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Methinks this post conflates “rent seeking” with “return on investment” just a tad. Economic rent is the extra money you can charge for owning a scarce resourc
by smeeth 6mo ago
Methinks this post conflates “rent seeking” with “return on investment” just a tad.
Economic rent is the extra money you can charge for owning a scarce resource. ML models are not waterfront real estate, they are IP. Other people can make more models if they can/want to.
Now, whether IP should be legally protected is a totally separate question, and while we in the West tend to assume the answer is obvious geohot would certainly not be the first person to suggest broadly applying private property rights to information makes questionable sense.
- lukev 6mo agoRent is charging money for access to an asset or property. The P in IP is Property.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- smeeth 6mo agoThe "rent" in "rent-seeking" does not refer to "rent" it refers to "economic rent." Totally different concept. But don't take my word for it: > "Rent-seeking" is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.[0] > In economics, economic rent is any payment to the owner of a factor of production in excess of the costs needed to bring that factor into production. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent
- happytoexplain 6mo agoPeople can make beaches. And they have.
- lukev 6mo agoAlso, the defining feature of capitalism is that it encloses what was previously common. Land used not to be owned (feudal lordship was functionally different than private ownership.) Then, society shifted, land became private, and that was the beginning of rent. This is enclosure. The whole concept of IP is to explicitly extend this process to ideas -- they are not free, they are owned, and I have to pay you to use them. This is also enclosure, precisely.