Re: Bill Gates and Tsunamis

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 01/20/05 

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:11:06 GMT

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:06:29 -0500, "robert j. kolker"
<nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote:

>royls@telus.net wrote:
>>
>> Fine. Explain to me how an idea can remain the creator's property
>> when it exists in other people's minds (i.e., is not secret or closely
>> held), and is thus irretrievably out of his possession.
>
>Clearly ideas cannt be regarded the same way as axe-handles. However the
>right to sell or purvey representations of the ideas can be handled the
>same as property.

It is not a right but merely a government-granted privilege, like a
monopoly on the salt trade.

>That is what copyrights are. Permission to publish or
>distribute copies of representations of ideas.

No. A copyright is a privilege of forbidding _others_ to publish or
distribute copies of particular representations of ideas.

>This artificial restriction in the handling of ideas is implemented to
>guarantee a monetary reward for creating the idea in the first place.

No, it is of course not a guarantee at all. Most copyrights never
earn a dime in royalties. The artificial monopoly privilege is
implemented to provide an increased _opportunity_ for the idea's
creator to obtain financial rewards for creating and publishing his
work, by violating others' rights to use it once published.

>Creators should be rewarded the the way they are rewarded is by being
>granted patents and copyrights.

Two true statements that do not add up because they confuse is and
ought. Yes, creators of ideas _should_ be rewarded -- and they were,
though perhaps not so richly or reliably, even before IP monopoly
privileges ever existed. And yes, IP monopoly privileges _are_ in
fact how such people currently _are_ rewarded -- but that in no way
argues that that is the only way they could possibly be rewarded.

>If you can think of a better system for rewarding creativity and
>providing economic incentives to create, share it with us.

I have proposed a system of open licensing that would provide
incentives for greater use and dissemination of ideas by making the
cost to the idea's user or commercial reproducer a fixed rather than
variable one.

>And taxing land will not do it.

But applying similarly effective economic strategies to land and ideas
(i.e., to optimally utilize the economic forces involved in both
natural and artificial economic rents) can be expected to work in both
cases.

-- Roy L

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