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IMO we shouldn't allow inventions such as AeroPress to have exclusive rights to produce it by enforcing Patent laws. The idea of Patents was to encourage entrep

IMO we shouldn't allow inventions such as AeroPress to have exclusive rights to produce it by enforcing Patent laws. The idea of Patents was to encourage entrepreneurs to invent, but the consumers get shafted by increased price and no competition. AeroPress is an extremely simple invention, patented to the brim and they spend a ton of money defending their patents. This expenditure gets passed to the consumer with a $40 price tag for something that costs $2 to make. Inventions are not special. Providing value to the user by out competing others either by price, quality, customer service, etc. is a win for the customer. Products such as AeroPress, Frisbee, Rubik's cube, etc. leave a bad after taste as a consumer. AeroPress has no incentive to improve their product because of the lack of competition. AeroPress should get a 2 year headstart. After the 2 years, their patent expires and they gotta actually compete with others. What if the Chinese start making these for $1.50? We should have a labor quotient - if country X imports from country Y, country X should charge import duty that is proportional to the labor quotient exactly to counter balance the higher labor cost in country X. I am interested in counter arguments, what are the benefits to the society as a whole when we have exclusive production rights to inventions?

diob 7y ago
How does a person outside the system compete or move up at all then? Sell immediately to someone who owns the means of production? I don't disagree with your thoughts about patents, but I also don't know how to protect regular folks.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The idea of Patents was to encourage entrepreneurs to invent, but the consumers get shafted by increased price and no competition For a limited time, that premium is imposed; that's where the incentive comes from. > Products such as AeroPress, Frisbee, Rubik's cube, etc. leave a bad after taste as a consumer. Two of those are long out of patent protection. (Well, in Frisbee's case at least on the base design, new innovations may be still be covered.) > AeroPress should get a 2 year headstart. So you have no problem with the idea of patents, you just want to reconsider the duration of either patents in general or patents in some particular subfields? > We should have a labor quotient - if country X imports from country Y, country X should charge import duty that is proportional to the labor quotient exactly to counter balance the higher labor cost in country X. Is this average labor cost per hour or industry-specific labor cost per unit delivered or something else? I suspect once you decide this, you'll see a whole set of unintended consequences...
CosmicShadow 7y ago
Just look at what already happens to people on Kickstarter, they spend years and all this money, their own and others, designing, testing, figuring out the market and ultimately manufacturing just to have the Chinese manufacturer or another one steal the idea and sell it for cheaper, often before the actual product is released. Now imagine this happening to every inventor in your country. But what about this import idea? How are you going to enforce it, figure it out, and actually handle or stop people trying to go around it? You'd need like 100k new government workers dealing with this.
- Lio 7y ago
  There’s also an imbalance here in that China is not an open marker to firms in the West. Chinese copiers have the ability to sell into their own massive market and then cross subsidise to dump cheaper products into the rest of the world. No company in for example the West using, say, robots to reduce labour costs could dump cheap imitations into the Chinese market to destroy their manufacturing base. Same goes for service companies.
  - fermienrico 7y ago
    This asymmetric aspect of Chinese trade has to stop.
jacobolus 7y ago
> What if the Chinese start making these for $1.50? The Aeropress is very cheap. If you use an Aeropress 1 time per day for 4 years, the amortized cost of an Aeropress is 3 cents per cup of coffee. That’s only a small fraction of the price of the coffee beans, and also much cheaper than a decent electric coffee grinder. Alternately, the Aeropress pays for itself if you use it daily for a week or two instead of going to a café. Even if the Chinese knockoff were free, it wouldn’t save you any appreciable amount of money in the long term. > consumers get shafted by increased price and no competition The design is extremely simple and robust, and the device does exactly what it is supposed to. I don’t see why we need competition to improve it.

diob 7y ago

How does a person outside the system compete or move up at all then? Sell immediately to someone who owns the means of production? I don't disagree with your thoughts about patents, but I also don't know how to protect regular folks.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> The idea of Patents was to encourage entrepreneurs to invent, but the consumers get shafted by increased price and no competition For a limited time, that premium is imposed; that's where the incentive comes from. > Products such as AeroPress, Frisbee, Rubik's cube, etc. leave a bad after taste as a consumer. Two of those are long out of patent protection. (Well, in Frisbee's case at least on the base design, new innovations may be still be covered.) > AeroPress should get a 2 year headstart. So you have no problem with the idea of patents, you just want to reconsider the duration of either patents in general or patents in some particular subfields? > We should have a labor quotient - if country X imports from country Y, country X should charge import duty that is proportional to the labor quotient exactly to counter balance the higher labor cost in country X. Is this average labor cost per hour or industry-specific labor cost per unit delivered or something else? I suspect once you decide this, you'll see a whole set of unintended consequences...

CosmicShadow 7y ago

Just look at what already happens to people on Kickstarter, they spend years and all this money, their own and others, designing, testing, figuring out the market and ultimately manufacturing just to have the Chinese manufacturer or another one steal the idea and sell it for cheaper, often before the actual product is released. Now imagine this happening to every inventor in your country. But what about this import idea? How are you going to enforce it, figure it out, and actually handle or stop people trying to go around it? You'd need like 100k new government workers dealing with this.

Lio 7y ago
There’s also an imbalance here in that China is not an open marker to firms in the West. Chinese copiers have the ability to sell into their own massive market and then cross subsidise to dump cheaper products into the rest of the world. No company in for example the West using, say, robots to reduce labour costs could dump cheap imitations into the Chinese market to destroy their manufacturing base. Same goes for service companies.
- fermienrico 7y ago
  This asymmetric aspect of Chinese trade has to stop.

jacobolus 7y ago

> What if the Chinese start making these for $1.50? The Aeropress is very cheap. If you use an Aeropress 1 time per day for 4 years, the amortized cost of an Aeropress is 3 cents per cup of coffee. That’s only a small fraction of the price of the coffee beans, and also much cheaper than a decent electric coffee grinder. Alternately, the Aeropress pays for itself if you use it daily for a week or two instead of going to a café. Even if the Chinese knockoff were free, it wouldn’t save you any appreciable amount of money in the long term. > consumers get shafted by increased price and no competition The design is extremely simple and robust, and the device does exactly what it is supposed to. I don’t see why we need competition to improve it.