[extropy-chat] The Golden Transcendence

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

I just finished reading the third part of John C. Wright's Golden Age
trilogy, and I am awed. As I suspected, Wright allows humanity an escape
from the eons of dignified dying outlined in Phoenix Exultant - I was
convinced that a dynamical optimist like Wright wouldn't let humanity go out
with a quadrillion-year whimper. Add to it insights and epiphanies galore,
some unexpected but smart (rather than, as it sometimes happens, confusing
and stilted) plot twists, wry humor, ebullient libertarianism and an
explanation of some hitherto mysterious elements of his world history and
politics, and you have a glorious conclusion to the best s-f trilogy since
Varley's "Titan" (AISI).

The one issue I don't understand are the IP laws in the Golden Ecumene - are
they statutory or merely contractual? If statutory, why are they
(apparently) time-unlimited, which might result in inefficiencies (and
Wright doesn't say how inefficiencies are avoided), and if they are
contractual, how do they become universally enforced? I could imagine the
following argument in favor of IP held in perpetuity - since the IP owner
receives the full market value of his invention, there is a strong stimulus
to provide new inventions - both to earn and to avoid paying for older IP.
But then, if the inventor of the wheel was still alive, we would be paying
him royalties on every car, including toy trucks. On the other hand,
contractual IP would assure return commensurate with effort spent on
research while avoiding perpetual royalties but Wright specifically mentions
the Parliament as the venue where the scope of IP was decided in the Golden
Ecumene.

All this doesn't detract from Wright's vision, however. Highly recommended.

Rafal