5 ms·

My comment is regarding whether ideas fall in the same category as physical goods. Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make

My comment is regarding whether ideas fall in the same category as physical goods. Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. And I question whether those laws really promote human flourishing, or whether they simply protect whoever is close to the government. Regarding China, copying without attribution should be prosecuted as a form of reputational or brand fraud, as it fails to give credit to others for the idea. And sure, under existing intellectual property laws many Chinese firms ought to be prosecuted and held accountable---I don't advocate breaking existing laws. I simply think that the laws out to be brought into better alignment with reality, and ideas simply aren't scarce (at least in how economics considers scarcity).

lancesells 3y ago
> Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. Is code an idea? Is the corpus of Github an idea?
gumballindie 3y ago
> as it fails to give credit to others for the idea That is precisely the issue at hand. > Ideas are fundamentally different But that's essentially what products are. It's not like chinese companies take a product and clone it, they take the idea of how to make a product look like and work and implement it. Same applies to code, art, books. OpenAI takes those products, the results of ideas, modify them and resell them without attribution or without having paid a license. That's simply theft.