I disagree with the notion that capitalism does anything to channel creativity. In fact, I'm of the opinion that capitalism does more to hinder it.
In a capitalist society I have an incentive to hide every discovery I make. If other people have the same knowledge I have of process, equipment, or the market, I cannot benefit from it as much. So there is a great incentive in a capitalist society not to share any new discovery.
Right, which is why we need intellectual property protection inside of a capitalist framework.
Copyrights and patents re a good example of laws that temper a market for the mutual benefit of both producers and consumers.
(...despite how those laws have been abused recently.)
Even without abuse I don't see how intellectual property helps anything. If the process is better than the status quo, the firm it was discovered at will adopt it. Competition will adopt it as soon as they can determine the process. the only thing I think copyrights and patents really do is discourage competition. I think for these things to be good it would have to be true that without them discovery does not happen, and innovations from those discoveries would not happen. I do not think this is the case.
That is the entire point of a patent.
You invent a process, and patent it. You now have exclusive rights to that process for 17 years. Your competition can not use it, unless they pay you for it. But after 17 years, they will have free access to the process because the process must be described to replicate-able detail in the patent.
So you gain a benefit, legally assured exclusivity to your invention, and the invention becomes part of the public record so that eventually everyone can use it.
In working on a large construction process, my father made an observation that if some part of the plan was done differently, millions of dollars in parts could be saved. The company ended up adopting his alternative plan. His company sure did appreciate the insight, but how did they reward him, a 1,000$ bonus. In other words, while he was providing something really valuable to them he got peanuts in return, and this is in my mind a best case scenario.
This is pretty much par for the course at work.
Someone above you in the chain of command will implement your plan, take all the credit, and give you a few peanuts.
So do tell, how would a communist society have prevented the boss from stealing all the credit?
In a worker-co-op or profit-sharing company even if you didn't get credit you would still share in the profits. If suggestions were made instead of in the way they are now, from you to your superiors, and instead to a managing body to be debated in front of meetings that all employees take part in it would be impossible for this to happen. Even the slightest level of democratization of work and profit would make this not happen.
I disagree with the notion that capitalism does anything to channel creativity. In fact, I'm of the opinion that capitalism does more to hinder it.
In a capitalist society I have an incentive to hide every discovery I make. If other people have the same knowledge I have of process, equipment, or the market, I cannot benefit from it as much. So there is a great incentive in a capitalist society not to share any new discovery.
Right, which is why we need intellectual property protection inside of a capitalist framework.
Copyrights and patents re a good example of laws that temper a market for the mutual benefit of both producers and consumers.
(...despite how those laws have been abused recently.)
Even without abuse I don't see how intellectual property helps anything. If the process is better than the status quo, the firm it was discovered at will adopt it. Competition will adopt it as soon as they can determine the process. the only thing I think copyrights and patents really do is discourage competition. I think for these things to be good it would have to be true that without them discovery does not happen, and innovations from those discoveries would not happen. I do not think this is the case.
That is the entire point of a patent.
You invent a process, and patent it. You now have exclusive rights to that process for 17 years. Your competition can not use it, unless they pay you for it. But after 17 years, they will have free access to the process because the process must be described to replicate-able detail in the patent.
So you gain a benefit, legally assured exclusivity to your invention, and the invention becomes part of the public record so that eventually everyone can use it.
You patent it at the cost of competition. By preventing others from using the innovation, you are preventing your competition from developing the same process and implementing it, which would allow for greater competition. It is my view that the profit-generation that is allowed from the use of patents is only justifiable if the inventions that are patented would not exist without this system. I don't believe that is ever the case.
What I was trying to explain is that I believe that because of natural market forces and the general nature of innovation/discovery, you would see the same kind of economic activity without patents.
I disagree with the notion that capitalism does anything to channel creativity. In fact, I'm of the opinion that capitalism does more to hinder it.
In a capitalist society I have an incentive to hide every discovery I make. If other people have the same knowledge I have of process, equipment, or the market, I cannot benefit from it as much. So there is a great incentive in a capitalist society not to share any new discovery.
Right, which is why we need intellectual property protection inside of a capitalist framework.
Copyrights and patents re a good example of laws that temper a market for the mutual benefit of both producers and consumers.
(...despite how those laws have been abused recently.)
Even without abuse I don't see how intellectual property helps anything. If the process is better than the status quo, the firm it was discovered at will adopt it. Competition will adopt it as soon as they can determine the process. the only thing I think copyrights and patents really do is discourage competition. I think for these things to be good it would have to be true that without them discovery does not happen, and innovations from those discoveries would not happen. I do not think this is the case.
That is the entire point of a patent.
You invent a process, and patent it. You now have exclusive rights to that process for 17 years. Your competition can not use it, unless they pay you for it. But after 17 years, they will have free access to the process because the process must be described to replicate-able detail in the patent.
So you gain a benefit, legally assured exclusivity to your invention, and the invention becomes part of the public record so that eventually everyone can use it.
You patent it at the cost of competition. By preventing others from using the innovation, you are preventing your competition from developing the same process and implementing it, which would allow for greater competition. It is my view that the profit-generation that is allowed from the use of patents is only justifiable if the inventions that are patented would not exist without this system. I don't believe that is ever the case.
What I was trying to explain is that I believe that because of natural market forces and the general nature of innovation/discovery, you would see the same kind of economic activity without patents.
Are you trying to increase competition or increase innovation?
Because patents properly implemented actually allow for both since each is generally necessary for the other.
I disagree with the notion that capitalism does anything to channel creativity. In fact, I'm of the opinion that capitalism does more to hinder it.
In a capitalist society I have an incentive to hide every discovery I make. If other people have the same knowledge I have of process, equipment, or the market, I cannot benefit from it as much. So there is a great incentive in a capitalist society not to share any new discovery.
Right, which is why we need intellectual property protection inside of a capitalist framework.
Copyrights and patents re a good example of laws that temper a market for the mutual benefit of both producers and consumers.
(...despite how those laws have been abused recently.)
Even without abuse I don't see how intellectual property helps anything. If the process is better than the status quo, the firm it was discovered at will adopt it. Competition will adopt it as soon as they can determine the process. the only thing I think copyrights and patents really do is discourage competition. I think for these things to be good it would have to be true that without them discovery does not happen, and innovations from those discoveries would not happen. I do not think this is the case.
That is the entire point of a patent.
You invent a process, and patent it. You now have exclusive rights to that process for 17 years. Your competition can not use it, unless they pay you for it. But after 17 years, they will have free access to the process because the process must be described to replicate-able detail in the patent.
So you gain a benefit, legally assured exclusivity to your invention, and the invention becomes part of the public record so that eventually everyone can use it.
You patent it at the cost of competition. By preventing others from using the innovation, you are preventing your competition from developing the same process and implementing it, which would allow for greater competition. It is my view that the profit-generation that is allowed from the use of patents is only justifiable if the inventions that are patented would not exist without this system. I don't believe that is ever the case.
What I was trying to explain is that I believe that because of natural market forces and the general nature of innovation/discovery, you would see the same kind of economic activity without patents.
Are you trying to increase competition or increase innovation?
Because patents properly implemented actually allow for both since each is generally necessary for the other.
I'm skeptical that innovation can be increased dramatically in any fashion. In a society that is more free than not, I expect it to flourish. I am skeptical of the idea that there are any tangible benefits to society from patents. Whether that be increased competition, or an increase in the amount of innovation that takes place.
It is my view that patents hinder both innovation and competition.
The only way to have a genuinely free society is to have a post scarcity one.
Given that's not at option at this point you now have to deal with scarcity and the fact that people are going to try and take each other's scarce resources via one method or another.
So if you want someone to innovate you need for there to be a way for them to gain from that innovation. There's no point in developing some new amazing invention in your garage if IBM can just copy it and you have to keep on flipping burgers. Similarly, there's no point in IBM to work as hard at innovating if they can just copy anything anyone makes and dominate the market.
I disagree with your assertion that a society must be post-scarcity to be free. I find it to be a non-sequitor and don't see how it's related. If you don't have a government that is actively suppressing any advances or intellectual discussion you will see innovation.
IBM would innovate even if there was no patent protection. The workers at IBM who spend thousands of hours working with their equipment could not help themselves but think of a better way to do it. Their supervisors would be fools not to adopt any ideas they thought were good. The workers can't help themselves in the course of their work but try to innovate. Innovation is more a product of thousands of hours of work being put into things than it is the reward for doing it.
I imagine in such a system pretty much every company would buy a few of each other's products, take them apart, and adopt any aspect of it they thought was beneficial. In that world, innovation would be incredibly dynamic. In general a market can only support so many participants, so unless some company is continually offering something unique in the way of either price, service, reliability, or some other benefit it is likely to go out of business.
If some company comes along, and figures out they can make your same product cheaper or more interesting, why should they be stopped from actually trying to produce it?
This isn't a hard concept. Without some guarantee of being able to profit from an invention, nobody's going to sink big bucks into R&D. In fact, you've created a strong incentive to do nothing, copy the next guy's invention, and sell it more cheaply because you didn't have to pay to develop it.
This isn't a hard concept. Without some guarantee of being able to profit from an invention, nobody's going to sink big bucks into R&D. In fact, you've created a strong incentive to do nothing, copy the next guy's invention, and sell it more cheaply because you didn't have to pay to develop it.
If suggestions were made instead of in the way they are now, from you to your superiors, and instead to a managing body to be debated in front of meetings that all employees take part in it would be impossible for this to happen. Even the slightest level of democratization of work and profit would make this not happen.
So wait, you want to model a company after congress or parliament?
Because that's the situation you just described, where the best talker, the best connected, the most popular, ie, the best person at politics is the one who's ideas get implemented.
Really, we already know how crappy that turns out.
I'm going to explain patents for an industry that I'm currently involved in: prescription drugs.
It takes approximately 10 years and $100,000,000 to R&D a new drug, to the point where the FDA approves it for general use.
It takes approximately 6 months and $100,000 to reverse engineer that drug well enough to make an exact replica (aka, generic) of it for sale.
Without a 17 year patent, the generic drug makers would be making generic versions of every drug within 6 months of FDA approval. It would be impossible for the original drug maker to recoup a $100,000,000 investment within 6 months. Thus, you would never see a new drug. None. Ever. Because you'd go broke.
That's obviously worst case scenario for removal of patents, but that's exactly what happens between the prescription drug makers and the generic drug makers.
Without a 17 year patent, the generic drug makers would be making generic versions of every drug within 6 months of FDA approval. It would be impossible for the original drug maker to recoup a $100,000,000 investment within 6 months. Thus, you would never see a new drug. None. Ever. Because you'd go broke.
Unless you obtained a different source of funding: eg, taxpayers. Government grants.
We already do this for drugs that affect diseases so rare that it would be impossible for a pharma company to recoup R&D costs through on-patent sales alone. (http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/)
But I agree with your general point. Patents are why we have a drug industry. Without patent protection, we'd need massive corporate subsidies.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think the problem with the patent system as it exists today (at least in the US) is twofold:
1. The USPO will essentially grant any patent. They are poorly funded and mainly exist to keep records. If you've a patent lawyer on your side you can ram whatever you want through.
2. The enforcement system is only accessible by the wealthy. If patents were actually limited to novel ideas this wouldn't be as much of an issue. As it stands, anything you invent can be stolen by a large corp with a portfolio of generic patents. If you try to sue them you'll be drowned in lawyers. Hell, they'll probably end up suing you for infringing on one of their bogus patents.
1 is fixable at least.
I've yet to hear a good way of fixing 2, in this specific case or in the general "good luck suing a billion dollar corp" sense.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
The pharmaceutical industry is definitely on the list of things I'd nationalize and/or socialize if I were God-King of America.
I can't quite jive with whole-hearted communism--the different variations are all naively utopian ideologies, same as their right-wing counterpart ideologies. But I'd nationalize and socialize the shit out of a lot of things. I'd prefer starting from communism and working right than starting at anarcho-capitalism and working left, that's for sure.
Market socialism might not be a bad endgame, although I know a lot of communists don't like market forces sticking around, or don't like it when you talk about socialism as the end goal and not a means to utopian communism.
I think the problem with the patent system as it exists today (at least in the US) is twofold:
1. The USPO will essentially grant any patent. They are poorly funded and mainly exist to keep records. If you've a patent lawyer on your side you can ram whatever you want through.
2. The enforcement system is only accessible by the wealthy. If patents were actually limited to novel ideas this wouldn't be as much of an issue. As it stands, anything you invent can be stolen by a large corp with a portfolio of generic patents. If you try to sue them you'll be drowned in lawyers. Hell, they'll probably end up suing you for infringing on one of their bogus patents.
1 is fixable at least.
I've yet to hear a good way of fixing 2, in this specific case or in the general "good luck suing a billion dollar corp" sense.
Fixing 1 would be a good start on 2. If corporations don't have a library of bullshit patents to hammer you with, they lose a lot of their advantage. It's obviously pretty silly that we have the big corporations playing patent MAD.
I think the problem with the patent system as it exists today (at least in the US) is twofold:
1. The USPO will essentially grant any patent. They are poorly funded and mainly exist to keep records. If you've a patent lawyer on your side you can ram whatever you want through.
2. The enforcement system is only accessible by the wealthy. If patents were actually limited to novel ideas this wouldn't be as much of an issue. As it stands, anything you invent can be stolen by a large corp with a portfolio of generic patents. If you try to sue them you'll be drowned in lawyers. Hell, they'll probably end up suing you for infringing on one of their bogus patents.
1 is fixable at least.
I've yet to hear a good way of fixing 2, in this specific case or in the general "good luck suing a billion dollar corp" sense.
I imagine in such a system pretty much every company would buy a few of each other's products, take them apart, and adopt any aspect of it they thought was beneficial. In that world, innovation would be incredibly dynamic. In general a market can only support so many participants, so unless some company is continually offering something unique in the way of either price, service, reliability, or some other benefit it is likely to go out of business.
If some company comes along, and figures out they can make your same product cheaper or more interesting, why should they be stopped from actually trying to produce it?
Because now you, Joe Shmloe, have no reason to actually innovate something new.
Because whatever you do make some bigger company is going to reproduce and sell cheaper than you ever could.
Posts
That is the entire point of a patent.
You invent a process, and patent it. You now have exclusive rights to that process for 17 years. Your competition can not use it, unless they pay you for it. But after 17 years, they will have free access to the process because the process must be described to replicate-able detail in the patent.
So you gain a benefit, legally assured exclusivity to your invention, and the invention becomes part of the public record so that eventually everyone can use it.
In a worker-co-op or profit-sharing company even if you didn't get credit you would still share in the profits. If suggestions were made instead of in the way they are now, from you to your superiors, and instead to a managing body to be debated in front of meetings that all employees take part in it would be impossible for this to happen. Even the slightest level of democratization of work and profit would make this not happen.
You patent it at the cost of competition. By preventing others from using the innovation, you are preventing your competition from developing the same process and implementing it, which would allow for greater competition. It is my view that the profit-generation that is allowed from the use of patents is only justifiable if the inventions that are patented would not exist without this system. I don't believe that is ever the case.
What I was trying to explain is that I believe that because of natural market forces and the general nature of innovation/discovery, you would see the same kind of economic activity without patents.
Are you trying to increase competition or increase innovation?
Because patents properly implemented actually allow for both since each is generally necessary for the other.
I'm skeptical that innovation can be increased dramatically in any fashion. In a society that is more free than not, I expect it to flourish. I am skeptical of the idea that there are any tangible benefits to society from patents. Whether that be increased competition, or an increase in the amount of innovation that takes place.
It is my view that patents hinder both innovation and competition.
Given that's not at option at this point you now have to deal with scarcity and the fact that people are going to try and take each other's scarce resources via one method or another.
So if you want someone to innovate you need for there to be a way for them to gain from that innovation. There's no point in developing some new amazing invention in your garage if IBM can just copy it and you have to keep on flipping burgers. Similarly, there's no point in IBM to work as hard at innovating if they can just copy anything anyone makes and dominate the market.
IBM would innovate even if there was no patent protection. The workers at IBM who spend thousands of hours working with their equipment could not help themselves but think of a better way to do it. Their supervisors would be fools not to adopt any ideas they thought were good. The workers can't help themselves in the course of their work but try to innovate. Innovation is more a product of thousands of hours of work being put into things than it is the reward for doing it.
If some company comes along, and figures out they can make your same product cheaper or more interesting, why should they be stopped from actually trying to produce it?
See: the mobile app development market.
Because that's the situation you just described, where the best talker, the best connected, the most popular, ie, the best person at politics is the one who's ideas get implemented.
Really, we already know how crappy that turns out.
It takes approximately 10 years and $100,000,000 to R&D a new drug, to the point where the FDA approves it for general use.
It takes approximately 6 months and $100,000 to reverse engineer that drug well enough to make an exact replica (aka, generic) of it for sale.
Without a 17 year patent, the generic drug makers would be making generic versions of every drug within 6 months of FDA approval. It would be impossible for the original drug maker to recoup a $100,000,000 investment within 6 months. Thus, you would never see a new drug. None. Ever. Because you'd go broke.
That's obviously worst case scenario for removal of patents, but that's exactly what happens between the prescription drug makers and the generic drug makers.
Unless you obtained a different source of funding: eg, taxpayers. Government grants.
We already do this for drugs that affect diseases so rare that it would be impossible for a pharma company to recoup R&D costs through on-patent sales alone. (http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/)
But I agree with your general point. Patents are why we have a drug industry. Without patent protection, we'd need massive corporate subsidies.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
1. The USPO will essentially grant any patent. They are poorly funded and mainly exist to keep records. If you've a patent lawyer on your side you can ram whatever you want through.
2. The enforcement system is only accessible by the wealthy. If patents were actually limited to novel ideas this wouldn't be as much of an issue. As it stands, anything you invent can be stolen by a large corp with a portfolio of generic patents. If you try to sue them you'll be drowned in lawyers. Hell, they'll probably end up suing you for infringing on one of their bogus patents.
1 is fixable at least.
I've yet to hear a good way of fixing 2, in this specific case or in the general "good luck suing a billion dollar corp" sense.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I can't quite jive with whole-hearted communism--the different variations are all naively utopian ideologies, same as their right-wing counterpart ideologies. But I'd nationalize and socialize the shit out of a lot of things. I'd prefer starting from communism and working right than starting at anarcho-capitalism and working left, that's for sure.
Market socialism might not be a bad endgame, although I know a lot of communists don't like market forces sticking around, or don't like it when you talk about socialism as the end goal and not a means to utopian communism.
Fixing 1 would be a good start on 2. If corporations don't have a library of bullshit patents to hammer you with, they lose a lot of their advantage. It's obviously pretty silly that we have the big corporations playing patent MAD.
#2 still happens - rarely, but its not always megacorps steamrolling mom and pops.
Because now you, Joe Shmloe, have no reason to actually innovate something new.
Because whatever you do make some bigger company is going to reproduce and sell cheaper than you ever could.