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Copyright and Patent Laws Hurt the Economy
Norsefire writes "Two economists at Washington University in St. Louis are claiming that copyright and patent laws are 'killing innovation' and 'hurting [the] economy.' Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine state they would like to see copyright law abolished completely as there are other protections available to the creators of 'intellectual property' (a term they describe as 'propaganda,' and of recent origin). They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
www.againstmonopoly.org
This vile proposal threatens to sacrifice shareholder value on the altar of the progress of the useful arts! The founding fathers would never stand for it.
Copyrights should only be a limited amount of time, not the current infinity+ that it is now.
More than the authors life is excessive.
A picture I took today shouldn't expire in 75 (if I live to 100) + 70 years, or in 2154.
If I had a son, he might not be alive at that point.
That is just way too long.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Would it be irony if their book was copyrighted? ;)
Also, I'm glad to see the description of the term "Intellectual Property" called for precisely what it is : propaganda. It's time for this term to be thrown out, and not to let so-called self-professed "intellectual property owners" inject this horrible term into the collective mind-set any further - it muddies the water of the discussion.
They put their mouths where their money is, or something like that (too late in the day to be properly witty). Read it online for free.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This vile proposal threatens to sacrifice shareholder value on the altar of the progress of the useful arts!
Shareholders benefit because their money isn't going into lawyers pockets, and being lost to the invisible, incalculable cost of hindered progress.
(yes I know you were being sarcastic. Sadly, that is actually the majority sentiment on this issue.)
"They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value"
And of course, such a thing as "social value" can be easily determined before the product has the ability to hit the market...
... or writing if someone else can come along and make money off your invention. Just imagine if Wal-Mart could print and sell and book they wanted without permission from the author or the publisher. What if they could take your program or product, have it made in China for a tenth of your cost and sell it for their own profit.
I don't create the products I create for 'social good.' I create them to make money. If I come up with a unique and new idea, it's mine (or at least it belongs to the company I created it for.)
Patents and copyright exist to ensure that the creator is protected. Sure there are problems with the way things are now, where patents are being given a little too freely, but to abolish copyrights and patents altogether is just absurd.
Those who can do... Those who can't get a certification from Cisco or Microsoft.
I'd say it'd be well worth it.
Remember: they can't lock up what they do any more.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'm not sure getting rid of either entirely would be the best option but I don't see much use of limits being longer than five years. Protection is supposed to give the original creator a short monopoly to give them, and others, incentive to create more. As it is now, someone can make something and sit on it for the rest of their lives; where's the incentive?
-SaNo
Don't forget that the GPL is effective because it is based on the protection of copyright.
if you just said 15 years only for original owner and unextendable except by original founder(a person, no corporations) it would curb the problem.
use it or lose it. the iteration time of mass use or mass distribution is far less than historically. you should be able to, with any substantive effort, make your mark/dollars in that time.
i am hard pressed to see damage to society by shortening the feedback loop.
Furthermore I submit that royalties be amended to include BRAAAAAINS.
Your post starts with the assumption that simply because they are economists they are not worth listening to before suggesting critical thinking as a positive thing that most of the slashdot readership do not engage in. This is either an example of an American not understanding irony or a brilliant piece of irony.
You then use the term 'reds', an old propagandist word, as if 'reds' are inherently bad before highlighting "China's lack of respect for IP" as if IP has real meaning beyond your own mindset, as if it is a part of reality that exists outside of you political environment. In doing this you demonstrate that you are not flexible enough to think within the bounds defined in the fine article which has clearly stated that intellectual property is a modern propagandist word.
Even if you disagree with that premise, it is important to take that concept on, suspend disbelief if you will, in order to understand the whole point of what they are saying. You are unable to do this, apparantly incapable of critical thought, so you can only miss the point.
Oh, and the 1950's called. They'd like their bigotry back.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I went to ye olde library today to get copies of 2 Articles from the Journal of Applied Polymer Sciences, a Wiley Interscience Publication. Xeroxing the articles under fair use from the library was free for me.
The Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment came when I checked online to find out how much it would cost to subscribe to the journal. I thought someone misplaced a decimal point: $23,245 a year is the institutional subscription rate! That's about what I paid yearly in college tuition back when I was in college. Even worse, it's almost the value of the lab equipment I'm using in the work I've been doing on my own time.
That's what those criminal scum deserve for singing "Happy Birthday."
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The issue here isn't "intellectual property". The issue is the property paradigm itself. Whether or not the proprietary period has been lengthened ridiculously to benefit Disney, we all agree that intellectual property eventually returns to the public domain that nourished its creation. Newton wasn't the only one who has stood on the shoulders of giants.
Why then do we assume completely and utterly that "real" property never expires? Why assume that once Manhattan was stol...er...purchased, that it remains purchased - not for 14 years - not for 100 years - not for the lifetime of Peter Minuit plus 75 years - not even for as long as the original Dutch nation retained possession - but rather, for ever and ever and ever?
The concept behind inheritance taxes is that the wealthy got that way by receiving special benefits from the body politic. Thus there is an end to wealth of all types. At issue isn't how "intellectual property" differs from other types of property - perhaps to the extent of not even representing property - but how we have all bought into the absurd proposition that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are somehow entitled - could possibly be entitled - to squat on billions in filthy lucre.
All property is intellectual property. What is real estate but a deed? What is a car but its title?
Can we see an objective, non-ideological defintion?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
accuracy economist have been shown to ahve of the last couple of years, I can't see why they could be wrong~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Where's a good -1 Pedantic mod when you need one?
I believe that the word you're looking for here is "hypocrisy."
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Computer Software: 5 years
Books: 10 years
For the most part, computers goes "out of date" every 18 months, what insanity is it to give software indefinite length of protection? A lot of old 8 bit software we grew up with won't even run on most modern platform, but they're still "protected."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Are you saying there would be no F/OSS without copyright? BSD seems to get by alright.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I'm not sure getting rid of either entirely would be the best option but I don't see much use of limits being longer than five years.
Here's a scenario for you and the rest of /.:
1. Individual author writes a very good, but not widely recognized book. Sales are mediocre, but this is mostly due to publicity issues.
2. Movie studio X bets that they can produce a blockbuster film based on this book. They go to the author to try and negotiate movie rights, but since copyright is only five years, they never offer more than a pittance. Negotiations fall through.
3. Movie studio X actually begins production of the film 3 years into the copyright of the book, and finishes just as the 5 year copyright is expiring. The movie becomes a blockbuster, and studio X sucks up all the profits, while not handing a penny to the author.
This is just something to think about.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Perhaps they feel that their book has "social value".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Can we say disingenuous?
Intellectual Property is a broad term that's come into being to describe old ideas. Patents and copyright aren't new at all.
That said, the base idea sounds like not allowing abuses of the system, which is fine by me.
BTW reds was a term used by the communists to describe themselves.
It represents a school of thought that IS inherently bad. Did you miss the twentieth century?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
While draconian intellectual property laws may hurt an economy in the long run, it could be argued that they are being used (particularly in the USA) as a protectionist device (as in trade barriers), protecting an economy where many people are not actually producing anything of value.
Given the size of corporate lobbies in Washington, D.C., and the assets any one of them -- whether pharmaceutical patents or music copyrights -- would stand to lose, I highly doubt any of Obama's economic recovery efforts will involve weakening the United States' IP regime.
I'm just sayin'...
... but there have been numerous smart articulate people (myself inclusive) who reached all those exact same conclusions many many years ago and have been suggesting precisely the same remedy to anyone and everyone who would listen... which, as it happens, wasn't a very large crowd. I wonder if that crowd has even grown faster than the birthrate in the last 20 years? Is there enough of a groundswell of people now to finally put a stop to centuries of wealth-concentrating madness?
First off, lets just start by saying that the whole left/right thing doesn't wash with me. It's an old fashioned concept that doesn't quite reconcile with modern politics as far as I can see.
Your using right and left as if they are concrete political groups, as if people are either one or the other, which makes all your arguments hard to fathom for someone who finds that whole world view quaint and primitive. Your also firmly for one side of this false duality and against the other, as if they are footy teams, as if anyone who identifies as being on the opposite team is an enemy and anyone who disagrees or argues with you must be on the opposite team. This is shown in your "idealist" comment. It really is quite odd.
So none of your arguments mean very much to me except has a fascinating museum piece. I therefore will not attempt to take them apart, because you really do have to take on board certain premises to understand an argument and I couldn't be bothered. It's all about context.
By the way, which part of my post was idiotic idealism? Perhaps you should read the post again. I thought I simply pointed out bigotry and inflexible thought on your part. I didn't really put forward much except to say that you won't understand others unless you at least attempt to see things from their perspective. I also showed that you really didn't offer any valid argument, just name calling and finger pointing.
Bigots who identify with any of the old left/right paradigm shit me to tears.
I don't therefore I'm not.
How about you lazy bastards learn to program your own software?! What this stinks of to me is yet another attempt to rob people of the products of their "OWN" creation. Possession is 9 10ths of the law remember? That means that if company A manages to hack your machine and steal your idea for a "competing product X", and manages to take it to market before you do.....you didn't make it...it was ALWAYS OURS!!!!! Give up America, quit trying to innovate your way to a better life, we are going to steal it if it is worth anything.
Actually, China is fairly respectful of IP, so long as it is Chinese IP that is being protected. As far as the rest of TRIPS members goes, they are working on it and making progress.
Also, I don't know where this vitriol against the term intellectual property comes from. The first thing any IP lawyer learns is that IP is not property per se. IP is just an umbrella term to encompass copyright, trademark, and patents, which have certain attributes akin to property but important distinctions that separate them from traditional property. The term intellectual property may be a relatively recent creation, but most of the legal doctrines are not. The problems most IP opponents have are with the developing doctrine, I don't see why they waste breath on attacking the term itself. Calling it propaganda strikes me as a bit over the top.
Oh, and the 1950's called. They'd like their bigotry back.
Let's see, in the 1950s, the United States was the undisputed leader in manufacturing, our managerial processes were widely acknowledged to be second to none, government spending was low and the able participants were prosperous.
Since then, American manufacturing in particular and the economy in general has gone on a long and slow decline relative to the rest of the world.
Bottom line is this... at some point, some people will wonder if it was worth trading the economic dominance and optimism of white male dominated sexist and racist America of ages yor, for the utterly bankrupt nation and shiftless people that we have today. Those ancient white men may have been racist and sexist, but at least they knew how to win wars, build things and make money. Today's Americans can't do anything, and we're still racist and sexist.
This is my sig.
YOU'RE. And that stands for the two of you. Nothing like a grammatical nitpicking bomb-drop in a good old internet argument.
It's kind of like the Anti-Chewbacca defense.
While I agree that the scope of copyrights and patents far exceeds that needed for the purpose described in the Constitution, and surely needs to be reduced, I don't think the authors have made a case for elimination of these types of IP. Their blog also makes some disparaging remarks regarding trademarks which are not backed up by any arguments whatsoever.
The arguments presented in their book are also often factually inaccurate. For example they make the comment that the pure sciences do not depend on patents to function (true) and that neither Newton, Einstein, or Darwin received government support. This is of course an important point, because if sciences are socialized there is no need of patents.
Unfortunately of course it is completely inaccurate. Both Darwin and Newton worked at Cambridge, which is a publicly funded university. The Beagle was a survey ship in the British Navy without which Darwin would have not been able to gather evidence for the Origin. Einstein was an employee of the German Patent Office, and his first academic position was at the University of Berne, also publicly funded. He also held other positions at publically funded universities like ETH.
Until they clean up their scholarship it is going to be hard to take their position seriously.
Wrong, AC.
What about 4 years ago, when there was a fuckload of venture capital floating around looking to be spent?
The companies that already owned tons of patents were looking to do what? GET MORE PATENTS.
Capitalism is Murder.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What is this "as if IP has real meaning beyond your own mindset, as if it is a part of reality that exists outside of you political environment" nonsense?
Of COURSE it has a real meaning. It's not a propaganda term! That phrase has been around for well over a century!!
And it absolutely has meaning in China. They're a member of WIPO! They've signed treaties! Do you know anything about the issue!?
But, of course, since you're raging against evil "imaginary" property (that one actually IS a propaganda term, btw), you will of course be modded up. This is /., after all.
Most Bible translations are copyrighted. I think the King James version is about the only [English] translation no longer in copyright.
I'm so sick of people posting this stupid, stupid, stupid argument over and over! Too bad the term copyleft seems to have dropped off in usage in the free software movement. The whole point of the GPL and copyleft in general is to turn copyright on itself. Saying "the GPL is effective because it is based on the protection of copyright" is like saying that vaccines made with killed or weakened virus wouldn't work if the virus didn't exist. Well duh! Way to miss the point. The GPL is about balancing the scales. We wouldn't need the GPL if there were no copyright.
You wouldn't? Really? Because, as far as I can tell, the entire goal of the GPL, the reason it exists, is to ensure that those who use GPL-covered code release those changes to the public. Without the GPL, Microsoft could, say, take Firefox, modify it as they see fit, and then refuse to contribute those changes back to the project. You're telling me you'd be just fine with that? Because I'm pretty sure a lot of people aren't... otherwise the GPL wouldn't exist in the first place.
Sure, there would be the problem of proprietary software vendors rolling GPLed code into their own products without releasing source, but on the other hand, everyone would be able to use the proprietary vendors code without paying so the scales would be balanced again.
And they would get the proprietary vendor's code how, exactly? Decompiling the binaries or something? Yeah... good luck with that.
In order to get people to pay, they would need to add value with support services, running servers, etc.
Bullshit. They'd do what they do today. Distribute object files only. Use licensing servers, encryption, online registration, or any number of other systems to ensure that an individual or corporation is using a paid-for copy of their software. The only difference is they wouldn't be able to use copyright as a legal club if said technological measures failed.
Your 'exclusive' term expires in five years. If you do not produce 'exclusive', derivative, works within the term of 'copyright', the work passes into the public domain to be exploited by those who can and you lose all claims to said 'copyright'. If you do, then you get a five year extension. It's (almost) the same thing as 'publish or perish'. Be productive while you are at the most productive stage of your career -and reap the rewards- instead of sitting on your laurels and stifling the innovation of those who come after you who possess greater intellectual capacity.
Sig this!
It does not hurt me. GPL is basicly a "hack" within the boundry's called Patent and Copyright law. It is those boundry's that make it "fail" So basicly, this means that GPL also shows that copyright and patent law is fundamentally wrong.
Below is a fitting quote from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Isaac McPherson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html )
Thomas Jefferson was originally against copyrights and patents but his beliefs evolved. In correspondence on 1790 June 27 to Benjamin Vaughan he wrote:
"An act of Congress authorising the issuing patents for new discoveries has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. Being an instrument in granting the patents, I am acquainted with their discoveries. Many of them indeed are trifling, but there are some of great consequence which have been proved by practice, and others which if they stand the same proof will produce great effect."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Did you even LOOK at the patent you were linking to? It is NOT about "mixing two substances together". What kind of low melting triglyceride blend do you think "anyone with a brain in their head could figure out"?
No wonder you decided to be anonymous.
The problem with this debate is that it requires people to look at the issue from outside of the system we have today. This is hard to do without the ideas maturing over time, especially because we have been from childhood taught that "IP" laws are necessary to create innovation/art.
I have not read the book (I would like to), but here are a few general point I have about the issue after reading the comments:
-"IP" laws are not inherent rights in society. Rather they are laws that goes agaist the basic foundations of western society - freedom and capitalism (IP laws restrict both freedom of expression and free competition).
-"IP" laws are in place because some people think the benefits of the incentive they create are larger than the damage the restrictions represents.
-"IP" laws are not there for the sake of the "creators", but for the benefit of society. It is believed the incentives creates positive value for society.
-Our progress and culture are based on information sharing and "copying". All ideas, music, art and inventions are based on what we have learned in our life and what other people have made before us.
-Without this sharing of information there would be virtually no innovation or advanced culture.
-Claiming "ownership of an idea" is a matter of definition. Trying to restrict others from adapting the idea is absurd, since a plethora of other peoples ideas have certainly been used to form it.
The important aspect here is for people to see that there is a definitive cost to restricting information. Whether or not the cost is worth the benefit could be debated, but assuming it is necessary without understanding the negatives is ignorant. I would advice the people that try to parrot the old propaganda "IP laws are necessary for there to be innovation" to read the book before they comment.
There was a post here about how Sony was artificially expanding PS3's life by making it very hard to use all the features it has to offer as a developer. Everyone was flaming about it.
Now imagine a world where a big corporation can no longer have an everlasting patent (or copyright or whatever). For the sake of the milking of his products, corporations would start releasing crappy improvements (or half-finished inventions), getting protection for them and when that protection is over, the corporation (or perhaps someone else) would release just a bit more of it, just enough to patent it again and the process repeats itself.
What I mean is that once a company has the full product, it'll strip it of the more innovating features and release it, half-featured. Then, as time passes, the corporation would release more and more features. Instead of what happens now (or rather what we want to have), that a corporation releases the full-featured product and then is free to milk it forever.
To quote the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
What does "limited Times" mean? We can agree that one day is insufficient to be an incentive. We can also agree that infinity is too long to promote progress.
Therefore, it stands to reason that there is some optimal duration, which both maximizes the rewards for both the inventors, and society at large.
Has any research been done to determine this optimum? Is current legislation based on anything other than what lobbyists can buy for their clients?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
For everyone defending the existing patent system, just a heads up from someone who has actually tried to start a business selling a "new" product: anything you can think of, there is a patent on some aspect of it. For instance, consider mixing two substances together. For example, you want to make a hot ham and cheese sandwich? Hint: it's patented.
http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7226629.html
Go re-read your link:
What is claimed is:
1. A microwaveable grilled cheese sandwich comprising toasted bread and cheese, the cheese being coated on all of its surfaces with an edible moisture barrier, [...]
Despite it's title, the patent isn't for a hot ham and cheese sandwich, it's for coating the cheese so the sandwich doesn't turn to mush before it's sold.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I'd push more for 15 to 30 years. Not every idea can be rolled out at Web 3.0 speeds. Anything that requires physical manufacturing, quality control, and any kind of regulatory oversight can't hope to go from concept to consumer within less than 2 years.
This is close to the original copyright and patent terms. Using an actuarial table of life spans Thomas Jefferson calculated that they should last 14 years with 1 14 year extension possible.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
No, I'm saying that the legal backing behind the GPL is copyright law.
Take away copyright law and the GPL becomes ineffective in its current form.
these two people are from Washington state, clear across the country
Nice job of not reading. They are from Washington university in St. Louis, not even halfway across the country from Beantown.
I bet that little truth hurts a bit more, eh?
Infuriate left and right
CR is the only form of IP that actually can give the little guy a chance. CR needs to be reformed. I certainly wish Eldred had prevailed in Eldred vs. Ashcroft; but dumping CR altogether would be a mistake. Also, CR violation penalties need to be brought under control, enforcement needs to be sane, etc. CR makes sense to just about everybody except anti-IP idealogues who want a free lunch to drop out of the sky.
Patents, OTOH, are just a royal mess. The only way to get one is to deal with a lawyer, and most patents are not the least bit "inventions". Patents in software in particular ought to just be totally abolish. They only create a minefield for developers. Maybe a handfull of things should be patented every year, instead of thousands. Also, if you own a patent you should not be allowed to suppress the use of your invention. In other words, compulsory licensing for all patents. Commercial infringers could pay into a pool from which claimants would receive payment. If nobody claims your product violates a patent, you file for a refund from the pool. If you don't pay into the pool, then you can just litigate like we do now. Or something like that; but if they abolished patents I don't think we'd miss them, whearas a lack of copyright would really suck for some people (Big Musico doesn't have to sign you anymore--they can just tape your show and market it).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I thought that undemocratic and oppressive regimes are bad. Communism is not inherently bad, it's a different economic system opposing capitalism.
Should I remind that there are religious communists in the heart of US - the Amish!!!!
The parent post hit upon the perfect balance. Really, I could live with 10 years from the date of "public availabilty" of any writing, design. or idea.
The key date is "public availabilty"
> "what should and should not be patentable"
The trouble is it is very hard to: "grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
How can some average patent examiner do that consistently and reliably enough? The temptation after a while would be to just rubberstamp everything.
To me what they should do is to award Prizes for Innovation, much like Nobel Prizes. Most people's hindsight is better than their foresight.
To qualify for the prize, inventors have to register their inventions and pay a registration fee that goes to the prize pool.
You could have one category of prize being awarded by "Experts in the Field", and another category awarded by members of the public (somewhat similar to the Hugo and Nebula prizes, except maybe we could allow a wider participation for members of the public?). Multiple prizes per category would be awarded. Prizes could be awarded every year.
Inventors could win a prize for something they did years or even decades ago.
So even if you are 30 years ahead of everyone and/or your stuff only gets declassified decades later, you can still win a prize.
In contrast patents don't reward the inventors who are really far ahead of their time. They instead reward people who somehow manage to sneak "Method of making omelettes by using contents of eggs while excluding shells and detritus" past overworked patent examiners deluged by similar garbage.
Also, punitive actions could be taken against people who falsely claim they were the first to invent something - at least based on the patent registration database.
What the "Patent Office people" would then do is: try to reduce dupes (you can't prevent dupes 100% but at least reduce them), organize and manage the data so that it is not too hard for people to find candidates for nomination - for instance you don't want to have people keep nominating an invention that has already won! That said an invention that has already won, could qualify for a "top winners amongst winners category".
The patent office workers could also help authoritatively link registered inventions with actual products out in the market.
Capitalism is Murder.
We've talked about this before, but there is a difference between capitalism, and corporatism. The two are often confused.
What we have in America right now leans far more towards the Corporatism end of the spectrum, than true (pure) capitalism.
They had some solid ideas on patent reform. Shifting the burden of proof to the soon-to-be patent holder seems like a sensible suggestion. However, their evidence, and their conclusions, are just rubbish.
Yeah, but none of the evidence shows that any of it is very good. Copyright, to this day, is still, by far and away the most popular business model, and despite the growing discontent with copyright amongst the ignorant and/or greedy, not one of them has managed to overtake the copyright business model.
Perhaps it's because people are having their cake and eating too. They have the protection of copyright, but they also have the option to subvert it at any time they feel like, at the expense of those who do pay for their entertainment. But, we'll never know, unless people stop pirating, and actually throw their support completely behind a competing business model. I suspect, if that happens, those business models won't be so popular over the next 5 years, but that's just my speculation.
Failures? Without copyright, would the students even have the choice whether or not to pirate that music (assuming the lawsuits are justified)? Without patents, would there even be a drug that African AIDS patients couldn't afford?
The article is rubbish. It completely glosses over the real issues with copyright/patent reform, and favours instead shouting PROPAGANDA in a crowded internet forum.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Isn't the whole point of Copyright and IP to protect the people? And if big corporations are using Copyright and IP against us to keep their "competitive edge" then doesn't that hurt the people?
It's funny, everyone wants fair competition until they have the advantage. If there was no IP or Copyright law, then the moment something was made, it would be reverse engineered and made better by someone else, therefor creating competition, forcing you to stay ahead of your self, and hence, ahead of everyone else. But no! I have a leg up, and instead of trying to keep doing better, I'll just sit at this position as long as I can - milking the product, keeping human progress stagnant - until someone works their way around, or comes up with a better idea...
The whole thing just pisses me off...
There is no 'Capitalism'. There is classical Liberalism, and there are other 'systems' that depart from it in degree, some more than others.
Liberalism is more advantageous for everybody and benefits nobody in particular, while all systems we currently experiment today are attempts to favor certain groups while necessarily screwing everybody else in the process. Which is kind of why they're so popular today. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I'll begin simply by suggesting that companies strong in IP are looking pretty good now.
GM is the penny stock.
Not Microsoft. Not Pfizer.
They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
Now this scares me.
Because it means that "social value" would be defined by the legislator, the bureaucrat, and the courts.
--- and how this new measure of socially redeeming value - could be limited to the denial of a patent or copyright escapes me entirely.
The politician, after all, likes to be pro-active.
I am not sure what it takes to "stifle innovation." I don't even have a clear notion of what innovation really means.
A patent only implies only distinction - a measure of originality in concept and execution.
The examiner does not have a crystal ball.
He does not ask and can not know whether you have accomplished anything significant and lasting.
The geek who would give the politician - the bureaucrat - that crystal ball and demand that he play oracle does enormous harm, I think.
"Cost-Effectiveness" is a lovely phrase.
Damnation in two words.
Big Pharm gets the Malaria patent because Big Pharm can quickly and safely ramp up to full production.
The little guy will botch it.
Cost-Effectiveness is about economies of scale. Technical competence. Managerial competence. Financial resources.
Cost-Effectiveness is also about papering over the politically unpalatable choices you know you have to make.
I'll admit to having become very cynical about this sort of thing.
But it still surprises me sometimes how High Church the geek really is.
China, which is kind of like our Wild West(tm) right now, does whatever it wants. And it's going to completely leave us behind much as we did with Europe. Remember, Europe at the time had very restrictive guilds, laws, and regulations. The U.S. didn't. So we invented and invented. We built and didn't really care that much if it was someone else's idea.
Just like China now is doing.
And you wonder why they are going to put up their own space station modules next year and beat us to a habitat on the moon... We have to dismantle the idiocy or we'll never be able to move fast enough to keep up.
Honestly, if I was interested in space or technology or just making new things, I'd be making a beeline to China and doing it there without the millions of laws and tens of thousands of lawyers all suing everyone into oblivion over idiotic patents.
There is no 'Capitalism'. There is classical Liberalism, and there are other 'systems' that depart from it in degree, some more than others.
OK. That was just silly. "Capitalism" would be one of those "other systems" that you mention.
Classical Liberalism (free market) economics is far better than what we have now, but it has its limits and there is a happy medium between the excesses of our current system and those of the TRULY Free Market. There should be some limited governmental regulation, but NOTHING to the degree we see today in the US.
RCA demonstrated all-electronic TV at the NY World's Fair in 1939. RCA began work on all electronic color system about a year or so later.
It didn't have a product until 1954.
It would be ten years before color became mainstream and profitable.
Ten years in which RCA was the only significant manufacturer of color sets and NBC the only network with a regular schedule of color broadcasts.
As with many laws that have ballooned out of control in our country's short history, the so-called IP laws need to be rolled back to their original condition. There are too many crooks in the system and too much abuse. We all know these laws were created to give creative people an added incentive to create because such creations advance the cause of the country. The limited time allowed by the original laws made it possible to earn back the costs of the effort and then make a necessary profit. Yes, profit is a necessary component in the system. But when the terms of these IP laws extend into the next millennium, it serves not to advance the well being of the country but to make useful works disappear from existence as their creators no longer exist or no longer care to provide the product. At the very least, if the terms are not shortened back to sane values, there should be a clause for so-called orphaned works, which would state that if you're reasonably sure the creator of a work no longer exists or the creator does exist but is no longer interested in selling the product, the IP laws cease to apply and it enters the public domain. In other words, protect the stuff you're actually selling. If you're no longer trying to sell it, you no longer need the protection.
Well, I feel about the GPL the same way I feel about firearms... I'll gladly toss mine into the bonfire, as long as mine is the last one left after all others are in the pit. I won't need it then.
The assertion that copyright laws are essential for innovation and creative expression is patently (pun intended) false. According to that irrefutable source, Wikipedia, the Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act. We all know that prior to this time no writers and artists produced anything.
"Intellectual Property" is indeed a manipulative propaganda slogan right up there with "War on Terror". The "right" to be recognised as the originator of a work, to get the credit, is widely recognised: the "right" to be granted a monopoly by the state to make money is far more dubious. Where are all you small state, free market libertarians? Too busy making money from your "private property"? Hypocrites all.
I have been saying this for years. It is about time some economists started backing me up! :)
Maybe my ideas are not so "radical" after all...
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
The other side is that many companies refuse to pursue innovations unless they see parts that can be patented to lock in the monopoly returns. Lesser profits just aren't worth the trouble of pursing innovation as they see it these days.
You've got that completely wrong. Due to the fucked up nature of the US patent system, patents are valuable to a company. Either for blackmailing companies that produce actual value, or for preventing blackmail from competitors. There is no innovation behind them.
My company tries to get patents exactly for the reason to prevent blackmail from competitors, who have patents in the same area. That works quite fine, as long as our competitors are doing well because when they are doing well, they can't afford mutual destruction by patent lawyers. Where it goes wrong is in a case like RIMM, where they totally beat their competitor in the market place, so their competitor had no reason anymore to be afraid from RIMM's patent, and could use their own patents in an offensive way.
The reason why my company innovates is not because of patents, it is because we want to offer our customers competitive products, so that they buy ours and not our competitors, and that way we make money. We do _not_ innovate to get patents. We do, however, like everyone else, turn our innovation and also our failed innovations into legalese to get patent.
Yeah. Then you go bankrupt and your patents are sold to a troll. Or your CEO changes and your patents are bine "monetised". Or the economy tanks and you need the money...
MS apologists ALWAYS said that MS patents were for defensive purposes. Look what they're doing to TomTom.
You will do the same. Even if you aren't doing it now by threatening new suppliers with needing patents to stop the market becoming as competitive as it could be.
All calculation set aside, what type of work gives us the most joy? I would say any type of work which we can do for the love of it.
The product of such a labor of love will by its nature invite other people to contribute to it or build upon it in their own labor of love.
This links all human beings as members of one human family laboring for the common good of all. There is no real conflict between the good of one individual and the good of the whole society. Because the good lies not in the product but in the process of creation.
Anything foreign to that process that seeks to impose limits upon that process, is a hindrance to society. The process of creation brings forth its own requirements of discipline and self-organizing structure.
Public policy should therefore focus on bringing about a society which can be governed by the laws of that process. One of the biggest impediments to creation is the worry for survival. If we have to think about the reward that we will get for our creation to secure our future survival, we cannot focus on the process of creation. As a consequence the products of such a handicapped process will be not in line with the common good.
I think that we should strive for a society where survival is a basic human right for all, just because one is alive, not because of merit. It is a misconception that we need competition to bring out the best. Competition usually tends to bring out the worst! So society should provide to all its members the basic rights for free. Food, shelter, health-care, education, ...
If we don't have to worry about these things, we can safely dedicate ourselves to the joyful process of creation for the love of it! We only need to get honest with ourselves and acknowledge the fact that striving for reward, security and money-making is NOT the real joy in our life. Most of us have settled to varying degrees with this false conception of life, to make life manageable.
I don't want to push any ideology here, but I want to point out that what made communism a failure, is not the lack of competition, but the rigid imposition of a system on people. That kills all entrepeneural spirit. Whereas the sense that we are all connected to each other and can take part in the whole of society in a meaningful way, is enabling instead of depressing.
So such a society as I depict here, can only come into being if its members are voluntary choosing and striving for it. Its coming into being, must be self-organized for it to be true. Exactly in the same way as such society will function once it is in place.
As a matter of fact, such a society is always open-ended and in evolution. So one can start where one is with oneself and ones immediate environment. And that is always the kind of process that is need now and in the future ...
But does "pure" capitalism exist in practice anymore than does "pure" communism?
Liberalism is more advantageous for everybody and benefits nobody in particular, while all systems we currently experiment today are attempts to favor certain groups while necessarily screwing everybody else in the process. Which is kind of why they're so popular today. :-)
Do you really believe this? I think is just the opposite. The field is not leveled, there are (and always be) few people with a lot of power and a lot of people with little power. Without rules the ones standing on the top would remain there and increase their advantage over the others. Free markets leads to monopoly in most cases, and we know how that benefits us all.
La vida no es una pastafrola.
The entire patent system sounds like a drunken game of Magic: The Gathering.
"I tap five swamp and play Dread Patent Lawyer. 8/8, Haste, Unblockable, Lifelink, Litigious."
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Ok, I'll step into the flamewar.
When I see Enron and AIG and all pretty much lying to investors' faces, deliberately abusing the notion of deregulation, and eventually destroying tens of thousands of peoples lives, homes, and savings, I don't sit down and think "damn regulations!".
Maybe I should. Maybe you're right and all the work that the EPA does, and DHEC, and the FDA- maybe it's all just a false savings, and the market could correct against them without government interference.
Obviously, though, I wouldn't be writing this screed if I thought that were the case. I appreciate the phenomenal theoretical beauty of the informed participant model, both from a political and economic standpoint, but I cannot completely agree with it in practice. The fact is that liars are common, and their art is highly profitable. Deception, known in some circles as "marketing", is the bane of that theory, and the backbone of the modern economy. Add to that that our system is rife with the local dependencies that obliterate the free exchange of goods and services demanded by the founders of Enlightenment thought, and I simply cannot agree that economic issues should be allowed to ride roughshod over the social concerns of the day.
So when I hear someone ranting about regulation, I have to stop and think- has this person never worked minimum wage? Never pondered the implications of the forty hour work week, or of working 80 hours at the age of 8? It seems foolish- shortsighted- for us to sit in the midst of our comfortable lives, griping about the difficulty of accruing more comfort, and pondering enacting a system virtually guaranteed to grind the comfort from our lives. Do you think we would live so well without those protections? If so, how? And how can you be sure that that is true for society in general, rather than just yourself, or me? I look forward to hearing your answers.
Levine and Boldrin point to students being sued for 'pirating' music on the internet (sic) ...as examples of the failure of the current system.
I can only assume they consider the 'system' a failure because people are still downloading music illegally, even though some people are getting sued. Otherwise, this is a really annoying statement typical of the free-loader mentality. Just get rid of the rule against downloading copyrighted material and it no longer is illegal to download copyrighted material.
I just took a look at Chapter V of this book, just to see if this is a case of somebody presenting a well-researched argument or an economist spouting off about something they know nothing about (and economists do that more often than most people would think - I once saw an economist at a conference proudly present a model for revenge that flew in the face of the whole of human history). I'm afraid that when it comes to the matter of books, it was downright dishonest in places.
This is propaganda.
Some examples:
Page 111-112 - the authors ask the question of how well the American copyright extensions have worked, and judge it solely on number of works created. Then, they declare that it didn't help, because there isn't a massive increase. They DON'T mention that there wasn't a decrease either - in fact, there is a very slow increase. They also don't look at works that were not properly registered. Even more telling, they don't look at other factors - whether the quality of life of the authors was impacted positively or negatively, whether there were enough publishers to provide an increase in publications, etc. They base their conclusion on a single metric.
Page 115 - A clear case of apples and oranges. Having talked about the reasons given for the CTEA (without, I might add, actually examining them in any detail), they comment that 8 years later, the same corporations are trying to get the European copyrights extended from 50 years to 95 years to keep up with the United States, implying that these companies are essentially raising one, then using it as an excuse to raise another. Which would be evil, except that it's not what's happening - the CTEA involved books, and the recent lobbying is about music, which have entirely different copyright terms. So, it would be more accurate to say that having harmonized one section of the creative arts, they're attempting to harmonize another - which is far less evil.
Page 115-116 - Here the argument turns absolutely dishonest. The authors want to demonstrate that books out of copyright are more available than books in copyright. So, here is what they do - they take Edgar Rice Burroughs, and compare the books that are in copyright to the ones that are out of copyright, and show that indeed, the ones in copyright have fewer editions available. This is a trick, though - Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the most famous writers of his day. Conspicuously, they don't provide any data for number of books published in total that are out of copyright compared to availability - they just take the case of a single, famous author, and extend that to be the case for the whole. If they extended it, it's fairly certain that they'd find that the majority of books that have entered the public domain are no longer available in print or online, undermining their argument. Most people would not claim that the exception is the rule, but they have made precisely that claim.
Pages 117-118 - The authors now demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how the book market works, as they claim that having classic spy novels in print would devalue new spy novels. To channel Morbo from Futurama, "Publishers do not work that way!" In fact, the decision of whether a book gets published or not is entirely based on how well it is likely to sell, and having a classic spy novel that is consistently selling well is more likely to reinforce the sales of new ones, not devalue them.
These are selected errors, both factual and methodological. It would be nice if there was actual research here, rather than taking a few surface facts and drawing ignorant conclusions.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
The peanut company that sickened hundreds and killed a few was privately owned. I have yet to hear about the owner being arrested for negligent homicide, but I guess rich people don't go to prison in the US.
But that wasn't corporatism that murdered those people, it was a rich man who killed for profit.
Free Martian Whores!
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, not Washington State.
Still a long way from MIT though.
"Ok, I'll step into the flamewar."
Then have some balls and do it as AC. That may seem contradictory to some, but AC on /. means comments have to somehow come up on their own merit from 0 instead of the default view of 1 given to account holders.
"When I see Enron and AIG and all pretty much lying to investors' faces, deliberately abusing the notion of deregulation, and eventually destroying tens of thousands of peoples lives, homes, and savings, I don't sit down and think "damn regulations!".
And how many of those investors did you talk to? Part of being an investor is not going with the herd, but looking into the company's background. This is why the stock market often looks more like gambling, because it's has so much speculation from people who don't research and simply risk based on a good name (see Madoff).
Case in point--how many of those investors actually bought the stock one or two degrees from the purchaser? Not many. Most bought it through funds, managed stock groups, etc. Investors didn't do the work themselves, end of story, but they sure like to complain afterwards.
You also seem to like to pick and choose--you forget the $300 billion given to Freddie prior to AIG. Not a number heard too often in Democratic Congress land. It's easy for you to pick what the "liberal" media focuses on, because the media inherently does not work to produce material goods, so mental fabrication of stories are at the forefront of their minds--what does the reporter's personal views play into the story? To point, how often do you hear of a "good energy company" in the media? Or a good bank? They exist. The bad story takes precedent, because that is the nature of news. Most feel good stories are human interest ones (cop saves kitty in tree), not "look at that excellent company" (although you occasionally get them).
Freddie was regulated. Freddie catered to those who supposedly otherwise wouldn't be. Freddie contributed to the screwing we got. If you make $30,000 a year and bought a $500,000 home, you were stupid and deserved to get screwed.
If our government, made up from generally liberal voters given the recent elections, doesn't get flack for putting money in the hands of criminals, who the hell are we to complain after the fact that stimilus funds, TARP, and other bailout money isn't used properly? WE GAVE IT TO THEM. AIG screwed us you say? Then why did you give them MORE OF THE SAME?
Government cannot regulate the businesses if the government themselves is and has been giving money to the business without strings.
Further, something you don't seem to understand, the handouts are CONTINUING because everyone is on the government bailout ticket. The poor want money. The rich want money. The middle class want money. Bail out the middle class, help the rich, help the poor...
And you think the answer lies in government regulation when the government cannot regulate itself? The government of the people, by the people, the people who you complain cannot regulate themselves?
Maybe circular to you, but it makes a perfect explanation why we are in this mess and why we are unlikely to get out of it because of the "liberals." Hell, most of the stabilization coming from the economy are from industries liberals badmouth, want to rework, and complain about--farming (don't kid yourselves, see Obama's plans) and energy.
Exactly. The proponents of unrestricted free trade are like proponents of a frictionless physical world. Sure would be nice if it could exist, but the reality is that because of political manipulation (friction) the system is skewed so that some systematically benefit at the expense of others.
Example: When a large corporation sends jobs overseas it's called "Free Trade" and they even get tax breaks for it. When an ordinary citizen tries to buy prescription medicine from Canada it's called "smuggling."
WRT deregulation, you've also hit the nail on the head. Sadly, those advocating it don't even have a recent historical sense, much less a deep one. It took centuries to achieve things like a 40 hour work week, outlawing child labor, and outlawing slavery. These would *all* come back if we eliminated regulation. For those who doubt the last, slavery, because the efficient market would eliminate it, realize that slavery still exists and is on the rise
Yes I do. The point is, the current rules do NOT level the playing field, they simply protect the politically favored market players from competition. They are designed to preserve people with a lot of power in place.
The fact of the matter is, cartels, price-collusion, big mergers, they all failed miserably back in the time when we were much closer to true laissez-faire than today, i.e. late 19th century USA. That's because these schemes are very unstable in a free market since participants can always just walk out when it benefits them. Moreover companies that attempted consolidation were consistently undercut by a smaller, more efficient competitors.
So antitrust laws and the rest of the 'progressive' political movement didn't happen because there was monopoly and it needed fixing. It was because of the lack of it. They are a direct result of a reaction from segments of business to declining profits due to the downward pressure on prices that is a direct consequence of free competition. They just wouldn't have that, and went to the government to fix it.
With governmental support, cartels had a way do discipline their members by the force of law. And huge stable corporations become possible once the government issues regulations that used to be in the scope of the market, therefore hindering small companies while giving the big players a comparative advantage.
I'd recommend both Antitrust and Monopoly and In Restraint of Trade as books that go more deep in this subject that I could ever could in a /. comment.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Really? Because I see news references saying that the company was the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). If you go to their website, you can see that their full title is Peanut Corporation of America, Inc., indicating that they are a corporation, not a sole proprietorship. It doesn't really matter if a corporation is owned by one, two, or 10,000 people. The corporate culture and the legal protections that come with it still hold. You would have to be a fool to start a business and not incorporate.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
There should be a system in place that allows for innovation regarding previous intellectual property, while still giving credit (and profit) to the original owner. Information Age Bottleneck: http://bit.ly/CL7KM
"They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
... to the people who own them. Congratulations, you've solved nothing.
Ok, fine! All existing patents are cost-effective
Here's a question for you: How do you prove a patent is stifling innovation? How do you define social value as a metric?
It's very nice of you to tell congress to change something. How about you do real work and come up with specific wording?
What's the acronym for an article that's the opposite of FUD, but just as useless? PITS (Pie in the Sky)?
The two are often confused because capitalism leads inevitably to corporatism - or plutocracy, to be more general. When you have a competition, someone will inevitably win; and the more capital you have, the easier it is to get more, so any differences in success levels are magnified exponentially until the plutocrats - be them corporations or individual entrepreneurs - have achieved near absolute dominance.
Of course. That's because once the winners emerge, they can use their capital to get the odds stacked on their favour; they can use both outright bribes and their control over a significant portion of local - and later national - economy (blackmail) to force their will on politics.
Pure capitalism leads to aristocracy and is thus an unstable model.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think it's counterproductive for these two to be lumping copyright and patents in the same complaint as hurting innovation. It makes what should be a very reasonable argument read 'lunatic fringe'.
Copyright violation is theft pure and simple (well, maybe not so pure or so simple - fair use, and all). Patents are another thing altogether, in the worst case, granting monopolies on basic ideas. These patents can cover completely separate implementations of those ideas with no theft of the original work.
Sure, there's some kind of mental work involved in thinking up a novel idea, but it's so hard to draw a reasonable line around what's truly an innovation and non-obvious, etc. And there's so much potential for abuse that harms innovation that the benefits of intellectual property patents are really hard to see. The benefits of copyright are much more obvious. And the protection is much more specific and so much more limited.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
These would *all* come back if we eliminated regulation.
Wow! If that's not hyperbolic scaremongering, I don't know what is. How in the hell is slavery going to come back? Even without government regulation, we still have the 13th amendment. Slavery is still illegal. How would deregulation change that?
And child labor?!? You forget that "child labor" is what pulled MANY families through the last depression. No parent wants to see their child having to work to help the family survive, but if the choice is between having your child work or having your child starve, I choose to have them work. The government's decision to stop child labor is a heavy handed "I know what's best for you and your family" attempt at control. And let's remember that the vast majority of what we call "child labor" today was performed by teens. We say that teens can't work and now we have a rise in juvenile crime and teen pregnancies. I'm not saying there is causation, but there is clearly some correlation which should not be ignored.
Finally, and most ridiculous, we come to the myth of the 40 hour work week. Whatever idiot came up with the idea that 40 hours is the ideal that should be imposed on all businesses should be shot. What makes 40 hours the magic number that we should all bow to? If you ever hope to "make it" in this world, you are going to be working far more than 40 hours a week. We don't need government regulation to tell us how many hours we can work. Let that be decided between employees and employers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that complete deregulation is proper, but you picked the three absolute worst examples to make your point.
Cartels failed miserably in the 19th century? How on earth could you think that? Standard Oil made the Rockefellers among the richest families in history. Another is Carnegie Steel. Then there are the numerous railroad robber barons, each lording it over their geographic monopoly.
On the contrary, these monopolies were very successful at mercilessly extracting wealth through corrupt and unfair practices-- price gouging, wage suppression, commodity manipulation, legislation for indirect subsidies, unfair anti-competitive measures, and so on. This lead to such unrest that the government had to do something, and also lead to the election of governments so inclined. Of course businesses wanted strikers busted and unions broken. Instead, T. Roosevelt, a Republican, became known for trust busting, and that's one of the things that makes him one of the US's greatest presidents.
Monopolies of any sort are too easily exploited damagingly. That problem offsets the benefits from economies of scale. How many people, if they saw a $20 bill on the ground, would let it lie? Neither does a monopoly let slip any "opportunity" for revenue. Can't avoid them all, but at the least we can stop actively creating artificial monopolies, as is currently done with copyright. Why not let any publisher publish anything they want, so long as they pay a "publishing tax" or royalty that goes to the authors? It would eliminate many of the problems artists have with being exploited and locked in. Why can't we have 2 or more publishers trying to sell the same book?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Capitalism does not lead inevitably to corporatism. Corporatism is the artificial support (known as "regulations") given to artificial entities (known as "corporations") by government. Name one corporation that controlled everything in the US in the 1800s. You can't because it didn't happen when we were following the Free Market (pure capitalism) system. It's when that bastard Keynes and his ilk came into town that things got screwed up.
obviously an open-source society of innovators would thrive... as long as people can change their focus from earning dollars to encouraging social growth and sustainability.... oh wait, they are, en mass... don't worry about the gov, they can be subverted through action... put your energy to better use: invent something and use the GPL--or the like--to distribute the idea and encourage it's use and further development.
intellectual property is fraud, and should be illegal.
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
"If you make $30,000 a year and bought a $500,000 home, you were stupid and deserved to get screwed."
I hear this again and again, mostly from USA people, and damn me if I can make any sense out of it.
So I make 30.000US$ a year and I manage to have a 500.000US$ home even if only for a while and somehow *I* am the stupid not the one that lent 500.000US$ to guy doing 30.000US$ a year!!!???
That's from the pure financial side of things. Now, from the ethical standpoint you have on one side a NINJA, usually without studies, without even a roof of their own signing one mortage and on the other some tycoons with tons of advisors with masters and what not, signing mortages by the thousands and still the one to blame is the poor guy? What the heck!!!???
I'm afraid I don't see either the logic or the factual basis of your arguments.
First, I think your anger at the SEC is misplaced. I grant you that there have been some monumental screwups in that institution, and that in the light of our current economic woes some of the trust we placed in our financial institutions seems misplaced. Having said that, the institutions most responsible were not the regulators but the regulatees- AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the now endless litany of failed or failing banks- we were deliberately deceived, and they were foolishly wrong in their calculation of risk. Should the economic regulations surrounding these institutions, and the government agencies that enforce them, be changed? Absolutely. Should we allow the scoundrels of industry a freer reign with which to abuse our trust once again? Absolutely not. Re-regulate, don't de-regulate.
Secondly, you seem to be arguing that the economy has grown past the point where it needs the abuses of the past. You then go on to mention "even worse informal market jobs" as being the consequence of the absence of minimum wage. This is a contradiction, and it reveals the extent of your experience with the truly deregulated markets. Outside of the minimum wage economy lies misery, particularly where it relates to the (totally unregulated) labor conditions under which illegal immigrants work. It would kill you to work like that, and if you suspect for even a moment that it was more than the accident of your birth that protected you from that fate, think again. The companies that abuse immigrants, if given even the faintest whiff of an opportunity, would cheerfully work you to death too.
The fact is that while companies do bid for the services of workers, in the swollen uneducated labor market the cost of the mobility required by the free exchange of services is prohibitive to most workers. Those that do migrate do so constantly, unable to scrape together enough savings to escape their lifestyle, and denying their children the education needed to eventually find a better life. Even if you maintain that those workers have earned their lives- an attitude I find repugnant- I have found few people willing to callously condemn the children of this country to lives of ceaseless misery on the back of an empty economic principle.
You say I don't know economics. I won't lie, I've heard this before from people probably not so different from you. The reality is that I know the unregulated markets quite literally inside and out. I've spent a lot of time in places where unemployment sits at 30%, and the desperate bow to the unscrupulous for their daily bread. Places where the law is openly scoffed at, and the needs of the workers ignored. I've been escorted around sweatshops by their proud proprietors, and come home to found my own business. The question you need to be asking yourself, is how far a walk was it for me to come home? Are all the abuses and evils of the industrial revolution part of history, the problems of another time and place? Or is it the demon waiting outside the door, waiting for the unwary, the blissfully ignorant, the comfortable denizens of a world so far removed from those horrors that they cannot comprehend their implications, to stumble, all smiling, through? We take a pretty different view on the subject, and I won't demean you or your position- which has, after all, been held by some of the greatest minds of our time- by chalking it up to life experience. But I do hope that in the future, when you call for deregulation, you'll at least think back to this conversation and see its rationale, the way that it is supposed to work, and the good that, done properly, regulation can do.
Communism is inherently bad as a political system because it invariably leads to unhealthy concentration of power which invariably leads to oppressive regimes. (One counter example? There are none.)
Religious 'communists' are not running a compulsory system, individuals can opt out at any time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Granting the left/right paradigm is not enough to completely describe a persons political views its indisputable that there is an objective left and an objective right in politics.
Yes Max there are leftists in the world as well a right wingers.
BTW accusing someone of being an '1950's bigot' because I recognize that there are still reds in the world is a perfect example of '1960s idiotic idealism'. It's been 40 years sense the 60s. We now know that those accused of being 'reds' then were in fact mostly 'reds' despite their repeated claims at the time that there is no such thing as a red and that those calling them 'reds' are bigots...starting to sound familiar?
The hippies typically called anybody who disagreed with them a 'bigot' or a 'Racist'. It's gotten to the point that the words have almost no meaning beyond hyperbole as they are so overused.
In other words if you don't want to be identified as a idiot stop using the words of idiots ('Bigot' != 'disagreeing with you').
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I find the term 'robber baron' quite amusing. Did they really put on masks and hold people up on train tracks? ;-)
Seriously now, these companies weren't busted because they were 'monopolies'. In fact there was more competition then then there is today. They were simply singled out because they big, successful and efficient.
This is a small excerpt from D.T. Armentano, the author of the book "Antitrust and monopoly". It's all a worthy read, but I took just a small nip that pertains especially to the Standard Oil case.
One of the most famous (and misunderstood) antitrust cases in history is US v. Standard Oil of New Jersey (1911).
The popular explanation of this case is that Standard Oil monopolized the oil industry, destroyed rivals through the use of predatory price-cutting, raised prices to consumers, and was punished by the Supreme Court for these proven transgressions. Nice story but totally false.
First, Standard never even monopolized petroleum refining, let alone the entire oil industry (production, transportation, refining, distribution) which would have been an impossibility. Even in domestic refining, Standard's share of the market declined for decades prior to the antitrust case (64% in 1907) and there were at least 137 competitors (firms like Shell, Gulf, Texaco) in oil refining in 1911. "A free-market 'monopoly' supplier is theoretically possible but not necessarily harmful and would not rationalize any antitrust regulation."
Second, although predatory practices were alleged by the government at trial, Standard offered rebuttal on all counts. Neither the trial court nor the Supreme Court ever made any specific finding of guilt on the conflicting charges of predatory practices.
Third, petroleum market outputs increased and prices declined for decades during the alleged period of "monopolization" by Standard Oil. For example, prices for kerosene (the industry's major product) were 30 cents a gallon in 1869 and fell to about 6 cents a gallon at the time of the antitrust trial.
Finally, the Supreme Court broke up the Standard Oil holding company not because of any demonstrable harm to consumers (there was none) but because it discerned some vague "intent" to monopolize through Standard's many mergers, an "intent" that just as clearly never succeeded in producing any monopoly. Yet generations of economic and legal commentators have been misled about monopoly and the alleged efficacy of antitrust policy because of the "facts everybody knows" concerning the Standard Oil antitrust case.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
This promotes cheap medicines. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0D7113AF932A0575BC0A961948260 No patent term extension can extend the term of a patent for a pharmaceutical beyond 14 years from the receipt of Food and Drug Administration approval to commence marketing. ...
The bottom line is that the period of marketing exclusivity provided by a patent for a pharmaceutical can never exceed 17 years
RTFM is not a radio station.
I'll be standing right there with a machete, crossbow a spear and some bolas, waiting for the flames to engulf your protection.
You can't handle the truth.
Are there some licensing methods to enable patents to be used only against blackmail but not for blackmail? A kind of patent gpl. I mean, imagine you collect "whitemail" patents, your company bankrupts and a patent troll picks up these assets to "blackmail" competitors and bankrupt them. A circle of destruction.
How can you "whitemail" your patents. So that even if you becomes crazy or your company is SCOed you as a patent holder cannot carry out any damage to your market and still can go after the bad guys. What social rules can be applied?
First, I think your anger at the SEC is misplaced. I grant you that there have been some monumental screwups in that institution, and that in the light of our current economic woes some of the trust we placed in our financial institutions seems misplaced. Having said that, the institutions most responsible were not the regulators but the regulatees- AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the now endless litany of failed or failing banks- we were deliberately deceived, and they were foolishly wrong in their calculation of risk. Should the economic regulations surrounding these institutions, and the government agencies that enforce them, be changed? Absolutely. Should we allow the scoundrels of industry a freer reign with which to abuse our trust once again? Absolutely not. Re-regulate, don't de-regulate.
You think my anger is misplaced? This is a government agency with a budget that went from 400 million dollars in 2000 to almost a BILLION dollars today and almost four thousand full-time staff that do its job of cracking down on a Ponzi scheme that they were WARNED about in 1999 and again in 2005?
So you think the SEC should be 're-regulated' instead of being trashed to give that money back to the taxpayers?
Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored enterprises, so they are hardly 'regulatees' in my book. All that leaves for me to blame is AIG. Ok, I blame them, let them go bankrupt! That's the best discipline to keep those 'scoundrels' from overreaching! Oh, seems the federal government can't let that happen either... And is even giving them more money for their failure. See where I'm getting at?
Secondly, you seem to be arguing that the economy has grown past the point where it needs the abuses of the past. You then go on to mention "even worse informal market jobs" as being the consequence of the absence of minimum wage. This is a contradiction, and it reveals the extent of your experience with the truly deregulated markets. Outside of the minimum wage economy lies misery, particularly where it relates to the (totally unregulated) labor conditions under which illegal immigrants work. It would kill you to work like that, and if you suspect for even a moment that it was more than the accident of your birth that protected you from that fate, think again. The companies that abuse immigrants, if given even the faintest whiff of an opportunity, would cheerfully work you to death too.
The fact is that while companies do bid for the services of workers, in the swollen uneducated labor market the cost of the mobility required by the free exchange of services is prohibitive to most workers. Those that do migrate do so constantly, unable to scrape together enough savings to escape their lifestyle, and denying their children the education needed to eventually find a better life. Even if you maintain that those workers have earned their lives- an attitude I find repugnant- I have found few people willing to callously condemn the children of this country to lives of ceaseless misery on the back of an empty economic principle.
How is what I said a contradiction? The fact that people are working for less than the minimum wage in horrid conditions is because they are forbidden to work in the normal conditions of the formal market because _working and employing for less than the minimum wage is ILLEGAL_. Illegal things have a way of happening in less than nice ways.
Compare the living standard of a hooker working in a brothel in Nevada to one in different state. If the latter gets the crap beat out of her by her pimp she can't go to the cops because then she's a criminal. The first one doesn't have a pimp, she has a contract with which she can sue her boss for any violations.
'Totally deregulated market' does not mean a lawless society where might is right. A free, unregulated market system presupposes
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Imagine you let business decide, so they want carrot and reject stick. That is exactly the problem.
A free competitive market is beneficial for all players from an efficiency point of view but companies flee competition, they want a monopoly. Companies do not want competion. They want ruinous competition of labour standards, tax competition, subsidy competition between nations.
Smaller companies benefit from a free competitive market with little market entrance barriers. Their margins are low anyway. They gain from interoperability. They don't want government contracts because its too much bureaucracy. They pay their taxes and want the world to be simple.
Large companies want their monopoly markets. They want the governments to subsidies their factories. They want patents that shield them from competition. They want the government to take no strong role in antitrust enforcement and interoperability but pay expensive framework contracts. They want fat contracts from the government.
In politics large companies have their lobbyists in the capitals and policy makers know these companies and think they are important. These companies are always there and they know their brand. Small companies are badly organised and it is difficult for them to fund a lobby organisation, also because their interests are to heterogenous and the aggregation problem (cmp. so called Samuelson condition). SME organisations are overtaken: their management by lawyers and the public affairs guys, their member network is sold to insurance and software companies as a distribution channel, and large companies as Microsoft provide the funding for lobbying in the name of their heterogenous members.
Large Companies are not interested in free markets. Free market ideology was just an ideological tool during the cold war. In the 1920th capitalism wanted state capitalism and fascist regimes. Ironically those who are supposed to support "free markets" haven't actually understood free market economists but advocate it as a kind of reverse-commie laissez-faire extortion business model. Many think tank hired guns are converted commies who sold out to the other side.
In the software a "free market" implies a software price around zero. Free software and free market fit well together.
There are all kinds of red flags in that quote.
Standard's share of the market declined for decades prior to the antitrust case (64% in 1907)
He's trying to say 64% isn't enough to be a monopoly? What standard will you accept as "not a monopoly"? 64% is huge. I'd go so far as to say that over 50% is monopolistic.
Neither the trial court nor the Supreme Court ever made any specific finding of guilt on the conflicting charges of predatory practices.
Weaseling. Much better to hear what the court did find, not what it didn't find.
petroleum market outputs increased and prices declined for decades during the alleged period of "monopolization" by Standard Oil
So what. What matters, is were they able to gouge? Yes. Was the price totally unrelated to Standard Oil's costs? Probably, in some places at some times.
generations of economic and legal commentators have been misled ... because of the "facts everybody knows"
So, everyone got it wrong? I find that highly unlikely. Whenever someone says everyone else is wrong, that's when you should be extremely skeptical.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
He's trying to say 64% isn't enough to be a monopoly? What standard will you accept as "not a monopoly"? 64% is huge. I'd go so far as to say that over 50% is monopolistic.
Gee, that's what I call stretching a concept. What monopoly MEANS is 100%, and you can't get what you want anywhere else.
You're pouring emotion here, not reason. Any successful company in your view is a moving target to be split in many. Perfect competition does not exist.
So what. What matters, is were they able to gouge? Yes. Was the price totally unrelated to Standard Oil's costs? Probably, in some places at some times.
Prices have nothing to do whatsoever with costs. Where do you get that from?
So if an economic agent has the freedom to set a very high price do you make it a case for trust-busting? Heck, you better chop me up into small pieces, I have been known to charge a stiff fee for freelance work and gotten away with it.
So, everyone got it wrong? I find that highly unlikely. Whenever someone says everyone else is wrong, that's when you should be extremely skeptical.
You're saying a million people can't be wrong? Argumentum ad populum? :-)
I don't know, but in my experience 'everybody' is wrong very often. It's either that, or you and me are batshit insane for being opposed to granting monopolies on ideas and creating artificial scarcity.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Let me start out by saying that I like to think you're a pretty intelligent human being. You have a good grasp of some aspects of economic theory, and you have an interest in the topics of the day, which says good things. Unfortunately, I get to hear a lot of these arguments pretty often from people without those advantages- people whose inexperience with real life has led them to conclude that a textbook's amoral theoretical certitude constitutes a roadmap to the perfection of a nation. I've found that to be, excuse my French, utter bullshit- and I know you're too smart to buy into the thinking that has led a solid chunk of our economy into the crapper in the last eight months. Having said that, forgive me if I begin to get a trifle grumpy about the issue. I don't want to lump you in with the other lumps, but I'm prone to occasional lapses in that direction. My apologies in advance.
As far as the SEC goes, no, I don't think it should be trashed. I said so to start out with, and the fact that it failed in this case is not proof either that it is entirely without merit, as you claim, or that it doesn't pay for itself in the end. However, the SEC is an ancillary claim and to be honest I have no real interest in discussing it. If you want to claim point here- fine.
As far as minimum wage goes, you are making the old argument that the level of employment is inversely proportional to the misappreciation of the value of labor. Unfortunately, like most things in economics, attempting to directly apply theory to practice doesn't give you the results you anticipated. As I said last time, in the low end of the wage scale, the pressures of market friction wind up consuming the efficiency of the market model, thus forming a powerful- and artificial- employer's market. Minimum wage is there to offset an artificially low price on the seller's end. There have been a ton of studies on this issue, but the work that Krugman has done are probably both the most well-regarded and the most accessible. I'd recommend it pretty highly.
Moving to the violence question, I've never seen any particular violence in a sweatshop. I grant you, it might have happened after I left, but I haven't witnessed it. The question I have is whether starving your workers to death is tantamount to violence against their person. I don't think it should be stated in such absolute terms- they confuse the bejeezus out of the issue- but I certainly think it happens and that it shouldn't be allowed to continue. The unregulated market doesn't have a mechanism to protect society from that, and that's where I start to have an issue with an otherwise "clean" theory.
As far as the question of what a regulated market is, I don't see why we should change from the standard definition- regulation is government involvement in an otherwise free market system designed to change the size, scope, or scheme of economic activity. An unregulated market, then, is one without government interference- note the difference in terminology between a "free" and "unregulated" market. You confuse the terms- not me.
The unregulated market I was specifically talking about there was the one in Kutna Hora, in the Czech Republic. While the Czech government has minimum wage and other labor protections, nobody seems to have gotten the memo there, and a pretty significant chunk of the population lives in destitute misery, just 6 or so hours from one of the most beautiful capitals in the world. The police exist, they generally keep order, and they don't mess with business. And nearly everybody is either in the service industry, run through the Church, unemployed and destitute, or destitute and employed. What should really scare you, though, is that I've seen things stateside that aren't all *that* much different- just a little more isolated.
I don't agree with you that testing toys for lead is a bad thing. That strikes me as being kind of a common sense thing to do- on a par with having health inspections for restaurants and hospitals. I won't disagree
What do you think is wrong about my position? I could certainly clarify it. Just didn't seem worth the effort on /. in light of the moderator abuse you noted.
Perhaps the asinine mod was actually targeting my sig? It is clear that some of the moderators really are that stupid, cowardly, and mendacious. Yes, this paragraph actually is off topic--but more relevant and topical than the average /. moderation, and it made me feel a bit better to vent spleen at the moron.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
So, you admit that the patent on making ham and cheese sandwiches that survive being frozen and microwaved is not just a matter of "mixing two substances together." Great, we're getting somewhere!
Now, you are maintaining that adding Criso and calcium stearate to the sandwich is "extremely" obvious. Well, naturally, simply everyone has calcium stearate in their kitchen cupboard, ready to apply at a moment's notice. But I think I'd need a little bit of persuasion to convince me that Crisco is an obvious thing to add to a sandwich.
But maybe you are just a natural food scientist and don't realize how special you are. Could be. Why don't you just point us to some of your food patents, then?
It doesn't just "seem" contradictory, it is contradictory.
Anyone can post with their own account and forgo the karma bonus. But the question is: "Why?".
If you object to the +1 bonus that a signed comment gets, believe me, it all works out in the wash.
Further, I want to make sure I give more weight to a comment from someone who's name I know and who's posting history I can examine to someone who might be an astroturfer from the Chamber of Commerce. Why? Because the Chamber of Commerce lies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The same way the "War to End All Wars" wasn't. The same way the "unthinkable" seems to happen all the time.
Sort of like "How are 19 religious fanatics with boxcutters gonna take down the World Trade Center?" and "Now that we're 200 years past the Enlightenment, how would Religious Fundamentalism ever come back?"
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, because the people with the most money have the best resources with which to fool people, the best resources with which to steal, the best lawyers with which to get off, and the most power."
Sorry, pal, but the thing that passes itself off as a free market is nothing but a way of siphoning wealth from the bottom to the top.
You want to see an unregulated business? Take a look at the Mafia or the Columbian Drug Cartels.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When you two are done congratulating yourselves, could you address the reasons that the biggest "free market" economy happens to occur in the nation with the largest percentage of incarcerated citizens? You don't think the two are connected?
We also happen to be the developed country with the most lax gun laws, and it doesn't seem to have done much for crime, overall.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, they paid Pinkertons and other armed thugs to enforce their will on their workers and communities, through violence, threats and murder. The growth of big corporations in the United States is littered with criminality, violence and ugliness.
Don't be an asshole.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In prisons, black markets and...that's about it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And you'd be put down like the viscous animal you're professing to be.
I'm not worried about power tripping chumps who think they are tough, I've handled the very few dumb enough to think I can be bullied very efficiently, thank you.
vicious
sorry.
"When we were following "the Free Market" we also had slavery, chinese building our railroads, Irish immigrants fighting our civil war, etc.
You have bought the propaganda that tries to put a smiley face on the ugliest of economic systems. People who amass wealth will amass power, which helps them amass more wealth, and more power. Eventually, the workers are going to pay the price. That's what's been going on in the US since Reagan, and that's what's in the process of turning around with the coming resurgence of the labor movement in the US.
Decoy, I bet there's an interesting story behind your joining Slashdot. Why don't you share?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let's keep this kind of hyperbole where it belongs: in the Mainstream Media.
In that case, I''ll see your "Racism Card" and counter with "Marxist Genocide".
The list of evils brought upon countries that adopt Marxism is far longer and much darker than any perceived evils perpetrated under Capitalism.
Decoy, I bet there's an interesting story behind your joining Slashdot. Why don't you share?
I'm not sure what this has to do with the current conversation. Is there a reason you ask?
Why should I address that? I don't like the war on drugs, but I don't think it has nearly as much to do with economic regulation as it does with misplaced moralities, despite the convoluted constitutional reasoning used to justify it. And I don't see how guns enter into it at all.
Yea yea, and the government stands up for the little guy against the big corporate interests. You're totally right. I'm an asshole.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Boldrin and Levine have posted the bulk of their book Against Intellectual Monopoly on the Web. So, if you don't want to purchase a dead-tree version of the work, you can download what amounts to an e-book (free of charge, but minus the front and back matter) from Mssr. Boldrin's website.
Last time I checked, there was a copyright regime in place for published works. I call these authors enlightened, not hypocritical, for finding a middle ground. Their publisher, Cambridge University Press, probably requires a copyright on any works that they distribute, if for no other reason than to protect their investment. The publisher also shows a degree of enlightenment, in allowing the simultaneous posting in digital form without DRM, unlike most publishers these days. By the way, Lawrence Lessig has followed a similar approach with his book Free Culture. (That work is also copyrighted, but the PDF version on the Web is released under a Creative Commons license.)