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Kind of a tangent but this really makes me think about this problem I see with thinking in Silicon Valley. It seems to be a common belief that if someone is sol

Kind of a tangent but this really makes me think about this problem I see with thinking in Silicon Valley. It seems to be a common belief that if someone is solving a problem they have with some product or service, they are helping everyone in the world. But the rest of the world is very unlike Silicon Valley. Someone making an app to help them book a masseuse is not going to be solving problems for people who cannot afford to transport their tomatoes in refrigerated trucks. I strongly believe that the best way to help people in other places very different from our own is to open source the best of what we know. Everything we rely on. For example instead of buying refrigerated trucks from an expensive European suppler (let's suppose) they could clone the designs and manufacture refrigeration more cheaply. Such an effort would take time but if we shared the plans for everything we rely on, someone could make it cheaper and offer it to those with less income. A free market of manufacturers would compete based on who can manufacture goods the cheapest, rather than who can both design them and manufacture them. Maybe refrigeration is already generic enough that this particular item would not get cheaper, but in general if everything was open source then people in places like this would be more able to manufacture what they really need even if they lack certain technical skills required to design the things. And with trade normalization required by the WTO, many of these companies cannot clone certain useful goods due to patent restrictions. We are so wealthy in the USA and yet we do not often consider sharing our wealth in this way with every other person sharing this time with us.

QuarterReptile 5y ago
I agree with your first paragraph. But you are discounting the rarity of productive labor and the value of R&D. Yes, we have serious vices in the US with our spending on frivolous pursuits, but at the same time we're doing incredibly ambitious things. If we undercut the profitability of those ambitious pursuits, we lower the number of ways to get funding to those enterprises. In the face of low payoffs for big ideas, you just get all that effort put toward more apps to book a masseuse for your dog. Wealthy people pay to have their problems solved, so undercutting intellectual property just directs more high achievers to cater to 'first world problems' rather than chasing big ideas.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  I have this discussion a lot, and I've found that many people share your belief. However I disagree with this view. I recently wrote a comment with citations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 But the gist of it is: patents prevent many people from innovating. That is the purpose of a patent: others are prevented from following forks of a given idea to the benefit of one entity. I argue that the losses to society from preventing so many people from following forks of an idea are greater than the benefits gained by giving one entity a monopoly. Constantly locking down new ideas for 20 years actually encourages companies with patents to rest on their laurels (see the linked comment above for figures) and prevents motivated newcomers from trying variations on the patented idea. People often say that without patents, investment would cease. But the linked example in the above comment features a great first hand account from an engineer and hacker about the innovation that happens in China when anyone can take ideas from others. It's a vibrant development environment in fact. My view is that investment would not cease, but the nature of investment would change. Instead of fewer larger investments, we would see more frequent smaller investments. So the economy would continue to function fine, only without constant barriers to copying all the good ideas would spread rapidly and many people would experiment with forks on those good ideas. In the end, the rate of innovation would be higher without patents, I believe, than it is with them. A relatively unorthodox view, but I find that those in the orthodox camp also tend to significantly discount the amount of innovation that happens in the normal course of market competition without intellectual property in play. Market forces already reward innovation. Patents do create a bigger reward for those innovators who make it all the way through the patent process, but at a great cost to society. This is why 3D printers only dropped in price by 50% after their first ten years on the market, and then dropped in price by 98% in the first ten years after the patent expired (see the linked comment for figures).

QuarterReptile 5y ago

I agree with your first paragraph. But you are discounting the rarity of productive labor and the value of R&D. Yes, we have serious vices in the US with our spending on frivolous pursuits, but at the same time we're doing incredibly ambitious things. If we undercut the profitability of those ambitious pursuits, we lower the number of ways to get funding to those enterprises. In the face of low payoffs for big ideas, you just get all that effort put toward more apps to book a masseuse for your dog. Wealthy people pay to have their problems solved, so undercutting intellectual property just directs more high achievers to cater to 'first world problems' rather than chasing big ideas.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I have this discussion a lot, and I've found that many people share your belief. However I disagree with this view. I recently wrote a comment with citations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 But the gist of it is: patents prevent many people from innovating. That is the purpose of a patent: others are prevented from following forks of a given idea to the benefit of one entity. I argue that the losses to society from preventing so many people from following forks of an idea are greater than the benefits gained by giving one entity a monopoly. Constantly locking down new ideas for 20 years actually encourages companies with patents to rest on their laurels (see the linked comment above for figures) and prevents motivated newcomers from trying variations on the patented idea. People often say that without patents, investment would cease. But the linked example in the above comment features a great first hand account from an engineer and hacker about the innovation that happens in China when anyone can take ideas from others. It's a vibrant development environment in fact. My view is that investment would not cease, but the nature of investment would change. Instead of fewer larger investments, we would see more frequent smaller investments. So the economy would continue to function fine, only without constant barriers to copying all the good ideas would spread rapidly and many people would experiment with forks on those good ideas. In the end, the rate of innovation would be higher without patents, I believe, than it is with them. A relatively unorthodox view, but I find that those in the orthodox camp also tend to significantly discount the amount of innovation that happens in the normal course of market competition without intellectual property in play. Market forces already reward innovation. Patents do create a bigger reward for those innovators who make it all the way through the patent process, but at a great cost to society. This is why 3D printers only dropped in price by 50% after their first ten years on the market, and then dropped in price by 98% in the first ten years after the patent expired (see the linked comment for figures).