Thread: Enjoy the circus, Intellectual Property

Its good for consumers but basically screws over independent artist and writers.

Yeah... and before long there won't be any independent artists or writers, and then there won't be any consumers either.

I've never met an independent artist or writer that was primarily motivated by money. They do it because they have an artistic urge to create. The more people they have appreciating their art, the happier they are. In the case of an author, I can buy the book from them. J.K. Rowling might be out a half a billion a year but I have no problem with that. She won't starve and will have the resources to pursue her art.

Again, in the case of films, we can choose to buy the film from them if we want to support their work. This doesn't have to be as complicated as it sounds. A company that wants to distribute a film could just give x percent of it's' profits to the company that originally made the film. I could choose to only purchase films (or films from certain writers/directors) from such companies.

In the case of medicine, it's a bit trickier. I personally favor socializing the development of medicine. I'd be curious to see what Blueline thinks about it.

What does it matter if their main goal is money or not? You think just because they enjoy doing it, they should be dirt poor? A lot of people like their jobs, that doesn't mean they want to do it for free.

When did I say that they should be dirt poor? I didn't. I said that it wouldn't eliminate many classes of art and then provided a mechanism by which artists could still be rewarded for their work if the consumers wanted them to be.

Fun discussion.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

When did I say that they should be dirt poor? I didn't. I said that it wouldn't eliminate many classes of art and then provided a mechanism by which artists could still be rewarded for their work if the consumers wanted them to be.

So the major part of a technological economy is going to be based upon charity? It just wouldn't work. Most people by far are morally disingenuous and would never pay anyone for anything no matter how good they thought it was.

There are many more examples apart from the couple I gave. Another issue is the implication that people would be able to do these things largely for personal enjoyment, in spare time. If IP does not bring in money, then there can be no support for jobs involved in creating IP. Development of technologies requires a person to devote their working lives to educating themselves and then researching. How do these people survive?

Originally Posted by Xei

So the major part of a technological economy is going to be based upon charity? It just wouldn't work. Most people by far are morally disingenuous and would never pay anyone for anything no matter how good they thought it was.

I don't think that art is the major part of a technological economy. Hard goods would still have to be bought as I've already outlined. Nobody would have a monopoly on the production of any given device. Anybody could build and sell any device that they were able to create. Again, as I've outlined, changes to the designs could be made incrementally and would provide short term, selective advantages until the changes propagated to the other manufactures at which point a new idea for an incremental change occurred. This is mirroring a process in nature but I just can't think of which one it is right now ...

There are many more examples apart from the couple I gave. Another issue is the implication that people would be able to do these things largely for personal enjoyment, in spare time. If IP does not bring in money, then there can be no support for jobs involved in creating IP.

But this isn't a necessary implication at all. For hard goods, it's not at all unthinkable that a mid size company (which I think is what would be rapidly selected for: we can discuss if you want) would be able to hire a few people to "tinker" and improve things. This is a very effective way of working. Incrementally, one small step at a time. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the jobs that are involved in creating IP are enjoyable to a certain percentage of the population. That is, they are the sort of thing which people would do for a hobby. While their would certainly still be companies paying people to come up with ideas, a larger portion of the work could be taken over by hobbyists. I have no problem with that. It's worked great with software. You say that that's not a valid point because software costs nothing to produce but that's a small obstacle to get around. It would be in the interest of the companies to fund efforts to get the necessary tools and education into the hands of people that wanted them and were qualified to play. It would allow them to share and distribute the cost of coming up with new ideas. It's always seemed that people that are "playing" (that is, genuinely enjoy what they are doing) are far more effective than people that are "working" (that is would rather be doing something else). Of course there's not fun stuff that needs to be done but (a) some people have the discipline to work through it anyways for the rewards of completing a project and (b) nobody's said that people won't be getting paid to do it other than you. People get paid to work on Linux, Ubuntu, Gnome, etc, because companies have an interest in selling support. Another business model is evolving. I see no reason that this couldn't happen for any other field.

Ultimately, you seem to be arguing from lack of imagination.

. Development of technologies requires a person to devote their working lives to educating themselves and then researching. How do these people survive?

I'm all for the state subsidizing education 100%. This includes the cost of tuition for whatever school the student can gain admittance to and the cost of living while the student is in school and making sufficient grades. And all this for as many degrees as the student cares to get. Until they're 83 years old.

Again, I'd be curious as to the libertarian perspective on this.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

I'm all for the state subsidizing education 100%. This includes the cost of tuition for whatever school the student can gain admittance to and the cost of living while the student is in school and making sufficient grades. And all this for as many degrees as the student cares to get. Until they're 83 years old.

Again, I'd be curious as to the libertarian perspective on this.

Well of course you know what a libertarian is going to say. We would ask, "How are you going to pay for it?" Then if you are like the usual politician you reply with, significant increase in taxes, or devalue our currency and print more magic money! In which case we simply shakes her head and sigh, saying. "Yea, I thought so." In all seriousness any libertarian would be happy to support such a plan, if you could pay for it without screwing everyone else over. The problem is, you need to screw someone over in order to pay for it, and usually its the tax payers.

And of course I'd screw the military over to pay for it. There's plenty of money to come out of their budget. But most politicians wouldn't say that. Also, we could stop sending people to jail for victimless crimes. I don't have numbers on hand but I imagine that each person that wasn't in prison for a victimless crime could equate to at least one person in school on a state sponsored tuition. I guess it's confusing from where I placed it but I was more referring to the notion of "Intellectual Property" in general than that particular idea.

Honestly, I've never liked that phrase. I'm not even really sure what it's supposed to mean.

The problem is we need to cut all that stuff out, just to pay for the things we already have but can't pay for. Before we can even really discuss that, we would need to cut all the spending and get our insane debt under control. Though if we can get our debt down to 0, I would be happy to talk about it, as long as we could pay for it as we go.

Or we could just cut money out of the equation altogether.
When we have robots in 10-20 years, or maybe sooner, to do all the menial tasks which nobody really likes doing, we can get rid of money and people will do things because they like to.

Teachers teach to teach, people learn to learn, people build things to build things and this will create a happier and more productive world because people play to play (as opposed to work so that they can play later).

I think this is inevitable.

Also, even with money, removing IP will move progress along greatly because companies have people already that come up with new ideas all the time but they don't want to implement them or produce them yet because they want people to buy up the old product as much as possible before they bring out the new and improved one which everyone will want to buy up ad infinitum.

However, I also agree with the OP somewhat. Stop worrying, sit back and enjoy the ride.
Because everything is ultimately pointless and your life does not matter, nor does anything that has ever existed.



Beautifully fucking illustrated.

Yes but we're not currently living in a post-scarcity economy are we? -_-

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

I don't think that art is the major part of a technological economy. Hard goods would still have to be bought as I've already outlined. Nobody would have a monopoly on the production of any given device. Anybody could build and sell any device that they were able to create. Again, as I've outlined, changes to the designs could be made incrementally and would provide short term, selective advantages until the changes propagated to the other manufactures at which point a new idea for an incremental change occurred. This is mirroring a process in nature but I just can't think of which one it is right now ...

But this isn't a necessary implication at all. For hard goods, it's not at all unthinkable that a mid size company (which I think is what would be rapidly selected for: we can discuss if you want) would be able to hire a few people to "tinker" and improve things. This is a very effective way of working. Incrementally, one small step at a time. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the jobs that are involved in creating IP are enjoyable to a certain percentage of the population. That is, they are the sort of thing which people would do for a hobby. While their would certainly still be companies paying people to come up with ideas, a larger portion of the work could be taken over by hobbyists. I have no problem with that. It's worked great with software. You say that that's not a valid point because software costs nothing to produce but that's a small obstacle to get around. It would be in the interest of the companies to fund efforts to get the necessary tools and education into the hands of people that wanted them and were qualified to play. It would allow them to share and distribute the cost of coming up with new ideas. It's always seemed that people that are "playing" (that is, genuinely enjoy what they are doing) are far more effective than people that are "working" (that is would rather be doing something else). Of course there's not fun stuff that needs to be done but (a) some people have the discipline to work through it anyways for the rewards of completing a project and (b) nobody's said that people won't be getting paid to do it other than you. People get paid to work on Linux, Ubuntu, Gnome, etc, because companies have an interest in selling support. Another business model is evolving. I see no reason that this couldn't happen for any other field.

Ultimately, you seem to be arguing from lack of imagination.

You seem to be arguing from the assertion that incremental steps are somehow capable of creating entire technologies.

Are you really saying that people tinkering with stuff every so often in their shed is going to create LCD displays? This is ridiculous, such things first require years of education, and then hard, full-time work, with equipment that costs a lot of money.

And you also seem to be saying that companies will have an incentive to put money into minor changes even though they clearly have no incentive to develop major changes. Why? If any other company can instantly start producing products with the same changes, big or small, then there is a negative incentive for any company to put money into development for anything. The only advantage in your model was gained by the time it takes for the change to 'propagate'. If there is no IP, why should it take any time at all? If development of new ideas is open, then as soon as the new idea emerges, everybody can use it.

About the charity thing: and what about non-physical products..? You'll notice that Mario likes to thank a lot of these posts but whenever you have an actual discussion about this he bails because his views are shown to be inconsistent and he also shown to not even stick to his own views. He is always saying 'I want to check out if it's good before I buy it', but he invariably forgets about that last bit when he finds out it's pretty good. He says 'I want to find out if a company makes good products and then I'll pay for their future ones' but he never gets round to that either, when push comes to shove it's always 'perhaps the company made a mistake, I'll just judge the product by its own merits this time and pay for it if it's good' and then of course he forgets to do that bit when it turned out it was as good as all the other company's products.

This is 95% of the people in your economy. It just doesn't work for chrissakes.

Originally Posted by tommo

Or we could just cut money out of the equation altogether.
When we have robots in 10-20 years, or maybe sooner, to do all the menial tasks which nobody really likes doing, we can get rid of money and people will do things because they like to.

Teachers teach to teach, people learn to learn, people build things to build things and this will create a happier and more productive world because people play to play (as opposed to work so that they can play later).

I think this is inevitable.

Also, even with money, removing IP will move progress along greatly because companies have people already that come up with new ideas all the time but they don't want to implement them or produce them yet because they want people to buy up the old product as much as possible before they bring out the new and improved one which everyone will want to buy up ad infinitum.

I would suggest looking at the following:

Venus Needs Some Austrians - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily
YouTube - Freedomain Radio Debates The Venus Project/Zeitgeist Moving Forward (Peter Joseph)

And maybe read up on Mises's calculation argument.

It would probably give raise to corporate spies, and much more security on products so that no one can tamper with them to find out how they are made. Then when you buy a new car or something, you can't even take a look under the hood without special equipment that only the dealer has, and so you can only get it repaired by them.

Originally Posted by Xei

Yes but we're not currently living in a post-scarcity economy are we? -_-


You seem to be arguing from the assertion that incremental steps are somehow capable of creating entire technologies.

Are you really saying that people tinkering with stuff every so often in their shed is going to create LCD displays? This is ridiculous, such things first require years of education, and then hard, full-time work, with equipment that costs a lot of money.

Why not? It's happened before, plenty of times. The first planes were all built in this manner. The Automobile, by Karl Benz, and later Henry Ford >>>>IMPROVED ON IT<<<<, light bulb, telephone, internet. Actually, I really can't think of any worth while invention that hasn't originated or come straight from someone tinkering in a shed.

BLUELINE- I'll check that out soon.

Alric - As long as these "security" measures are as useless as the playstation's anti piracy protection, well, I think we'll be alright.
If you can't remember it, you basically had to draw a line with a permanent marker around the outside of the disk, so the laser just skipped over it.

I know that currently most things like that really do suck. However if things came to the point where the companies entire lively hood relied on not letting out any secrets, I suspect they would get far more serious in the security they have to stop people from stealing their plans.

This thread is now about Intellectual Property (IP).

The only thing they could do is not release the product, which would be pointless. Even then someone would leak the plans. Nothing is unhackable.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

This thread is now about Intellectual Property (IP).

how did that happen?

Originally Posted by poopman

how did that happen?

I dun it with ma powa

i know this isnt really contributing much to the conversation. but......ENJOY THE CIRCUS. its great having tiger blood

Originally Posted by poopman

i know this isnt really contributing much to the conversation. but......ENJOY THE CIRCUS. its great having tiger blood

What's tiger blood? Is it "give up and be a loser while laughing at the world's obstacles" liquid? Are you convincing yourself that it's courage instead of cowardice?

And what exactly is it that makes you believe we're heading for an apocalypse that no one can change? Obama? Peak oil? Global warming? The global economy? New world order? Big brother? 2012? North Korea? Democratic uprisings? All of the above? What is the point of your post?

Personally, I still don't think things today have gotten as bad as WWII, or times of struggle before that.

Oh but they will. Just wait.