able to industrialize as quickly as it did during the 18th and 19th centuries is because we basically ignored European copyright laws and patents.
