[ExI] Lessons from Tesla?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 8:33 PM, Dan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, September 29, 2014 4:45 PM, Kelly Anderson <
> kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd have to see evidence for that.
>
> If you read "The Most Powerful Idea in the World - A STORY OF
>
> STEAM, INDUSTRY, AND INVENTION" by WILLIAM ROSEN, I think you
>
> may end up agreeing with his hypothesis that the British patent
>
> system was one of the most influential elements promoting the
>
> industrial revolution.
>
>
> I admit I haven't read that book... yet! :)
>

If you want evidence of my hypothesis, then you can read the book. If you
like I have an MP3 of it...


> Yes, I'm a libertarian bordering on anarchy. But one of the prime
>
> roles of government is that of protecting property from thieves.
>
>
> For me, as you probably know, a libertarian who is not an anarchist is
> inconsistent.
>

The Leviathan argues that full anarchy leads to unproductive violent
vendetta circles. I don't think we want to go back to that. Pinker makes
similar arguments. Maybe this is utilitarian, but damn it, I don't want to
have to worry about being murdered every time I leave the house.


> The only difficulty here is whether you see intellectual property
>
> as a valid form of property. And if it is, then you must concede
>
> that the government has a legitimate interest (or rather the People
>
> have a legitimate interest) in protecting that property (life,
>
> liberty and property in the original) from others.
>
>
> There are serious problems with intellectual property inside the
> libertarian ambit. But let's say there is valid intellectual property, a
> bit problem then would be that the utilitarian argument would be irrelevant
> -- just like an argument that slavery was more efficient would be
> irrelevant. And it's harder to see why intellectual property would expire
> as it does under the current -- save for a ulitarian argument about it.
> (You wouldn't, as a libertarian, I trust, say that your ownership to your
> car expired after seventeen years simply because someone else might have
> produced your car by that time.)
>

The whole purpose of the patent system is to propose a trade. Yes, you do
have infinite ownership of your intellectual property under trade secret
law. However, to promote the reproduction of productive memes, we will
allow you to have EXCLUSIVITY on your idea for a period of time if you will
SHARE the idea with others.

We do not know how to build a Stradivarius violin today because he was
protected ONLY by trade secret, and not by patent law.


> Thus software should be protected, IMHO, like authorship, by
>
> copyright law, but not by patent law.
>
>
> I'm not sure that would prevent much here. And the duration of a copyright
> is much longer.
>

The difference is that copyright protection is very narrow. You can't
outright copy my stuff. Patent law protects ANYONE doing the same thing by
SIMILAR means. It is much broader, and more open to being used for evil
ends by malicious lawyers.


> Litigation around copyrights now can be all over the place, with things
> like song writers being sued for having a melody similar to another song.
> Doesn't always succeed, of course, and I'm not saying you must either agree
> with all aspects of current intellectual property law or embrace an anti-IP
> position.
>

It's not perfect either.


> If you disagree that intellectual property is actual property
>
> in ANY case, then we have a different argument on our hands
>
>
> I see it as very problematic, especially from a libertarian point of view.
> I don't think it meshes well with libertarian theories of property. Of
> course, that said, yes, many libertarians do support intellectual property.
> But this isn't a numbers game, but whether it actually makes sense from
> that perspective.
>
> But the argument I was raising here was two-fold:
>
> 1. Government granted patents to the Wrights in the first place, so this
> wasn't like a market anarchy in patents that the government suddenly
> intervened in because of war. It was merely trading one intervention for
> another.
>
> 2. It seems like the case for patents as spurs to innovation is not a
> slamdunk one
>
> and in that case, I will side with Benjamin Franklin, who has
>
> sufficient libertarian and capitalistic cajones for my purposes.
>
>
> This is an alien way of looking at things to me. I don't seek out a figure
> from history to rally around. I try to see if an argument has merit,
> regardless of who made it. In any case, Franklin was somewhat against
> patents, wasn't he? I've heard that he didn't patent any of his inventions,
> but I'm not well read on his life.
>

He didn't patent SOME of his inventions. The lightning rod, for example,
because he was more interested in preventing house fires than making more
money. Could have had something to do with the fact that he was already one
of the richest men in America at the time.

My recollection though is that Franklin supported the idea of having a
patent system. I am not 100% sure of this, and my Internet isn't working
properly at the moment so I'll have to double check this fact at some
future time.

-Kelly
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