4 ms·

Or patents on live saving medication? You can always buy someone else's grape, but sometimes there's only one cancer med.

kube-system 6y ago
There are zero cancer meds if humans do not dedicate resources to developing them. Right now we incentivize allocation of those resources under the promise that the successful development of a drug results in a financial reward. The change you are suggesting is not just a matter of patents but a broader conversation about economic systems.
- oehpr 6y ago
  Agreed. This argument about DRM and software rights and redistribution finds its roots in the failure of markets to distribute products that have infinite supply once they are created. Call it an "Idea Product". Information can only be duplicated, not moved. It can only be shared, not taken. And since this feature means that "Idea Products" aren't scarce, how to you price it? The correct price is 0, just looking at it from first principles. But we don't like that because then these "idea products" have no incentive to get made, so we pretend like supplies are limited, we limit them with patents, we limit them with DRM, we limit them with laws, pretend it's scarce so the market can price it. To many, this is an acceptable result. Buuuut... must we use a market for absolutely everything? Even if it's clearly broken in this use case and we're just pretending it works? The fact that we are pretending is fine, even when someone's life is on the line? I think we need something like bug bounties for information. I think we need a different kind of market for novelty.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > Information can only be duplicated, not moved. It can only be shared, not taken. And since this feature means that "Idea Products" aren't scarce, how to you price it? Non sequitur. Ideas generated (/recorded, transformed, interpreted, etc) by human labor or human capital are scarce because human labor and human capital are scarce. > must we use a market for absolutely everything? Certainly not, the more applicable question is whether the change we make to the status quo results in better conditions for people. Every economic system has strengths and weaknesses. I don't disagree with the concept of a "bug bounty for information" but I'm struggling to come up with an idea of what that would look like in a way that is either more effective or different than patents.
    - wz1000 6y ago
      > I don't disagree with the concept of a "bug bounty for information" but I'm struggling to come up with an idea of what that would look like in a way that is either more effective or different than patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_grants_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_grants_in_the_United_S...
      - kube-system 6y ago
        That's exactly the example I had in mind when I wrote the sentence you quoted. Pharma grants have their own issues. Our current mixed system with both private investment and public investment allows us to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of both allocation schemes.
      - oehpr 6y ago
        I feel like, ideally, such a system of incentivizing novel ideas and information should be decentralized. Bug bounties, for example, is a decentralized form of incentivizing public works.
    - oehpr 6y ago
      I don't agree that's a non sequitur. We typically sell "access" to the idea, even though the supply of access is infinite. If you want to account for human labor and cost, then you're describing novel ideas, not "an idea". novel ideas are scarce, access to an idea is not. That may seem pedantic, but that distinction is the thing we charge for access on. The reason I'm harping on this is to make it black and white crystal clear, that the existing system we are using is a kludge. It would be shocking if such a system was flatly the best way to do things. No idea what's better, but there are much smarter people out there than me.
      - hakfoo 6y ago
        The other side of the coin is that creating a market for creative work optimizes for commercializability, not necessarily any other attributes we'd consciously prefer. How much effort in the medical industry is devoted to me-too treatments that don't really expand our therapeutic vocabulary? How many writers were focusing on writing Law & Order: Food Truck Inspectors Unit instead of something more distinctive? I think that maybe we need to look into UBI for creatives: we'll pay you a comfortable living as long as you're regularly producing some deliverables/signs of progress, but you don't get to drag everyone else down with patents and copyrights when you're done. We could probably finance a lot of singers at 50k per year for the cost of one Rolling Stones tour.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  I'm 100% not arguing that intellectual property is evil. Just that if you can patent chemo drugs, patenting a grape doesn't seem crazy.
pc86 6y ago
You can always buy someone else's grape right now. Monsanto has already sued farmers that own land next to their farms because their patented pesticides drift into the other property. It's not at all unreasonable to envision a future where Monsanto (or some other company) tries to sue hundreds or thousands of farmers because one of their patented strands of some fruit has overtaken larger populations.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Monsanto has already sued farmers that own land next to their farms because their patented pesticides drift into the other property I addressed this in an earlier thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841
- rbecker 6y ago
  The sibling comment pointed out how that Monsanto lawsuit is mischaracterized. But focusing on that lawsuit misses the bigger point - they don't need to sue when they can drive farmers that don't buy from them to bankruptcy because their patented seeds enable slightly better margins. Doing any other kind of farming will simply become unviable.

kube-system 6y ago

There are zero cancer meds if humans do not dedicate resources to developing them. Right now we incentivize allocation of those resources under the promise that the successful development of a drug results in a financial reward. The change you are suggesting is not just a matter of patents but a broader conversation about economic systems.

oehpr 6y ago
Agreed. This argument about DRM and software rights and redistribution finds its roots in the failure of markets to distribute products that have infinite supply once they are created. Call it an "Idea Product". Information can only be duplicated, not moved. It can only be shared, not taken. And since this feature means that "Idea Products" aren't scarce, how to you price it? The correct price is 0, just looking at it from first principles. But we don't like that because then these "idea products" have no incentive to get made, so we pretend like supplies are limited, we limit them with patents, we limit them with DRM, we limit them with laws, pretend it's scarce so the market can price it. To many, this is an acceptable result. Buuuut... must we use a market for absolutely everything? Even if it's clearly broken in this use case and we're just pretending it works? The fact that we are pretending is fine, even when someone's life is on the line? I think we need something like bug bounties for information. I think we need a different kind of market for novelty.
- kube-system 6y ago
  > Information can only be duplicated, not moved. It can only be shared, not taken. And since this feature means that "Idea Products" aren't scarce, how to you price it? Non sequitur. Ideas generated (/recorded, transformed, interpreted, etc) by human labor or human capital are scarce because human labor and human capital are scarce. > must we use a market for absolutely everything? Certainly not, the more applicable question is whether the change we make to the status quo results in better conditions for people. Every economic system has strengths and weaknesses. I don't disagree with the concept of a "bug bounty for information" but I'm struggling to come up with an idea of what that would look like in a way that is either more effective or different than patents.
  - wz1000 6y ago
    > I don't disagree with the concept of a "bug bounty for information" but I'm struggling to come up with an idea of what that would look like in a way that is either more effective or different than patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_grants_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_grants_in_the_United_S...
    - kube-system 6y ago
      That's exactly the example I had in mind when I wrote the sentence you quoted. Pharma grants have their own issues. Our current mixed system with both private investment and public investment allows us to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of both allocation schemes.
    - oehpr 6y ago
      I feel like, ideally, such a system of incentivizing novel ideas and information should be decentralized. Bug bounties, for example, is a decentralized form of incentivizing public works.
  - oehpr 6y ago
    I don't agree that's a non sequitur. We typically sell "access" to the idea, even though the supply of access is infinite. If you want to account for human labor and cost, then you're describing novel ideas, not "an idea". novel ideas are scarce, access to an idea is not. That may seem pedantic, but that distinction is the thing we charge for access on. The reason I'm harping on this is to make it black and white crystal clear, that the existing system we are using is a kludge. It would be shocking if such a system was flatly the best way to do things. No idea what's better, but there are much smarter people out there than me.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
      The other side of the coin is that creating a market for creative work optimizes for commercializability, not necessarily any other attributes we'd consciously prefer. How much effort in the medical industry is devoted to me-too treatments that don't really expand our therapeutic vocabulary? How many writers were focusing on writing Law & Order: Food Truck Inspectors Unit instead of something more distinctive? I think that maybe we need to look into UBI for creatives: we'll pay you a comfortable living as long as you're regularly producing some deliverables/signs of progress, but you don't get to drag everyone else down with patents and copyrights when you're done. We could probably finance a lot of singers at 50k per year for the cost of one Rolling Stones tour.
JamesBarney 6y ago
I'm 100% not arguing that intellectual property is evil. Just that if you can patent chemo drugs, patenting a grape doesn't seem crazy.

pc86 6y ago

You can always buy someone else's grape right now. Monsanto has already sued farmers that own land next to their farms because their patented pesticides drift into the other property. It's not at all unreasonable to envision a future where Monsanto (or some other company) tries to sue hundreds or thousands of farmers because one of their patented strands of some fruit has overtaken larger populations.

gruez 6y ago
>Monsanto has already sued farmers that own land next to their farms because their patented pesticides drift into the other property I addressed this in an earlier thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841
rbecker 6y ago
The sibling comment pointed out how that Monsanto lawsuit is mischaracterized. But focusing on that lawsuit misses the bigger point - they don't need to sue when they can drive farmers that don't buy from them to bankruptcy because their patented seeds enable slightly better margins. Doing any other kind of farming will simply become unviable.