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How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an article by Dr.Joe Stiglitz on how intellectual property reinforces inequality by allowing patent owners to seek rent (aka license / sue) instead of delivering goods to the society. From the article: 'At first glance, the case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, might seem like scientific arcana: the court ruled, unanimously, that human genes cannot be patented, though synthetic DNA, created in the laboratory, can be. But the real stakes were much higher, and the issues much more fundamental, than is commonly understood. The case was a battle between those who would privatize good health, making it a privilege to be enjoyed in proportion to wealth, and those who see it as a right for all — and a central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy. Even more deeply, it was about the way inequality is shaping our politics, legal institutions and the health of our population.'"
That's common to all monopolies in general: by disallowing newcomers and competition, they serve no purpose but feeding whatever company/cartel holds that monopoly. And governments, instead of disrupting them, take more and more bribes to allow creating even more monopolies...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
yes, the 'life is a race' concept. I heard of that. Nice concept. if everybody started at the same point (and not: some near the finish pole and others without legs outside the stadium)
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The article author seems to assume that patented technology just falls from the sky and comes for free to the lucky patent holder who then exploits the rest of the world, when they say;
"But the patents had devastating real-world implications, because they kept the prices for the diagnostics artificially high."
they are arguing from false premises. Now in this case I happen to agree with not allowing patents on unmodified genes however it is still the case that the prices are only artificially high if the diagnostics would have existed had it not been possible to acquire patents on them in the first place,
According to the article it would have been ok if they had gotten the patents if they were motivated to save lives rather than make money. This is not an article which rationally discussed the problems of the patent system, and those problems are legion, it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad. Not really very interesting.
-jon
Yet in Australia, the most corrupt and inequitable country in the English-speaking world, the courts ruled that the BRCA1 patent owners can screw 'we the people' for all they are worth, all the while their porcine politicians snorted and squealed in delight.
Gene patenting: Australian court rules BRCA1 patent is legal http://theconversation.com/gene-patenting-australian-court-rules-brca1-patent-is-legal-12240
This is nothing new. When asked to rule if Australians had free speech the Australian courts wouldn't even grant them that: http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4529/do-we-have-the-right-to-freedom-of-speech-in-austr.aspx http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1741850/QA-What-are-the-limits-to-free-speech http://www.ask.com/question/what-countries-don-t-have-freedom-of-speech
Well, nice to see America putting Australia to shame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implications_of_US_gene_patent_invalidation_on_Australia
I'm not a fan of patents but Mr. Stiglitz's central argument is silly unless this is a pitch to Marxists or whatever-Richard-Stallman-is types. Landlords can hold arbitrary amounts of property and charge rent on all of them... isn't that an accepted part of our society?
I've tried making that argument, but most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV. Also, I cringed a bit when I read that summary, because every phrase screams "leftist academic". That's one of the quickest and easiest ways to get dismissed by moderates and center-right allies.
Since when /. became the platform for commie propaganda?
Inequality is good, it is what drives progress.
paying rent for imaginary things doesn't drive progress all that much - if you count progress as progress in the physical world, what if all combine harvesters cost 100x as they do today because someone had managed to extend patents to be 200 years?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Did you even read the article? There's nothing "commie" about it.
"Inequality" in itself isn't good or bad. Otherwise, please allow me to abscond with your savings and reduce you to pauperdom...I'll be doing you a favor, right?
Some inequality is good. When you expand the sum total of wealth available to humanity, and benefit from that, it's good. Inequality that is based upon rent-seeking is bad. As when someone patents an existing gene located in the human body and tries to charge you fees to access your own genome.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
... it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad...
The author I'm sure very well understands patents. I think your statement over-simplifies his argument though.
One of the conversations we as a society need to be having right now is regarding HOW people make money. Is it bad to try to make money? Absolutely not. Everyone needs to be able to at a minimum cover basic life needs, and those that work harder should definitely be able to reap what they sow and have extra goodies and a good retirement. I think that's fair.
The question is, are people making money by exploiting people? Are they knowingly taking advantage of people's ignorance, or taking advantage of laws and systems, to maintain their upper hand and avoid competing against others that very well might have better ideas and more drive, but cannot get a foothold to even start a business? Worst of all, are people suffering when they do not have to, if such a business model was not in the way of a better system? Patents make sure that anyone with a better idea (perhaps someone could come up with a way to make healthcare more affordable while still making money??) is not able to actually compete. What about the right of the entrepreneur to establish a new business? Why is everything always framed in the established businesses, rather than the people prevented from creating businesses (and jobs)?
IMHO, there is something sociopathic about one's business model being to make money on the suffering of others (particularly things like medical issues, which are often through no fault of one's own -- cannot choose your DNA, etc.). Simply saying "Well someone has to pay for it, and they have a right to make money" doesn't really correct the fact that someone is still capitalizing on someone's illness. Perhaps this is a place where the government makes a lot of sense -- perhaps most medical research should be publicly funded and available to all. Get the idea of "I have to make money off of this cancer patient!" out of the system entirely. (Really, I think education and health care should be rights (or "perks", if you prefer) of any citizen; the function being to give everyone a similar base when they start out in the world. After that, it is up to you what you want to make of yourself, but at least everyone is given a fair chance.). This isn't saying patents in general are a bad idea, but simply questioning whether patents on human health are a good idea..
I can't say I know the answer, but I think pretending any attempt at conversation is an assault on business's rights to make money is disingenuous, and I'm really getting sick of "...but business!" being the response to everything. How about we agree that if current business models are not working, we try to allow new ones to take over?
This is a feature of all private property protections. We don't mind having private property because the goal of our society is promoting general welfare, not promoting equality. Sometimes these two goals are compatible, and sometimes they are not.
yes, the 'life is a race' concept. I heard of that. Nice concept. if everybody started at the same point (and not: some near the finish pole and others without legs outside the stadium)
That's the second part: "Life isn't fair".
So, what's your point?
If I start with nothing, work hard, and generate superior r results I get nothing?
If I raise a superior child, though time, dedication, and, yes, spending some extra dough, do they get nothing?
I think the key is the “OP” is a “little inequity”. Life is not always fair but it should be fairish. Hard work and bright ideas would be motivated with rewards, which will result in inequity. As for a “lot of inequity” - we should not live in a winner takes all, class bound gilded society – that takes away the incentive for hard work.
(I am still mulling the Supreme Court case. I think Myriad should be reward for the research it did but I think the patent may have been overly broad. )
Ah, but all people should be equally valued in the eyes of the law. That's the point. Laws should not favor the rich over the poor, or one ethnicity over another. While one person may be born into wealth, and their possession of it, therefore a given, another person born into poverty should not be barred from obtaining wealth through hard work and careful planning. When laws exist that effectively preclude the poor from gaining wealth, we now have inequality in the law, and that is what the article describes.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
So (in cases other than this DNA one) a company spending billions on research for something and then making a basic effort to prevent bottom-feeding generic companies and foreigners from ripping off their work with zero investment in the initial research causes Earth's elite population to move to an exclusive space station orbiting Earth called Elysium? I think this article is a little overblown, as is my hyperbolic oversimplification of it.
The real issue here is stupid patents. People patenting round corners and touch to open and the wheel or whatever other stupidity the patent office lets pass by. Those pretty much result in extortion to other companies. But then you've got Dungeons and Dragons. The company invents something that cost a fortune to develop with staff time, spell checking, math, balancing, etc. Someone shouldn't be able to rip it off freely and resell it or give it away just because it's intellectual property and not "real" property. Some copyrights and patents reflect actual value and some are made up BS to go around suing people over. THAT is what needs to be fixed. Depriving the poor masses of their right to D&D information by lording it over them with patents and copyrights is a completely made up fantasy though (pun intended).
Your logical mistake is equalling a "characteristics of life", inequality, with evolution.
Just because A has C and B has C, does not mean that A is B.
The problem is logical failure.
Now, if someone is truly better than someone else, clearly they "deserve" a bit more. However, nobody "deserves" to treat other human beings as slaves, or getting rich from their diseases when it can be cured by a simple cure. Modern soceity is built on the foundation of "equality", that all people are "equal".
It's a logical mistake to think "equality" means everyone is or should be the same.
It means everyone should be given equal chances and opportunities in life, as much as possible.
Especially those who don't believe in reincarnation should be adamant about how important equality is, both for each individual, to have a chance to rise up beyond one's station, but also for society. All will benefit from the most efficient and compassionate citizens. On the other end of the scale you have the cruel psychopath criminals destroying everything for their own short-term gains.
his articles are copyrighted.
The problem with IP today is the complete lack of reasonable limits on who can make money from IP and for how long.
It's is fundamentally unfair to the world to expect unlimited and life-long (or longer) income from your IP (or even worse, from someone else's IP to which you have acquired the 'rights').
IP is a human mental construct that was brought into being to address fairness. The pendulum has swung way too far.
Disclosure: I am a certified accountant with a specialty in cost accounting.
If your competitor steals your idea and then is able to copy your idea for cheaper...doesn't that mean you just lost and SHOULD go out of business?
What it means is that you need to study cost accounting. It's quite easy to demonstrate how a company that knocks off another company's product can gain a cost advantage. Research and development costs are often a very substantial portion of the cost of a good. Copying someone else's research is usually cheaper than doing it yourself. For two similar sized competent companies there is typically little difference in manufacturing or distribution costs. Holding all other things equal it is quite impossible for the company doing the R&D to sell it cheaper than a company which can simply copy someone elses work. This is called the free rider problem and it is the entire reason why patents exist in the first place.
They improved upon your idea, right or else how would they sell it for less?
They can sell it for less because they do not have to recoup R&D costs. Please go find a cost accountant and they will explain this to you in exquisite detail. You do not have to improve on a product at all to sell it for less if you do not have to do any engineering yourself.
So if society is going to confiscate intellectual property for the good of the whole.. is it going to compensate those who spent millions iventing it. or subsidize those who in process? As hard as it may be for some of you to beleive.. these people and companies invested A LOT of time and money into these products.
How short-sighted can someone be? If a landlord couldn't collect rent, they wouldn't provide an apartment for a renter to live in. Innovation doesn't "just happen". It happens because people expect to profit from their investment of time and effort.
So what if you have to pay a royalty? If it's too much, you don't have to take advantage of the innovation. At least you have a choice, which you wouldn't otherwise.
Moreover, the newest innovation means the older stuff becomes cheaper. An old iPhone may have been too expensive for you in the past, but you can pick one up for nearly free now. And the same thing will happen to current products when the next generation comes out. This isn't just true of phones, but lots of other things like cars, medicine, computers, etc.
yeah I suppose your angle would fly if I was paying rent to someone who owned this piece of land back in 1917.. and not the current owner of this physical property(which I am doing!). do you send monthly checks to the guy who drew your apartment or did you buy it from the previous owner?
the thing with intellectual property licensing about technical solutions is that.. surprise surprise I no longer have choice to figure out how to do thing XYZ instead of buying someones solution.
and in regards of something like iphone? you really think that's the value there, intellectual property? fuck no, manufacturers would still be compelled to sell you their latest, fastest cpu's, so you can buy a phone that's vastly superior to the generation 1 iphone now pretty cheap. however thanks to the fucking ip laws you can no longer get sw without hassle for the iphone1.
the need to have a product to sell drives people to creating products to sell, which would still be there. you'd have more variety too but I suppose you don't want that. someone like intel would still thrive in their business because it's not their patents but their practical knowhow that's kept them on top. that's why you aren't seeing some mega infringing intel killer clone chips on the black market from north korea.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Myriad Genetics did *not* patent a gene, they patented a propensity for disease test, that featured a specific gene at the center of the test.
If what you say is true then why did the recent Supreme Court ruling invalidate Myriad's patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2? Myriad was apparently granted patents on naturally occurring genes they had managed to isolate and they used these patents to prevent anyone else from testing for the presence of these genes. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Myriad on this topic. This does not prevent Myriad from developing some novel test technology, it simply means they can't patent something that is just found in nature the same way they cannot dig up a pile of some mineral and get a patent for what they found.
How many other diseases will go unstudied, now that there is no reward for linking a gene to a disease?
There is plenty of reward for coming up with a therapy, coming up with novel testing equipment, etc. There is no public interest to be found in allowing patents for things simply found in nature.
most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV.
And the movie studios, which own the channels where these demagogues appear, have been doing their best to keep this from becoming a talking point because they benefit from expansion of copyright.
> When laws exist that effectively preclude the poor from gaining wealth, we now have inequality in the law, and that is what the article describes.
Much of law defines the property and the rights of property owners. All of this prevents the poor from gaining wealth, and is inequitable in that the poor don't benefit from it. However personal property is also regarded as one of the Inalienable Rights bestowed on man by the Creator by the Founders of this nation.
IP law is just one facet of this. The idea that it is any different in this regard is preposterous.
IP law's justification is that it encourages the development of the useful arts. It is important to realize that progress in technology is the ONLY proven way to increase the standard of living. As such any institution that can be shown to accomplish this end deserves a special place in society. The Founders recognized this and gave it special status in the Constitution of the United States of America.
If it can be shown these laws are ineffective toward this goal they should be abolished. If they are shown to be inefficient they need to be made efficient. But the idea that they are unreasonable based on equity is not reasonable.
Amazingly confused.
Your first paragraph directlt contradicts your second.
Newton stood on the shoulders of giants because he didn't have to pay some mob of rent-seekers for the priviledge.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No, telecommunications is responsible for the explosions of innovation, as well as existing technology to build on. Countries without patents and copyright did just fine compared to otherwise similar nations. Countries that shunned trade fell into to decay, and the ability to spread ideas faster and further greatly accelerated that growth in countries which the printing press was widely available and not greatly restricted. With patents, the giants are tripping you instead of letting you stand on their shoulders. Competition provides more than enough reason to innovate. Also, many innovations are the result of scratching an itch, so there is no need at all for an external incentive, and they may actually prove a distraction in some cases. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
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It's a lot like land. A songwriter has been successfully sued over having accidentally copied an eight note sequence from another song. But there exist only a limited number of eight note sequences. There are seven intervals in the scale from one note to the next, and the time from the start of one note to the start of the next can be short or long. (The last note has no following note.) This means 7 * 2 = 14 possibilities per note other than the last, or 14^(n - 1) possible n-note sequences, or fewer than 106 million eight-note hooks. How many millions of songs do you think are already in the ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC repertories?
Except copyright and patent holders do tend to try to screw themselves quite often. They wanted to stop the VCR despite the gold mine it turned out to be, as well as many other technological processes. Allegedly, P.L. Robertson screwed himself out of the US market despite having a superior product because he refused to license his screw technology due to a bad business deal in England, and thus lost out to the inferior Phillips head.
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One of the more interesting theories was the switch from beer to coffee.
Yes, but they also produced as much or more new inventions and works as the countries with patents and copyright.
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As for a “lot of inequity” - we should not live in a winner takes all, class bound gilded society – that takes away the incentive for hard work.
The paradox of extremes. In a communistic society, there's no reason to work hard because your can get the same rewards without exertion. In what we simplistically call a "capitalistic" society there's no reason to work hard because the people who got there first will deny you the benefits anyway.
I use quotes around "capitalistic" because the term is routinely expanded to include aspects of business and philosophy that have nothing to do with how you raise and use capital.
Am I the only one who likes inequality? Not to the extend that it exists today, but it's pretty much the only thing that makes most folks to get out of bed in the morning: the hope that they'll be better off than those that skip the "getting out of bed and going to work" part. That's why inventors invent, researchers research, directors direct, actors act, writers write, software engineers code, and folks at Boeing make airplanes and space ships. What would be their motivation if no matter what they did, they'd still be "equal" to someone who sits on his ass all day and does nothing? There are not one but several large scale examples that equality does not work. Russia, pre-capitalism China just the two largest ones. And not working was a crime in those countries, punishable by jail time.
Why must everything be the lowest common denominator?
If I start with nothing, work hard, and generate superior r results I get nothing?
the part where hard work generates results is nice. in reality though, luck is much more important than all other factors.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
If inequality is the engine of progress, then you should live under Hitler or Pol Pot, with equanimity.
You will find, on only casual study, that excessive patent term extension kills progress, innovation and discovery - leading only to extractive rent-taking.
In the current, modern economy, wealth is created through POLICY. Not through innate virtue, or luck of evolutionary/social chances.
"Intellectual Property" was not even a term in the language 25 years ago. Extension - into near perpetuity - of copyright and patent protections is a perversion of policy to grant "intellectual" fiefdom.
All this article advocates is the removal of artificially created policy constraints, that grant near-feudal extraction concessions to those already privileged and benefiting.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
also, just to clarify, the Constitution ALLOWS Congress to pass patent and copyright laws, but it in no way REQUIRES it.
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We are fairly sure now that inequality really is bad, even just relative inequality in a world where everyone's basic needs are met. This is a scientific question about human well-being, and it's answerable in principle if not in practice. Just existing in an unequal society puts mental stress on human beings which correlates to significant negative health outcomes both physically and mentally. If you could instantly inflate the US economy ten fold, but following the same trend of inequality growth, you'd actually be doing a terrible thing. Everyone would have more wealth in an absolute sense, but the massive increase in inequality would make the majority of people demonstrably less happy. You would have greatly added to the human misery of the world.
This isn't intuitive, but there are a lot of true concept that aren't intuitive to humans. Certain types of people even find this idea quite repugnant, to the point where they simply reject it outright. Sadly, wishing it to go away won't change reality. You might be able to stake out some defensible territory around the proposition that SOME level of inequality is indispensable as a motivator, but that doesn't give you license to ignore the negatives that come with it. And if there can be too little inequality there can also be too much. When society becomes too unequal then inequality ceases to be a motivator, since it becomes clear to everyone that the struggle for improvement is virtually hopeless.
Inequality in itself IS bad. The single minded pursuit of ending all inequality is also bad (and impossible to achieve anyway). Our current society has reached an absurd level of unbalanced wealth distribution. It isn't sustainable, and it isn't optimizing human well being or potential. We can do a lot better.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Sigh. The death of hope. So sad.
Fortunately empirical studies show this is not true. (Class mobility looks to be declining but skill still seems to dominate.)
No. Patents exist to promote progress.
A distinction without a difference. Patents promote progress by mitigating the effects of the free rider problem. Patents make many investments in research and development in useful arts and sciences possible that otherwise would not be economically viable. There is absolutely no way that Intel or Pfizer or IBM would exist without some means to mitigate the free rider problem.
You characterize copying first as "free riding", which is not true, and second as a "problem", which it definitely is not.
If you are smart enough to prove that your (bogus) assertion above is correct then there is a Nobel prize in economics waiting for you because NOBODY in the field of economics will agree with you. Let's be clear - I'm not talking about the mere transfer of information. I'm talking about producing knockoff products based on someone else's research and investment effort which is why someone would care about patent protection in the first place. Producing knockoff products most certainly is free riding and it most certainly is an economic problem. If you think otherwise you have never tried to run a business. Seriously, take a deep breath and go do some reading about the free rider problem and what it means. It's not just about people on buses.
Why is copying not free riding? Because free riding is about material goods and services. Ideas are neither.
An idea for a drug or a microchip which does not take tangible (and thus potentially saleable) form is useless. The ideas relevant to patent protection have to manifest themselves into products to be economically useful. Turning ideas into products costs significant money and if this money cannot be recouped then it will never be spent and society will not progress. It is trivial to demonstrate the economic effects to the free rider problem. You can (and should) share ideas all you want but when it comes to making the investments to turn those ideas into tangible form, there HAS to be a return on investment. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Pfizer, and the rest could not possibly justify spending billions each year on research if others could simply take their findings and produce knockoff products. There would be no point to most of these investments.
If scientists cannot share their ideas with each other and the public without first getting permission and securing payment, to make sure no one is getting a free ride, we will progress very slowly.
Scientists are not prohibited from sharing ideas. They are however prohibited (temporarily) from profiting from someone else's ideas or buying knockoff products of patented ideas. Yes, unfortunately this sometimes this slows progress in places. However without patent protection from free riders progress would stop altogether in many technologies. If you want to argue that patent terms are too long or that patents are being granted for ideas that don't deserve protection then I will agree with you 100% since that is manifestly true. But until you can articulate a solution to the free rider problem or can articulate why it has somehow ceased to be a problem (and you have not done either) then you have no meaningful argument to make regarding whether to do away with patents.
The issue isn't the concept of Intellectual Property. The problem is how IP rights are doled out, and the breadth of patents issued.
The fact that patenting a genome was even ever up for debate is systemic of the patent office in general not knowing what the fuck they're doing. You should be able to patent the method by which a genome is altered, sure. You could even claim that a sequence that you created from scratch in a lab is your IP (assuming that sequence doesn't occur naturally) But the original proposition was beyond asinine. It would be like inventing a camera, taking a picture of someone, and then claiming that person's face is now your IP. And this concept gained traction. WTF. That they weren't immediately laughed out of the office is just another symptom of the root cause.
Likewise, Google has IP rights over their search process, and the algorithms used in searches ... but they certainly have no dominion over the concept of "web searching." Movie studios have IP rights over their specific movies, and characters contained therein... but Marvel doesn't have rights over the concept of Super Hero movies. These examples are obvious and clear. But as soon as we start talking about something even a little bit abstract, like "genomes," everyone drops the common sense.
I'm not familiar enough to know the root cause, but my SWAG* is simply age and indifference. Those in charge of the Patent Office are old farts who can't be bothered to learn these newfangeled thingy-ma-whats-its. A more cynical view would be that those in charge know exactly what they're doing, and have been well paid to keep doing it... but I'll side with Hanlon's Razor on this one.
*that would be this SWAG. Not whatever newfangled definition you kids are using today.
This signature is false.
But then, there is the matter of how many people you've met, and how diverse their walks of life are. If you are born into a family known for its success, you are likely to grow up around other children from families that are also known for success. Furthermore, those children are taught to believe that their success is due purely to their own "hard work". They don't actually have to work hard because they are taught how to use their family's advantages such as inheritance and connections with the other families known for success. Utilizing that knowledge is furthermore seen as the end all and be all of "hard work", when in fact it doesn't even begin to compare to the difficulty of the work those not similarly advantaged have to do just to survive much less be successful. Furthermore, those families tend to stick together into adulthood so these notions are all constantly reinforced in addition to your notion that practically everyone you met that "worked hard" were successful. It becomes a tautology. Just how many people have you met that haven't "worked hard" anyways?
Once you bring "empirical studies" into it, your statements can no longer be evaluated on whether they are internally logically cnsistent. you have to actually cite at least one relevant "enmpieical study" in order to even stand a chance of being elieved by a rational person. Such relevancy in this case would have to at the least havea rigorous definition of "skill" Of course you are free to withdraw your assertion that mpirical studies show this is not true.
Sure, but I am not sure how much IP work they are doing.
First, I will point out that even in Africa’s 200 million poverty bound woman, those woman who produce superior results get ahead economically. Sadly, African culture tends to discount heavily the value of woman and “woman’s work”.
Second, I would point out that a Free Market is not a magical wand. In order for it to work you need the right social institutions, like equal access to the court system to enforce contracts (and to protect your IP, to keep this vaguely on topic), infrastructure, land registry, etc.
Third, I mentioned superior results, not just hard work. This is to reflect human capital and in this regard you have been screwed by the government.
Some inequity drives the system. Too much inequity crushes all by the elite. You fall into the second category and you are being treated as second class citizens. This is not right.
You may want to chat with Lysistrata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata
It is only AFTER a product is shown to be profitable does it attract imitators. This allows for a natural limited duration monopoly in which to recoup R&D costs.
Problem is that the time period you are talking about is FAR too short to recoup R&D costs. I've got 20 years experience in manufacturing and I assure you that the time period you propose is actually incredibly short. My company makes wire harnesses. We're a contract manufacturer. If you handed me almost any example of any wire harness, I could probably have a working prototype copy in your hands within a week. A month at the outside if it is really, really complicated. And we're a small shop with limited resources. One of the big companies could probably do it in a few days no matter how complex it is. Doesn't matter how innovative your product is, I can copy it cheaper than you can design it and I can probably have it in production inside of a month. Exactly how do you think you are going to recoup R&D costs on anything original in that short a time window?
Let's take drugs for example. Conducting the clinical trials to get a new drug approved takes many years and can easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Setting up the manufacturing equipment to produce the drug typically is trivial by comparison and may only cost a few million. If I gave you the chemical formula for a drug, you could have someone manufacturing it within a month for a few cents a pill. There is no possible way any drug company could recoup their investment in the time it would take someone to knock off their product and they certainly can't "just innovate more" because that literally takes a decade for just a single drug.
Same situation with lots of other technology and manufactured products. It is MUCH cheaper to copy than to produce original work. This creates an economic disincentive to conduct original research. You will note that there is a very strong correlation between locations with strong patent and copyright protection and locations with strong research. That's not to say research cannot happen at all in places without such protection but it is almost invariably less.
Patents cause a market distortion by setting an artificial hurdle for innovation. If you jump this high you get a 17 year monopoly.
Yes they do. Because that twenty year monopoly is incentive for you to conduct the R&D necessary to make the product in the first place. Patents aren't supposed to be for incremental improvements to existing products. They are supposed to be for genuinely novel inventions - things that were hard (and probably expensive) to come up with. I'm very much of the opinion that our current patent regime is in bad need of reform but doing away with it altogether would be unbelievably stupid. I've spent a lot of time in places like China and Southeast Asia with rather lax enforcement of patent rights and there is a very good reason why we still don't see a lot of original technology come out of those places. Companies that have to do R&D are VERY reluctant to do it in China because of the free rider problem. They can easily be put out of business by knock offs no matter how innovative they are. They make stuff there but they are very careful with sharing design information. I don't think you have an adequate appreciation for the economics at work here. What you are saying sounds good from an ivory tower but doesn't really work in the Real World (tm).
Amazingly confused.
Your first paragraph directlt contradicts your second.
Newton stood on the shoulders of giants because he didn't have to pay some mob of rent-seekers for the priviledge.
He also didn't publish his calculus, and kept them as his personal trade secret, until Halley approached him about the shape of the orbit of comets.
Similarly, Richard Feynman didn't reveal that he was using Clifford Algebras to solve systems of Feynman-Dyson diagrams; it made him look like he was skipping intermediate steps and leaving them as "an exercise for the student", and made him look vastly more intelligent than hist students.
Both men kept their methods secret to have an advantage. A patent is a trade for disclosing these trade secrets in exchange for a time limited monopoly - so the original author is being disingenuous with their perpetual rent argument.
You wish to participate in an economic discussion yet you do not know what an economic rent it? You make the baby Adam Smith cry.
300? I think you are stretching definition of "property" to meet your ideology.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Life isn't fair
but society should be.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If I start with nothing, work hard, and generate superior r results I get nothing?
No, you should get something. Specifically, you should get a reward commensurate to the superiority of your results, rather than with a factor of 0.1x for the low end of the scale, and 1000x for the high end.
The funny thing is that when they went around and asked people what they think the distribution of wealth in the country is like, turned out that most (even liberals, much less conservatives) have a picture that's far more rosy than what the reality is. Funnier still, when those same people were asked to draw the "ideal" distribution of wealth (taking into account motivation with rewards etc), 92% drew a picture that resembled real-life distribution in Sweden, of all places.
All else being equal? WTF? I really hate this attitude, lots of people "try", lots of people work really hard and many still struggle. There seems to be a large minority who believe that you can achieve anything if you try (good to not be locked into your position in life, but it often doesn't workout), so if you are struggling or god forbid somehow fail, then it's all your own fault and you have "chosen" to be unemployed/homeless/whatever. Increasingly if your parents are poorer, then you will probably be stuck at a lower socio-economic level as it is becoming harder to move to another level. Personal responsibility is great, I think we need more of it, but compassion and a fair go are needed too. No one chooses a hard terrible life, but sometimes it happens, and society should provide a way out of this cycle. If you lack compassion, then remember it's cheaper for your taxes if they don't need to be spent on welfare/private security/more insurance. Also the more people who have good jobs, the more people who can buy goods and services, and society functions better. Stepping around homeless people should make you sad and guilty, there should be a way out for those people. People who think like that act like it's some sort of in this life karma, you get the position you choose/work for. Crap. Some people have it easier, some much harder, we as a society are better off it most people are functioning members of society, so we should have systems in place to help people to get education, jobs and somewhere safe to stay until they can provide for themselves. " the more you put in the greater your possibility of a positive result. This is a distinction that seems lost on more and more people." It's not lost on me, I agree with responsibility, I agree that you have to work, but recognise that some start way behind others, and the "possibility" of a positive result is just that, a possibility, it doesn't workout for all so there have to be systems so that they can try again/something else.
Everything you just said is perfectly valid. Its unfair to start behind the curve. Its unfair that you might be challenged by your genetics while another is gifted in the same way. Its unfair that assholes sometimes inherit wealth and power. But that wasn't my point. My point was that if you never tried to succeed, you do not deserve to. If you never attempt to better yourself, you wont. And like it or not, there's a growing culture of, "Fuck it. Why should I work when I can draw [disability/food aid/unemployment/etc.]"
I do not suggest for a second that there are not perfectly worthy recipients of assistance. There are many, and I have no issue with providing it. I do have issue with parents teaching their kids how to milk the system, and if you don't think it's happening you're deluding yourself.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Newton wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Of course, the "shoulders of giants" thing was meant as a crack at Leibniz, who wasn't very tall.