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People have lived thousands of years without refrigeration.
by Cyph0n 11y ago
People have lived thousands of years without refrigeration.
- CamperBob2 11y agoRefrigeration is an excellent example of something that could have easily been developed and refined without patent protection. Consumers win when innovators compete with each other. Patents replace market competition with a foot race.
- oldmanjay 11y agoand yet somehow we have more technical innovation now than we ever did outside of a patent system. there is a lot of emotional and assertive speculation around this issue but all of the hard facts that are available very strongly suggest patents work despite occasional (if highly publicized) conflict. how does your theory accommodate that fact?
- CamperBob2 11y agoCounterexample: how did the Internet and WWW ever evolve without a significant reliance on patents? How did the software industry in general ever flourish? The best we can say from empirical observation is that patents don't lead to guaranteed failure. We certainly can't say they're necessary. If everything that could have been patented was patented, we'd all be poorer for it. Except the lawyers, of course.
- ubernostrum 11y agoActually, people have lived thousands of years with refrigeration. Insulated structures using evaporative cooling systems (capable of acting as air conditioners, or of maintaining near-freezing temperatures suitable for refrigeration) are known to date back to the 14th century BC.