From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Fri Mar 07 2003 - 15:15:45 MST
> (Dickey, Michael F <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com>):
>
> I would certainly be interested to hear what extropians think of Patents (at
> least, mechanical innovation patents) There is a large portion of
> libertarians here, and I generally consider myself one (a 'neo'-libertarian
> I guess to be more accurate) but I do not see much value in the arguments
> against IP. They seem to center around 'see, there has been plenty of
> innovation without patents, the wheel, steam engines, etc' to which I would
> respond 'yeah, but those took thousands of years to come about'
First of all, let's change the rules: the burden of proof is on those
who wish to support patents, not those who wish to remove them, because
freedom should always be the default. Patents reduce freedom.
Second, even as someone who opposes the idea, I don't deny for a moment
that they encourage innovation. Indeed, that's one reason I oppose them:
they encourage innovation /for its own sake/ over other things like
craftsmanship, gradual refinement and evolution, collaborative
development, competition, and other things I think are more important
than mere innovation. If people invent novel things, that's fine, but
I also want people to make not-so-novel things, interesting combinations,
refinements, and customizations of existing things. I want more people
competing to find cheaper ways to produce things. I want people to find
and exploit more markets for things than the inventor ever imagined.
The idea that inventors inherently deserve reward is the communist
fallacy of the labor theory of value: the totally discredited idea that
the value of a thing is inherent in its creation. That's simply not
true, and policies based on that idea are doomed to failure, as all
socialist systems have been. Value is created by /demand/, and so what
should be rewarded is the ability to fulfill demand, whether by
innovation or other means. Without patents, innovation will still be
rewarded /when it fulfills a demand/, but not otherwise, which is how
it should be.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Mar 07 2003 - 15:20:51 MST