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At the cost of so deeply skewing what an "investment" is. How much destructive nonsense has been driven by the stock market? The South Sea Bubble, and every bub

At the cost of so deeply skewing what an "investment" is. How much destructive nonsense has been driven by the stock market? The South Sea Bubble, and every bubble since. Short-sighted decisions to meet quarterly revenue targets, at the expense of all else. What TeMPOraL calls "fracking": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34297430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34297430. I would not call any of this investment, but the stock market would. If they require disclosure of enough information for the technology to be (in principle) independently reproduced, patents are worth it. I'd even argue that patent terms could be extended, in some domains, where that's necessary to ensure a return on investment. Copyright is, in principle, worth it, though the term is currently far too long and the laws can be abused for unrelated things (e.g. DMCA ink cartridges). But the stock market is not worth it. The invisible hand of the market can remain irrational far, far longer than you can remain healthy and fed with a roof over your head, surrounded by friends and beautiful things. Let us not sacrifice what is good at the altar of the invisible hand. The real estate market is similar: housing is for living in, not for speculative investment. The market incentivises real estate owners to ensure there aren't enough houses to go round, driving up house prices – but they usually forget that they can't actually sell their only property, so this only benefits landlords. (Irrational behaviour, sure, but whoever said humans were rational was a 20th-century economist who never read Adam Smith.) Large infrastructure developments used to be handled at the community level, and in many places, they still are. For something as large as a nuclear power plant, that'd be your regional council or your national government. Hundred-year investments have to be made at that scale, anyway: that's what your secondary market proposal is about, after all. The stock market is only one (highly-flawed) way of organising things. People do not build sheds in their gardens because they expect to be compensated: they build a shed because they want a shed. People do not work because they expect time and labour to be returned to them: they work because they get other things out of it. We should not assume that investment of resources yields fruits in kind – but the stock market cannot but make that assumption!

gruez 3y ago
>If they require disclosure of enough information for the technology to be (in principle) independently reproduced, patents are worth it. How does this work for "obvious" patents like "[x] but on [y]" that the sibling was talking about[1]? I think that's the patents that attract the most ire, rather than pharmaceutical patents that don't allow you fully reproduce the drug or whatever. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763707 >But the stock market is not worth it. The invisible hand of the market can remain irrational far, far longer than you can remain healthy and fed with a roof over your head, surrounded by friends and beautiful things. Let us not sacrifice what is good at the altar of the invisible hand. So basically what you're saying is "people can't be trusted to price things correctly, therefore we should ban them from being able to engage in exchange of assets?" This is, to put it mildly, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". >Large infrastructure developments used to be handled at the community level, and in many places, they still are. For something as large as a nuclear power plant, that'd be your regional council or your national government. Hundred-year investments have to be made at that scale, anyway: that's what your secondary market proposal is about, after all. The stock market is only one (highly-flawed) way of organising things. This is eventually going to break down to "central planning vs free markets", which has been litigated to death elsewhere and probably isn't going get resolved by two HN commenters. >People do not build sheds in their gardens because they expect to be compensated: they build a shed because they want a shed. People do not work because they expect time and labour to be returned to them: they work because they get other things out of it. We should not assume that investment of resources yields fruits in kind – but the stock market cannot but make that assumption! The shed example actually shows a lot of problems with your line of thinking. Sure, for a project like a shed in the typical case, you can be reasonably assured that whatever utility can get out of the shed (eg. 15 years of storage) exceeds the cost you put in (eg. $1000 and a weekend's worth of work). However, that's not guaranteed to be the case. For instance, you might not be able to use the shed for the full 15 years, eg. if you're planning to start a family and need to move in 2-3 years to a bigger home[2]. If that's the case, the economy (as a whole) would still presumably benefit from the shed getting constructed. Future occupiers of the property presumably would have storage needs as well, for instance. You might not be able to use the shed enough to recoup all the resources you put in, but other people will. However, the shed doesn't end up getting constructed because the person paying for the construction can't capture all the utility. In a world with markets this wouldn't be a problem, because if the shed is something that other people would appreciate, it will boost the value of the home, which would allow the current owner to capture the full value of the shed even if he moves out in a year. [2] you might argue that sheds are such a slam dunk proposition that even using it for 1 year would justify the construction cost. Even if we grant that's the case, not every investment opportunity in the economy are slam dunks, and arguably we shouldn't restrict ourselves to investing in only slam dunks.

gruez 3y ago

>If they require disclosure of enough information for the technology to be (in principle) independently reproduced, patents are worth it. How does this work for "obvious" patents like "[x] but on [y]" that the sibling was talking about[1]? I think that's the patents that attract the most ire, rather than pharmaceutical patents that don't allow you fully reproduce the drug or whatever. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763707 >But the stock market is not worth it. The invisible hand of the market can remain irrational far, far longer than you can remain healthy and fed with a roof over your head, surrounded by friends and beautiful things. Let us not sacrifice what is good at the altar of the invisible hand. So basically what you're saying is "people can't be trusted to price things correctly, therefore we should ban them from being able to engage in exchange of assets?" This is, to put it mildly, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". >Large infrastructure developments used to be handled at the community level, and in many places, they still are. For something as large as a nuclear power plant, that'd be your regional council or your national government. Hundred-year investments have to be made at that scale, anyway: that's what your secondary market proposal is about, after all. The stock market is only one (highly-flawed) way of organising things. This is eventually going to break down to "central planning vs free markets", which has been litigated to death elsewhere and probably isn't going get resolved by two HN commenters. >People do not build sheds in their gardens because they expect to be compensated: they build a shed because they want a shed. People do not work because they expect time and labour to be returned to them: they work because they get other things out of it. We should not assume that investment of resources yields fruits in kind – but the stock market cannot but make that assumption! The shed example actually shows a lot of problems with your line of thinking. Sure, for a project like a shed in the typical case, you can be reasonably assured that whatever utility can get out of the shed (eg. 15 years of storage) exceeds the cost you put in (eg. $1000 and a weekend's worth of work). However, that's not guaranteed to be the case. For instance, you might not be able to use the shed for the full 15 years, eg. if you're planning to start a family and need to move in 2-3 years to a bigger home[2]. If that's the case, the economy (as a whole) would still presumably benefit from the shed getting constructed. Future occupiers of the property presumably would have storage needs as well, for instance. You might not be able to use the shed enough to recoup all the resources you put in, but other people will. However, the shed doesn't end up getting constructed because the person paying for the construction can't capture all the utility. In a world with markets this wouldn't be a problem, because if the shed is something that other people would appreciate, it will boost the value of the home, which would allow the current owner to capture the full value of the shed even if he moves out in a year. [2] you might argue that sheds are such a slam dunk proposition that even using it for 1 year would justify the construction cost. Even if we grant that's the case, not every investment opportunity in the economy are slam dunks, and arguably we shouldn't restrict ourselves to investing in only slam dunks.