Comments on: Does Monopoly Create Wealth?

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:39:04 +0000

Swiss researcher claims markets promote inventions better than patents.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Patent_system_needs_overhaul_say_researchers.html?siteSect=105&sid=10449654&cKey=1237052962000&ty=st&sb=red

“Markets are much better than patents in stimulating intellectual curiosity and discovery, according to Swiss-led research.

An international team, led by Professor Peter Bossaerts from Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology, carried out experiments to quantify the ways patent systems and market forces might influence someone to invent and solve intellectual problems.”

By: Gil

Gil — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:35:54 +0000

Dang it! S. Barta beat to the punch! Oh well.

But is there something unreasonable of saying “could you imagine someone owning the colour ‘orange’?” “People wouldn’t have the right to wear orange clothes or paint anything orange without pay a fee to do so” or something like that? Call me an I.P. dimwit but I thought you couldn’t copyright and patent something since copyrights and patents are different or so I thought. Yet is this argument any different from “what if the government recognises some form of property ownership without a ‘reasonable amount of homesteading’”? Or “what if all the land is owned by someone such that everyone who doesn’t have land is a potential trespasser of some sort”?

By: Silas Barta

Silas Barta — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:11:33 +0000

Yes, monopoly creates wealth. Absolutely. A monopoly on a factory, a monopoly on one’s own body, a monopoly on a plot of land …

Oh, yes, I know, you were just talking about monopolies that are, like, bad and stuff. Which proves your point that … bad monopolies are … bad. Yeah.

By: newson

newson — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:47:28 +0000

there are so many crazily earnest, and just plain crazy comments on this topic, it’s a relief to find the odd contra!

By: Contra

Contra — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:11:49 +0000

Dear Jeffrey,

I was just messing around I thought it would be funny to travel back in time and use IP to prevent IP from ever coming into existence. Of course that’s a logical contradiction, which is why it may become the plot of a blockbuster movie!

By: J Cortez

J Cortez — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:51:52 +0000

Bravo.

Thanks for the posts on this book.

By: jeffrey

jeffrey — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:05:32 +0000

that’s like saying that the invention of public schools was an inevitable spinoff of the need to be educated, and hence we should be happy in ignorance, which is precisely where the people who don’t read this book will end up.

By: Contra

Contra — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:00:38 +0000

Dear Mr. Tucker,

If you followed your argument to its logical conclusion, you would be forced to take a time machine back in time, invent the printing press, patent it and prevent anyone from producing it, thereby preventing the emergence of IP. But that is where your argument falls apart, because you could not have prevented IP from coming into existence without patenting the printing press, and you could not have done THAT without IP!

I hope you can now see that IP is not only inevitable, but impervious to science-fictional assault. Good day to you sir.

By: jeffrey

jeffrey — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:42:51 +0000

this chapter is online

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/imbookfinal02.pdf

Don’t trust my rendering of it. have a look.

By: heuristic

heuristic — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:38:07 +0000

“Google: it runs Linux, an open-source OS”

And Google also has many software patents.

By: heuristic

heuristic — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:11:52 +0000

“Thus did Microsoft make no effort to protect its IP in the early days”

Hmm, so the story that their big break was their ownership of the operating system for the IBM PC, is a myth?

By: luisdiego22002

luisdiego22002 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:44:05 +0000

If intellectual monopoly was desirable then, we would have to pay royalties for everything from the discoveries of the wheel on up. It’s just mercantilism pure and simple Like L.Rockwell says: -liberty is not a matter of public policy.