5 ms·

A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled Briti

by not2b 2y ago

A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works. Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents, though not as much as the US did back then.

_Microft 2y ago
Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development: “No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
mytailorisrich 2y ago
Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology transfers...
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.
mmooss 2y ago
It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0] In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome. Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable. If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example). [0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more." https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-607 https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting And up is up unless it is down :-)
  - mmooss 2y ago
    I'll try to keep my sentences shorter for you. :-) It's not that 'wars must end, otherwise they keep fighting', but that there is 'a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability ... otherwise they keep fighting'. [0] I will stipulate that the sentence could have parsed more clearly. :-( [0] It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Warfare is politics conducted by other means.
    - arunabha 2y ago
      > It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Drink! Apologies to fans of Bret Deveraux :-)
  - penteract 2y ago
    I think that was intended to be read as "how all wars must end" rather than "because all wars must end".
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  War never ends, alliances and theatres merely shift.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > War never ends Some wars end! In 2000, Bo McCoy and Ron McCoy organized a joint family reunion of the Hatfield and McCoy that garnered national attention. More than 5,000 people attended. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud
  - mmooss 2y ago
    What does that mean? Aren't there endless examples of peace? Unless you just say all conflict is part of a great universal conflict, which you'll have to give us some evidence for.
Neonlicht 2y ago
Famously the West stole tea and silk cultivation secrets from the Chinese and I'm pretty sure they never paid any royalties...
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  What's the royalty on tea cultivation?
- mywittyname 2y ago
  They also fought the Opium Wars over tea (well, trade imbalances resulting from the tea trade).
  - ywvcbk 2y ago
    To be fair it’s not like the Chinese were unwilling to buy western goods (not just opium) it’s just that the ultra mercantilist Qing government didn’t allow them to..
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  Well… by Western standards the patent on silk (tea is probably no even applicable) would have expired a couple of thousand year prior to the 1800s. Nobody is arguing in favor of perpetual patents.. Edit: the Romans first “stole” silk in the 500s, but still
kiba 2y ago
America's economic strength doesn't rely on something as easily copyable as intellectual property. Look at SpaceX. What they had perfected isn't going to be easily available in patents, homeworks for other people to copy, especially the Chinese. What they are willing to do is what other companies and organizations aren't willing to do. When SpaceX steadily made progress, people kept dismissing them until it's too late and now SpaceX is pushing ahead anyway. It's a form of false strength, and there had been discussion about how detrimental patent laws are to innovations.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  My grandfather filed patents on his method of forming large halide crystals. However, all attempts to duplicate his process have failed to produce those crystals, and he's long dead. He apparently wished to both protect his process and keep it secret.
  - thehappypm 2y ago
    Walter Bright, making crystals. Did he inspire a show by any chance?
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      I am sometimes confused with Walter White, as we are both in the Empire business.
WalterBright 2y ago
Germany ignored patents and copyrights in the 19th century, and their economy rapidly industrialized. The free software movement has shown that freely distributing IP is quite workable.
- yazzku 2y ago
  Is this Da real Walter Bright? Hello, sir.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    It says I am on my passport!
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  > The free software movement has shown It’s very successful in areas where software is a “cost center” (i.e. allows companies to use it reduce the cost of developing (semi)proprietary software)and not the end product. Everywhere else it’s mixed or a failure (e.g. video games).
rustcleaner 2y ago
So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming out of nowhere from trolls and such. If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p, and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's generation, which is a competitive advantage.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    Or that you can't squat ideas and memes, and you actually have to materially produce to get [super]wealthy.
    - poincaredisk 2y ago
      And you should never publish your new ideas and memes, to ensure your keep your technological advantage.
      - alwayslikethis 2y ago
        That's the idea behind patents. You get a period of what is essentially monopoly license in exchange for the idea being made available to the public. The issue with copyright is that it lasts far too long now compared to the original length (14 years in the US), which throws off the balance.
m463 2y ago
I think the same thing happened with movies. Edison basically pirated "A Trip to the Moon" and showed it in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release
627467 2y ago
One reason I'm always skeptical of the IP moralists. IP is not property. If it was it wouldnt need the classifier. It's really just a rent seeking mechanism
- professor_x 2y ago
  How is it any more or less rent seeking than property ownership?
  - xpl 2y ago
    Yeah some people don't get that "property" is just as much a constructed concept as everything else is. It is an agreement/contract between people that is enforced by other people (e.g. the government). Owning a home might seem more "real" than owning some IP, but it is just an agreement, and without a proper enforcement, anybody could enter and live in your house (which is what actually happens with squatters in some European countries where you're not allowed to kick them out by yourself and police don't care). So property rights were never "real" (inherently) — they only become real when somebody kicks your ass for violating them. That's the only real thing about it.
    - generic92034 2y ago
      True, but "this is my home and you cannot have it" is still quite a bit different from "this is my idea and you cannot use it". ;)
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    IP law is more analogous to zoning in that it fixes the supply of land that can be used for a particular purpose. I know everyone gets a stupid stick up their ass over property ownership and "rent seeking" but property ownership is just ownership of "something". You can rent seek any investment. The whole point of much every professional license is that we all agree to let these people "rent seek" because they've proved they don't suck at the subject.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

by not2b 2y ago

_Microft 2y ago

Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development: “No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...

mytailorisrich 2y ago

Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology transfers...

WalterBright 2y ago
The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.

mmooss 2y ago

It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0] In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome. Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable. If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example). [0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more." https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-607 https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...

WalterBright 2y ago
> as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting And up is up unless it is down :-)
- mmooss 2y ago
  I'll try to keep my sentences shorter for you. :-) It's not that 'wars must end, otherwise they keep fighting', but that there is 'a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability ... otherwise they keep fighting'. [0] I will stipulate that the sentence could have parsed more clearly. :-( [0] It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Warfare is politics conducted by other means.
  - arunabha 2y ago
    > It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Drink! Apologies to fans of Bret Deveraux :-)
- penteract 2y ago
  I think that was intended to be read as "how all wars must end" rather than "because all wars must end".
rustcleaner 2y ago
War never ends, alliances and theatres merely shift.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > War never ends Some wars end! In 2000, Bo McCoy and Ron McCoy organized a joint family reunion of the Hatfield and McCoy that garnered national attention. More than 5,000 people attended. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud
- mmooss 2y ago
  What does that mean? Aren't there endless examples of peace? Unless you just say all conflict is part of a great universal conflict, which you'll have to give us some evidence for.

Neonlicht 2y ago

Famously the West stole tea and silk cultivation secrets from the Chinese and I'm pretty sure they never paid any royalties...

WillPostForFood 2y ago
What's the royalty on tea cultivation?
mywittyname 2y ago
They also fought the Opium Wars over tea (well, trade imbalances resulting from the tea trade).
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  To be fair it’s not like the Chinese were unwilling to buy western goods (not just opium) it’s just that the ultra mercantilist Qing government didn’t allow them to..
ywvcbk 2y ago
Well… by Western standards the patent on silk (tea is probably no even applicable) would have expired a couple of thousand year prior to the 1800s. Nobody is arguing in favor of perpetual patents.. Edit: the Romans first “stole” silk in the 500s, but still

kiba 2y ago

America's economic strength doesn't rely on something as easily copyable as intellectual property. Look at SpaceX. What they had perfected isn't going to be easily available in patents, homeworks for other people to copy, especially the Chinese. What they are willing to do is what other companies and organizations aren't willing to do. When SpaceX steadily made progress, people kept dismissing them until it's too late and now SpaceX is pushing ahead anyway. It's a form of false strength, and there had been discussion about how detrimental patent laws are to innovations.

WalterBright 2y ago
My grandfather filed patents on his method of forming large halide crystals. However, all attempts to duplicate his process have failed to produce those crystals, and he's long dead. He apparently wished to both protect his process and keep it secret.
- thehappypm 2y ago
  Walter Bright, making crystals. Did he inspire a show by any chance?
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    I am sometimes confused with Walter White, as we are both in the Empire business.

WalterBright 2y ago

Germany ignored patents and copyrights in the 19th century, and their economy rapidly industrialized. The free software movement has shown that freely distributing IP is quite workable.

yazzku 2y ago
Is this Da real Walter Bright? Hello, sir.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  It says I am on my passport!
ywvcbk 2y ago
> The free software movement has shown It’s very successful in areas where software is a “cost center” (i.e. allows companies to use it reduce the cost of developing (semi)proprietary software)and not the end product. Everywhere else it’s mixed or a failure (e.g. video games).

rustcleaner 2y ago

So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming out of nowhere from trolls and such. If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p, and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.

BobbyJo 2y ago
It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's generation, which is a competitive advantage.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Or that you can't squat ideas and memes, and you actually have to materially produce to get [super]wealthy.
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    And you should never publish your new ideas and memes, to ensure your keep your technological advantage.
    - alwayslikethis 2y ago
      That's the idea behind patents. You get a period of what is essentially monopoly license in exchange for the idea being made available to the public. The issue with copyright is that it lasts far too long now compared to the original length (14 years in the US), which throws off the balance.

m463 2y ago

I think the same thing happened with movies. Edison basically pirated "A Trip to the Moon" and showed it in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release

627467 2y ago

One reason I'm always skeptical of the IP moralists. IP is not property. If it was it wouldnt need the classifier. It's really just a rent seeking mechanism

professor_x 2y ago
How is it any more or less rent seeking than property ownership?
- xpl 2y ago
  Yeah some people don't get that "property" is just as much a constructed concept as everything else is. It is an agreement/contract between people that is enforced by other people (e.g. the government). Owning a home might seem more "real" than owning some IP, but it is just an agreement, and without a proper enforcement, anybody could enter and live in your house (which is what actually happens with squatters in some European countries where you're not allowed to kick them out by yourself and police don't care). So property rights were never "real" (inherently) — they only become real when somebody kicks your ass for violating them. That's the only real thing about it.
  - generic92034 2y ago
    True, but "this is my home and you cannot have it" is still quite a bit different from "this is my idea and you cannot use it". ;)
- potato3732842 2y ago
  IP law is more analogous to zoning in that it fixes the supply of land that can be used for a particular purpose. I know everyone gets a stupid stick up their ass over property ownership and "rent seeking" but property ownership is just ownership of "something". You can rent seek any investment. The whole point of much every professional license is that we all agree to let these people "rent seek" because they've proved they don't suck at the subject.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago