Re: The Great Divide

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 08/25/04 

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:19:14 GMT

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:38:08 -0500, "Jim Blair" <jeb@wisc.edu> wrote:

><royls@telus.net> wrote in message news:4124ddea.3722001@news.telus.net...
>> On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:22:31 -0500, "Jim Blair" <jeb@wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >I have worked with research scientists in several different jobs, and I
>have
>> >yet to meet one that does not care about being paid.
>>
>> Sample bias. Duh. If you played pro sports, you'd never play on the
>> same team with an amateur. That doesn't mean there aren't any
>> amateurs.
>
>Research is no longer an amateur sport. Note that early on the US
>government thought that patents would stimulate invention. And it has.

That is the post hoc fallacy. Invention was also increasing rapidly
before patents, so it is not justified to claim that patents were
responsible for the increase. There was also invention in places that
did not have patents.

>Earlier Mark Monson (I think?) correctly described a patient as being like a
>"Keep Out" sign. And if farmers could not make others keep out of their
>fields, why would they plow and plant crops? How could they make money from
>farming if after they invested in plowing and planting only to see others
>harvest the crops?

Right. If we want people to sow, they must be assured of the right to
reap, which means that non-sowers must be denied the liberty to reap.
But by farming that land, the sower also gets, _and_denies_to_others_,
a benefit of which he is not the creator: the advantage conferred by
use of that land. He should rightly make restitution for that
advantage to the community that creates it.

Similar reasoning applies to patents. The inventor only creates part
of the value. He should pay for the rest. I have explained how this
could be done _without_ issuing monopoly privileges.

>Note that there has been a long history of conflict between farmers and
>ranchers who believe in "open range: their cows or sheep should be free to
>graze everywhere, even in the gardens and fields of the farmers. The
>musical OKLAHOMA! is set against this conflict in the US west, and it is a
>factor in the current Sudan problem. But clearly farmers need to be able to
>make outsiders "keep out" if enough food is going to be produced. Keeping
>the cattle from grazing in the corn fields is not "rent seeking".

Actually, it is, as long as the community is not being paid the land
rent. But so is putting the cattle in the corn fields.

>> >And who would pay them for working on only
>> >non-patientable solutions?
>>
>> If all solutions were unpatentable, lots of companies would pay them
>> for working on finding the _best_ solutions, instead of only the
>> patentable ones.
>
>Why would any company spend millions to develop and test a new medicine or a
>new product when anyone could then copy it and sell it?

To make money. Corporations already spend millions to develop and
test unpatentable products that others can copy and sell. They just
make sure they do it better. Universities also spend millions on
unpatentable research (though far less than they would if they were
not also tempted by Mammon), with no hope of recouping their
expenditures directly.

>While it may take hundreds of million of dollars to find and test the
>formula for a new antibiotic or medicine, someone can determine the
>structure and mass produce it for much less than that.

The testing is not part of the natural economic situation, but an
arbitrary hurdle established by government; to get drug makers to jump
this hurdle, government must offer them rents on the other side. But
if the hurdle was removed, so would be the rationale for the rents.
If the hurdle has to stay, just make all the potential providers jump
it. I.e., if a brand name drug has gained approval, approve only the
brand name drug, not the generic. So the knockoff maker would have to
get approval for its own brand, by doing the same tests.

>So the smart short
>term strategy would be to wait for someone ELSE to develop and market a new
>medicine and then copy and produce it.

But if there were no patents, they would soon see that the smart
producers were relying on their own in-house technology, and realize
they would have to do some research too.

>> >Probably only academic departments that have
>> >independent funding.
>>
>> False and absurd. Companies have technical problems they need solved,
>> and they also want to develop new products that solve problems for
>> their customers. In the absence of patents, companies that spent no
>> money developing their products and production technology would go
>> broke, outcompeted by companies that did.
>
>Companies that spent million (billions?) to develop a product would lose out
>to the competition that just copied what they made and sold it for less.

Not at all. It is not so easy to copy products well enough to
replicate their quality. You can get knockoffs of Gucci luggage,
Rolex watches, etc., but they are not nearly as good as the real
things. The Soviets tried to copy Western military equipment and
other technology of all sorts, and almost always failed miserably.

I do support protection for brand names, as knockoffs are defrauding
the consumer.

>> >> >College professors like to publish so they can get tenure.
>> >>
>> >> Right. They don' nee' no steenkin' patents to make them spill
>> >> everything they know.
>> >
>> >But if in their research they find something that is patientable, they
>file
>> >a patient.
>>
>> Of course. Just as if you stumble on a gold deposit, you stake a
>> claim and either sell it or try to raise capital for a mine, rather
>> than keeping the location secret and mining it yourself at night. The
>> legal ability to stake the claim does not create the gold, though. It
>> just makes the mining open and orderly, and usually more profitable
>> for the discoverer.
>
>How about staking a claim on land and then fencing it off and planting corn
>or wheat?

That doesn't give you rightful ownership of the land. Only of the
corn or wheat.

>I say that is closer to the patent situation. People seldom just stumble
>onto a new drug or new device. It is more likely the result of effort.

So? The point, above, was that non-patentability does not stop people
from doing and publishing tons of research.

>> >> >Only non-patientable research is published in academic journals.
>> >>
>> >> That is false and ridiculous.
>> >
>> >??? Name on thing that was published in an academis journal and then
>> >patented.
>>
>> ?? You need to work on your English language skills. The fact that
>> publication places something in the public domain does not mean that
>> only things that are in the public domain get published. I have
>> certainly read of cases where patentable research was placed in the
>> public domain by academic publication as a public service. Whereon it
>> became unpatentable, as intended.
>
>Possibly a few. But I can't think of any. There have been patents issued
>to the government, but that does not make any sense to me. Except maybe
>they want SOMEONE to invest in producing it and no one is willing to unless
>they have exclusive rights to it.

Maybe. But that strikes me as an idiotic rationale that shows how
privilege has poisoned people's thought processes.

>> >>...Although of course, publication will
>> >> often take research out of the realm of the patentable.
>> >
>> >Change that "often" to *always*.
>>
>> That is false. A patent can be obtained when previously published
>> theoretical research is first reduced to practice, as long as the
>> patentability requirements are met.
>
>You can't patent a theoretical idea. Or even a theory. And something can't
>be patented after it has been published (which puts it into Public Domaine)

You can patent the first practical demonstration of a known
theoretical phenomenon.

>On Interest:
>>
>> >That include municipal bonds? US Treasury
>> >bonds?
>>
>> Yes, the only reason governments go into debt is that their tax
>> systems are poorly designed. Government borrowing is an attempt to
>> solve the tax problem by creating a debt problem, too.
>
>My experience with government loans is limited, but I do know of one case.
>Antigua (the Caribbean island) would like to have a tourist attraction in
>their main cruise ship port in the capitol, St. John. But they don't have
>the money (capital) to build one. The government just collects enough in
>taxes to pay the bills and has no surplus.

It's not taxing land rent enough.

>So they have offered to give some land near the sea port to someone with
>enough money to build such an attraction. A professor in NYC was an expert
>on the history of the island and after he died his son (who is a lawyer in
>Boston) assembled an exhibit of the history of the island and of slavery
>there. He (the son) is now trying to put together a plan for a museum of
>island history to be built on that land and hopes to find someone with
>enough money to build it. If he can sell the plan to the government of
>Antigua and also to someone who will invest in it, then maybe it will
>happen.

Doesn't sound very tourist-attractive to me. Now a free-trade zone...

>There are other projects (like the monorail in Las Vegas) where a
>governement would like something but does not have the money to build it.

Vegas landowners don't pay enough tax, either.

>But after it is built, it will either save money or make money. So the
>government must either borrow or else have someone with the money build it.
>In the case of the Vegas monorail, a private company built it and will
>charge for riding it. But it would probably be better for the city if it
>were free to ride: they would save on road repairs and traffic problems.
>But maybe the strip casinos will give out monorail tokens to people who stay
>in their hotel or who gamble there.

Wake up, will you? Why not just tax the casino owners on the value of
their land, build the monorail using those funds, and let people ride
it for a token fee (I know, each ticket could be printed with a keno
card on it...).

-- Roy L

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