Every so many years they come out with this new exciting standard that turns out to go nowhere. That is because technology isn't standards driven, it is standards that are freedom/technology driven. For example, Linux (in spite of all the distros) has done more to standardize the OS that all the POSIX standards committies and Motif (renember that one) and CDE (renember that one too) standards combined. Typically a good stnadard is one where people created it first to meet a need, everyone started using it, then the standards committie eventually get arround to formalizing it. If it doesn't happen in that order, it is most likely crap.
Goolge is persuing a strategy called "appeasement" - it was also a military strategy tried by the Chineese for nearly 500 years and failed horribly, and only served to make their enemies stronger until China got crucified. I guess China has learnt their lesson, but Google hasn't.
If someone says "you better do 10 doses of evil or I'll do 100" - my advice would be to not do the 10 dose, because there is nothing to stop them from doing the 100 dose anyhow. The same is true with Google. This is not about wether Google is going to make an evil choice or a more evil choice. This is about whose going to be the one that makes the evil choice the Google execs censoring, or the Chinese leadership blocking. I guess the Google execs have decided it is going to be them. Well fine, but don't say "do no evil".
Google has done more than just appease (thus reward) an evil choice. They have denied their own free will, the free will of the Chineese leadership, and thus the free will of the Chineese people. Well geuss what, free will is about freedom, and search is a consequence of freedom not a cause of it. The Chineese people need freedom pressures more than they need search. Google has done noone a favor.
When you vote on an issue that you can't win, then what you are doing is legitimizing the way the system takes away your freedom. If someone wants to take away your freedom, and they win, it is far better that they win with a 30% turnout then with %100 turnout - which would be translated as a mandate. More often that not, votes should be used as a tool to throw people out, or recend bad taxes or laws - not as a tool of participation.
And most especially, votes should never be used as a tool to give (insert good cause here) freebies coerced at everyone elses expense
Today I will not vote for democrats or republicans, neither have the slightest care about my freedom. But let me tell you, when the time comes to reap the consequences of their unstable policies - you can better believe I will be happy to nail them hard.
I think a lot of people see the the seperation of education systems and commercial industries as a natural part of a free market. I don't think that is the case at all. Because of things like copyright and patent monopolies - it causes the persiut of knowledge and R&D to be fenced off in the commercial sector, when in a normal environment that wouldn't be the case. In fact, you can see this in Linux. When the technology was non proprietary, the center of R&D for unix was in a corporate environment. Then UNIX became proprietary, the focus of R&D shifted to the university sector. Then when Linux came out, the focus of R&D is now shifting back to the private sector. In more broader terms, this is the case with all persuits of knowledge. Also, have you ever noticed how some of those techies that surf the net all the time, also tend to be the most productive. This is because they also tend to be learning things within all that surfing.
It's not normal for education, study, and the persuit of knowledge to be seperated from industry, in a healthy free market environment education and the persuit of knowledge is a normal part of day to day business. In a proprietary market, all you get is people trying to pawn off certificates on you to sucker you into centering your skillset and systems arround their product offerings.
Well, the goal wasn't to be manipulative or attack people. Patents are justified by bad logic, and have evil consequences, and I'm effectively being forced into that system - so I think I have a right to protest loudly. I went way out of my way to attack patents, and patent behavior, and the poor reasoning to defend patents, but not to attack individuals. The goal here was not to beat down, or judge people who have patents, the goal is to get rid of patents. I dunno, some people might get harmed in that process - I don't think I could ever take joy in that at all, but still I can never accept the patent system being imposed on my life.
Not if the whole point of inventing the machine was to sell it for profit.
But as he made so clear, invnetions are driven by need. Profits are a consequence of meeting those needs at value, not a cause.
If you go bankrupt because your neighbor watches you from his window and then sells an identical device for 1/2 the cost, that first mover advantage doesn't mean anything, and would very likely be an advantage of less than one day.
And that is why getting rid of patents will promote innovation, because it promotes competition to get one up instead of rewarding people for resting on their laurels.
You're far too naieve about the honesty and ethics of corporate executives.....
Am I. It's 1000 times easier for a corporation to beat you down with a patent, than it is for you to you to beat them.
Take pharmaceuticals as an example industry....
Well, on the other side of the coin, it was the pharmacuticals that sued African nations to block the manufacture of generic AIDS drugs in the world court, arguably leading to the needless death of millions. It is the pharmacutical industry that has legislatively sidelined alternative and natural cures for the sake of patentable medicines that have had all sorts of nasty chemichal side effects. It is the pharmacutical industry that has killed scientific cross collaberation in every major field of medicine research. Yeah, they effectively killed medicine collaberation so of course they need big money to do R&D now.
Are you telling me that you would refuse to invent a snow plow to clear your driveway, even though you needed it cleared because someone could copy that invention once you created it? Are you saying, that if friends, neighbors and people wanted to buy and use the same snow-plow for their own use, and were willing to pay you for it, you would turn them and their cash away because someone else could copy it?
Inventions are not driven by monopoy, they are driven by need. Those needs still exist even though a monopoly doesn't. So that means a profit opportunity exists even though a monopoly doesn't.
Like what? If you ask me (or anybody else) to invest in a project, you've got to be able to show me how you're going to get a return.
Turnaround is fair play here. If you expect anybody to accept a patnet monopoly, you must prove that patents are the only acceptable way that this can happen before imposing this massive restriction on how people can use inventions.
Bad example, Linux is a clean implementation of Unix, which is covered by copyrights. Software has no place in the patent world, software is written, therefor it is covered by copyright.
The point was that big and expensive things can be built without a monopoly. But that argument is the number one lie used to justify patents. It has nothing to do with wether Linux is copyrighted ot patented.
And what if you want to do physics research in need of a particle accelerator?
When's the last time patents funded something like this?
It makes sense to give people a monopoly on truly unique inventions they intend to build and sell to let them recoup their costs, and then open it up to free market competition.
For every one you give a monopoly, you are locking out millions of others. (who might have created the same thing anyhow) In fact, the invention just might be a natural progression, and now throwing patents in the way just retards that progression. I would say that the burden to prove that patents are acceptable in all cases would be on those who wish to impose them.
I put collaberation as an alternative, and to point out how patents actually inhibit researchers from collaberating. The point is that the arguemnt "well we need patents, because well never get real R&D any other way" is a fradulent argument. What about those 2 million people of cancer, would they not be willing to put up $1000 each. That's what capitalist systems do best, they pool capital. Either way, the "need" for a massive local monopoly system is still a fraud.
With a patent system, companies tend to fence off every innovation. In a patent world the university system almost has to take over the function of public R&D for society to compensate.
High tech (read highly educated PhD) research is going to be replaced by collaberation? How exactly are these research PhD's going to be paid?
Google has a lot of PhD's even though they run Linux.
There would be NO financial advantage for a company to spend money on research if the company could just take the product of another company's research as its own, thus leading to no research at all.
Things were getting researched and applied for hundreds of years before patents even existed.
You want to change the status quo, so the burden of proof is on you. And saying 'Get it' at the end of every line make you look like a moron, the use of 'shit' really helped you argument as well......
The fact that it is the status quo, means that even more of the burden of proof should be on it. With "get it" and "shit", I shouldn't have been so emotional, but I find many things about patents deeply offensive. Like how arguably millions of Africans died who didn't need to because pharmacuticals sued to block the manufacture of generic AIDS drugs in the world court. All things considered, the response was very human even if it was irrational and emotional.
... the slave plnatation system was "the product of the use of a great deal of property." I think it is being underestimated just how truely evil the patent system is.
I am a computer programmer, and my boss wants to patent my code because it is novel and it is unique, and since he holds several other patents (in the cell phone business, which is a tough business) so I know he will succede at it. I suppose this benefits me, sorta like if I was put in charge of slaves on the plantation. But the fact is that I feel like I am being forced into this system, and even my company is being forced into this system that is pure evil (see my essay A Violent Protest Against Patnets). Because like most tech companies, we don't get patnets to collect royalities, we get patents to retaliate in the event of lawsuits and we get them to enter into cross license agreements with pools of large companies to get access to other inventions without being sued. Just because I am supposedly benefiting from patents now, doesn't mean that I should be a liar about how evil they truely are. If patents are allowed to be brought to their logical conclusion, it will result in the genocide of billions.
You vote to eliminate patents... In the process you'll eliminate independent inventors and large monopolistic cooperations will rule the day!
Patnets create monopolistic companies. When a big company has patents, they can beat down on you 1000 times harder than an individual patent holder can beat down on them. I suppose if you can be a slave owner, you can do good things toward your slaves too. The foundation is still pure evil.
The one thing most useful thing I've learned in my 25 years is that "Where you stand depends on where you sit",
This is just an intellectual way of saying that people are destined by their circumstances and not their choices. So many people have made choices, and even died, so that we can have the peace and freedom we enjoy today. That is just wong on so many levels. I hope you understand, you can choose to be an innovatior company or a lawsuiter, but you will never be able to be both.
Please post a link to the part of patent law that "locks out" collaboration.
Excuse me, you don't need a law to lock out collaberation. That is another consequence of the patent system. Get it. When reaserachers from different companies can get a leg and grab a key patent that locks out one of their competitors - then companies tend to discourage their researchers from collaberating. Get it.
While you're fruitlessly searching, you'll realize you made that entire line of reasoning up, if you haven't already been forced into that conclusion.
I am so glad you mentioned that. Ahem... Hey you... You're the one that wants to coerce this massive restriction on what everybody can immitate. The burden of proof is on You to prove that patents are anything more than piece of shit. You won't be able to do that, because they are a piece of shit. The writing is on the wall, the symptoms are everywhere, and those who don't see it are in denial.
This is the 4th time I've herd that, and it just kills me. In an environment where they can copy your inventions and you can copy their inventions You don't need millions in R&D because it is more than made up for with sharing and collaberation. Think of Linux? Did investors need to pony up 500 million in R&D for soneone to roll their own OS. NO.
The fact that people need that kind of dough for that kind of research is another symptom of the patent system going out of controll. We do not need patents to solve the funding problem, that is just another symptom of Patents gone out of controll. Encouraging patents is the single most worst thing that can be done in this kind of environemnt!
Why would I ever want to invest a huge amount of money/time into creating something new, when the next person can just start where I was?
You wouldn't. Getting rid of patnets would change the market dynamics so there is a lot more collaberation on invention and competition on product, thus benefiting everyone. It would force the market to focus on natural barriers to entry "lets build a big efficient plant to get one up on comeptitors" rather than on human made ones "lets get a key patent and sit on it to lock out competitors in this market segment"
Oh, sure. Pharmaceutic companies would continue to invest eight-, nine-, and even ten-figure sums into developing a drug knowing that, once developed, any competitor could produce and sell exactly the same thing without having invested the GNP of Albania in developing it.
No they wouldn't! that's the point. There are better ways to collaberate on R&D without multi billion dollar venture investments. This is just another symptom of the patent system gone amuck. The patent system locks out collaberation, so now to invent medicine people need to go into billion dollar R&D ventures, so it's a joke to say "well how are we going to raise all that money without patents!" Not to mention that patents provide a strong inventive to attack and not persue natural and alternative cures.
It only takes the tiniest amount of study to understand that, without patents, the pharmaceutic industry would cease to exist.
Well, if the end in itself is a bunch of overbloated industries, then yeah then I suppose some would find patents attractive.
Re:Patnets brought to their logical conclusion
on
Supreme Court spurns RIM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If I invent a machine to stop it from snowing on my driveway (yes, I'm in Canada:P), I don't want some other company to rip apart my machine and start building their own without having to go through the R&D that I went through. They don't have all of that invested money to make back, and so they sell it for 1/2 the price that I'm selling it for. Patents protect me from this.
This just kills me. The reward for the effort of inventing your machine is not having snow on your driveway, and having the satisfaction that you made something usefull, and maybe even a "first mover" advantage if you run a company. Not a global monopoly who locks everyone else out - even if the machine would have been invented anyhow, even if they invented it with their own R&D. It's not "protection", because in a patent free world you are more free to copy and improve on other inventions too. In a patent world, big companies have more resources to lock you out, then you have to lock them out, it'd be foolish to believe otherwise.
Patnets brought to their logical conclusion
on
Supreme Court spurns RIM
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
The thing that irritates me the most is this attitude that the patent system just needs "some adjusting", rather than accepting that the entire foundation of patent is a fraud to begin with, and all patents are inherently evil because all patents are a coercive restriction on how people can use inventions (for insert cute sounding justifications here). The bad tree bears bad fruit. Yes, it really is that simple, it only takes the tinist ammount of study to understand that creation and invnetion will continue at their pace if patents go to hell where they belong. Why do people so desperately cling to such a filed system?
Once the "officially DRM'd" industry realises that they can't lock people (or profit) into their content managment schemes - then they will come out saying we need to protect kids from pron, and we need to outlaw any porn that isn't digitaly signed "for, OH MY GOD, the sake of the children!". Hollywood, and big media, will then surely jump on the bandwagon, and it won't be long before they try to outlaw any content that is't DRM controlled.
It is a 100% mistake to assume that society won't get its needs successfully met without granting these useless monopolies that pretend to incentivize R&D and pretend to "protect" inventors.
PS. I am by no means a fascist, in fact I chose the example so you wouldn't suspect me of sympathising with it. (Which I guess I've pretty much proved by making a relativist argument.)
But this is what I mean though. If you take a platform that starts out with the premise that libertarian isim is equal in consideration to communisisim, facisim, etc... It automatically introduces a bias. The bias in this case is that the free will of individuals is irrelavent in governing systems. That is wrong, and the exact opposite of what every successfull governing society has assumed as a premise.
Just as science needs to start out with a premise of a rational universe, politics and government need to start out with a premise of free will as being an end in itself. And it's not fair to say we should have equal respect for say, facist ideas. For example, when someone starts out with the premise that a government should have the potential right to kill me in the name of say a master rase. How could that very premise not be a disrespectfull imposition on me to begin with?
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Every so many years they come out with this new exciting standard that turns out to go nowhere. That is because technology isn't standards driven, it is standards that are freedom/technology driven. For example, Linux (in spite of all the distros) has done more to standardize the OS that all the POSIX standards committies and Motif (renember that one) and CDE (renember that one too) standards combined. Typically a good stnadard is one where people created it first to meet a need, everyone started using it, then the standards committie eventually get arround to formalizing it. If it doesn't happen in that order, it is most likely crap.
Goolge is persuing a strategy called "appeasement" - it was also a military strategy tried by the Chineese for nearly 500 years and failed horribly, and only served to make their enemies stronger until China got crucified. I guess China has learnt their lesson, but Google hasn't.
If someone says "you better do 10 doses of evil or I'll do 100" - my advice would be to not do the 10 dose, because there is nothing to stop them from doing the 100 dose anyhow. The same is true with Google. This is not about wether Google is going to make an evil choice or a more evil choice. This is about whose going to be the one that makes the evil choice the Google execs censoring, or the Chinese leadership blocking. I guess the Google execs have decided it is going to be them. Well fine, but don't say "do no evil".
Google has done more than just appease (thus reward) an evil choice. They have denied their own free will, the free will of the Chineese leadership, and thus the free will of the Chineese people. Well geuss what, free will is about freedom, and search is a consequence of freedom not a cause of it. The Chineese people need freedom pressures more than they need search. Google has done noone a favor.
When you vote on an issue that you can't win, then what you are doing is legitimizing the way the system takes away your freedom. If someone wants to take away your freedom, and they win, it is far better that they win with a 30% turnout then with %100 turnout - which would be translated as a mandate. More often that not, votes should be used as a tool to throw people out, or recend bad taxes or laws - not as a tool of participation.
And most especially, votes should never be used as a tool to give (insert good cause here) freebies coerced at everyone elses expense
Today I will not vote for democrats or republicans, neither have the slightest care about my freedom. But let me tell you, when the time comes to reap the consequences of their unstable policies - you can better believe I will be happy to nail them hard.
I think a lot of people see the the seperation of education systems and commercial industries as a natural part of a free market. I don't think that is the case at all. Because of things like copyright and patent monopolies - it causes the persiut of knowledge and R&D to be fenced off in the commercial sector, when in a normal environment that wouldn't be the case. In fact, you can see this in Linux. When the technology was non proprietary, the center of R&D for unix was in a corporate environment. Then UNIX became proprietary, the focus of R&D shifted to the university sector. Then when Linux came out, the focus of R&D is now shifting back to the private sector. In more broader terms, this is the case with all persuits of knowledge. Also, have you ever noticed how some of those techies that surf the net all the time, also tend to be the most productive. This is because they also tend to be learning things within all that surfing.
It's not normal for education, study, and the persuit of knowledge to be seperated from industry, in a healthy free market environment education and the persuit of knowledge is a normal part of day to day business. In a proprietary market, all you get is people trying to pawn off certificates on you to sucker you into centering your skillset and systems arround their product offerings.
Well, the goal wasn't to be manipulative or attack people. Patents are justified by bad logic, and have evil consequences, and I'm effectively being forced into that system - so I think I have a right to protest loudly. I went way out of my way to attack patents, and patent behavior, and the poor reasoning to defend patents, but not to attack individuals. The goal here was not to beat down, or judge people who have patents, the goal is to get rid of patents. I dunno, some people might get harmed in that process - I don't think I could ever take joy in that at all, but still I can never accept the patent system being imposed on my life.
Not if the whole point of inventing the machine was to sell it for profit.
But as he made so clear, invnetions are driven by need. Profits are a consequence of meeting those needs at value, not a cause.
If you go bankrupt because your neighbor watches you from his window and then sells an identical device for 1/2 the cost, that first mover advantage doesn't mean anything, and would very likely be an advantage of less than one day.
And that is why getting rid of patents will promote innovation, because it promotes competition to get one up instead of rewarding people for resting on their laurels.
You're far too naieve about the honesty and ethics of corporate executives. ....
Am I. It's 1000 times easier for a corporation to beat you down with a patent, than it is for you to you to beat them.
Take pharmaceuticals as an example industry....
Well, on the other side of the coin, it was the pharmacuticals that sued African nations to block the manufacture of generic AIDS drugs in the world court, arguably leading to the needless death of millions. It is the pharmacutical industry that has legislatively sidelined alternative and natural cures for the sake of patentable medicines that have had all sorts of nasty chemichal side effects. It is the pharmacutical industry that has killed scientific cross collaberation in every major field of medicine research. Yeah, they effectively killed medicine collaberation so of course they need big money to do R&D now.
Are you telling me that you would refuse to invent a snow plow to clear your driveway, even though you needed it cleared because someone could copy that invention once you created it? Are you saying, that if friends, neighbors and people wanted to buy and use the same snow-plow for their own use, and were willing to pay you for it, you would turn them and their cash away because someone else could copy it?
Inventions are not driven by monopoy, they are driven by need. Those needs still exist even though a monopoly doesn't. So that means a profit opportunity exists even though a monopoly doesn't.
Like what? If you ask me (or anybody else) to invest in a project, you've got to be able to show me how you're going to get a return.
Turnaround is fair play here. If you expect anybody to accept a patnet monopoly, you must prove that patents are the only acceptable way that this can happen before imposing this massive restriction on how people can use inventions.
Bad example, Linux is a clean implementation of Unix, which is covered by copyrights. Software has no place in the patent world, software is written, therefor it is covered by copyright.
The point was that big and expensive things can be built without a monopoly. But that argument is the number one lie used to justify patents. It has nothing to do with wether Linux is copyrighted ot patented.
And what if you want to do physics research in need of a particle accelerator?
When's the last time patents funded something like this?
It makes sense to give people a monopoly on truly unique inventions they intend to build and sell to let them recoup their costs, and then open it up to free market competition.
For every one you give a monopoly, you are locking out millions of others. (who might have created the same thing anyhow) In fact, the invention just might be a natural progression, and now throwing patents in the way just retards that progression. I would say that the burden to prove that patents are acceptable in all cases would be on those who wish to impose them.
I put collaberation as an alternative, and to point out how patents actually inhibit researchers from collaberating. The point is that the arguemnt "well we need patents, because well never get real R&D any other way" is a fradulent argument. What about those 2 million people of cancer, would they not be willing to put up $1000 each. That's what capitalist systems do best, they pool capital. Either way, the "need" for a massive local monopoly system is still a fraud.
With a patent system, companies tend to fence off every innovation. In a patent world the university system almost has to take over the function of public R&D for society to compensate.
High tech (read highly educated PhD) research is going to be replaced by collaberation? How exactly are these research PhD's going to be paid?
Google has a lot of PhD's even though they run Linux.
There would be NO financial advantage for a company to spend money on research if the company could just take the product of another company's research as its own, thus leading to no research at all.
Things were getting researched and applied for hundreds of years before patents even existed.
You want to change the status quo, so the burden of proof is on you. And saying 'Get it' at the end of every line make you look like a moron, the use of 'shit' really helped you argument as well......
The fact that it is the status quo, means that even more of the burden of proof should be on it. With "get it" and "shit", I shouldn't have been so emotional, but I find many things about patents deeply offensive. Like how arguably millions of Africans died who didn't need to because pharmacuticals sued to block the manufacture of generic AIDS drugs in the world court. All things considered, the response was very human even if it was irrational and emotional.
I am a computer programmer, and my boss wants to patent my code because it is novel and it is unique, and since he holds several other patents (in the cell phone business, which is a tough business) so I know he will succede at it. I suppose this benefits me, sorta like if I was put in charge of slaves on the plantation. But the fact is that I feel like I am being forced into this system, and even my company is being forced into this system that is pure evil (see my essay A Violent Protest Against Patnets). Because like most tech companies, we don't get patnets to collect royalities, we get patents to retaliate in the event of lawsuits and we get them to enter into cross license agreements with pools of large companies to get access to other inventions without being sued. Just because I am supposedly benefiting from patents now, doesn't mean that I should be a liar about how evil they truely are. If patents are allowed to be brought to their logical conclusion, it will result in the genocide of billions.
You vote to eliminate patents... In the process you'll eliminate independent inventors and large monopolistic cooperations will rule the day!
Patnets create monopolistic companies. When a big company has patents, they can beat down on you 1000 times harder than an individual patent holder can beat down on them. I suppose if you can be a slave owner, you can do good things toward your slaves too. The foundation is still pure evil.
The one thing most useful thing I've learned in my 25 years is that "Where you stand depends on where you sit",
This is just an intellectual way of saying that people are destined by their circumstances and not their choices. So many people have made choices, and even died, so that we can have the peace and freedom we enjoy today. That is just wong on so many levels. I hope you understand, you can choose to be an innovatior company or a lawsuiter, but you will never be able to be both.
Please post a link to the part of patent law that "locks out" collaboration.
Excuse me, you don't need a law to lock out collaberation. That is another consequence of the patent system. Get it. When reaserachers from different companies can get a leg and grab a key patent that locks out one of their competitors - then companies tend to discourage their researchers from collaberating. Get it.
While you're fruitlessly searching, you'll realize you made that entire line of reasoning up, if you haven't already been forced into that conclusion.
I am so glad you mentioned that. Ahem... Hey you... You're the one that wants to coerce this massive restriction on what everybody can immitate. The burden of proof is on You to prove that patents are anything more than piece of shit. You won't be able to do that, because they are a piece of shit. The writing is on the wall, the symptoms are everywhere, and those who don't see it are in denial.
I could try and argue again why patents are not property at all, but I already did that much more elloquently here ....
If I sunk $20M ...
This is the 4th time I've herd that, and it just kills me. In an environment where they can copy your inventions and you can copy their inventions You don't need millions in R&D because it is more than made up for with sharing and collaberation. Think of Linux? Did investors need to pony up 500 million in R&D for soneone to roll their own OS. NO.
The fact that people need that kind of dough for that kind of research is another symptom of the patent system going out of controll. We do not need patents to solve the funding problem, that is just another symptom of Patents gone out of controll. Encouraging patents is the single most worst thing that can be done in this kind of environemnt!
Why would I ever want to invest a huge amount of money/time into creating something new, when the next person can just start where I was?
You wouldn't. Getting rid of patnets would change the market dynamics so there is a lot more collaberation on invention and competition on product, thus benefiting everyone. It would force the market to focus on natural barriers to entry "lets build a big efficient plant to get one up on comeptitors" rather than on human made ones "lets get a key patent and sit on it to lock out competitors in this market segment"
Oh, sure. Pharmaceutic companies would continue to invest eight-, nine-, and even ten-figure sums into developing a drug knowing that, once developed, any competitor could produce and sell exactly the same thing without having invested the GNP of Albania in developing it.
No they wouldn't! that's the point. There are better ways to collaberate on R&D without multi billion dollar venture investments. This is just another symptom of the patent system gone amuck. The patent system locks out collaberation, so now to invent medicine people need to go into billion dollar R&D ventures, so it's a joke to say "well how are we going to raise all that money without patents!" Not to mention that patents provide a strong inventive to attack and not persue natural and alternative cures.
It only takes the tiniest amount of study to understand that, without patents, the pharmaceutic industry would cease to exist.
Well, if the end in itself is a bunch of overbloated industries, then yeah then I suppose some would find patents attractive.
If I invent a machine to stop it from snowing on my driveway (yes, I'm in Canada :P), I don't want some other company to rip apart my machine and start building their own without having to go through the R&D that I went through. They don't have all of that invested money to make back, and so they sell it for 1/2 the price that I'm selling it for. Patents protect me from this.
This just kills me. The reward for the effort of inventing your machine is not having snow on your driveway, and having the satisfaction that you made something usefull, and maybe even a "first mover" advantage if you run a company. Not a global monopoly who locks everyone else out - even if the machine would have been invented anyhow, even if they invented it with their own R&D. It's not "protection", because in a patent free world you are more free to copy and improve on other inventions too. In a patent world, big companies have more resources to lock you out, then you have to lock them out, it'd be foolish to believe otherwise.
The thing that irritates me the most is this attitude that the patent system just needs "some adjusting", rather than accepting that the entire foundation of patent is a fraud to begin with, and all patents are inherently evil because all patents are a coercive restriction on how people can use inventions (for insert cute sounding justifications here). The bad tree bears bad fruit. Yes, it really is that simple, it only takes the tinist ammount of study to understand that creation and invnetion will continue at their pace if patents go to hell where they belong. Why do people so desperately cling to such a filed system?
Once the "officially DRM'd" industry realises that they can't lock people (or profit) into their content managment schemes - then they will come out saying we need to protect kids from pron, and we need to outlaw any porn that isn't digitaly signed "for, OH MY GOD, the sake of the children!". Hollywood, and big media, will then surely jump on the bandwagon, and it won't be long before they try to outlaw any content that is't DRM controlled.
It is a 100% mistake to assume that society won't get its needs successfully met without granting these useless monopolies that pretend to incentivize R&D and pretend to "protect" inventors.
PS. I am by no means a fascist, in fact I chose the example so you wouldn't suspect me of sympathising with it. (Which I guess I've pretty much proved by making a relativist argument.)
But this is what I mean though. If you take a platform that starts out with the premise that libertarian isim is equal in consideration to communisisim, facisim, etc... It automatically introduces a bias. The bias in this case is that the free will of individuals is irrelavent in governing systems. That is wrong, and the exact opposite of what every successfull governing society has assumed as a premise.
Just as science needs to start out with a premise of a rational universe, politics and government need to start out with a premise of free will as being an end in itself. And it's not fair to say we should have equal respect for say, facist ideas. For example, when someone starts out with the premise that a government should have the potential right to kill me in the name of say a master rase. How could that very premise not be a disrespectfull imposition on me to begin with?