3 ms·

Well the obvious and well-know difference is that land is naturally scarce, but patents are just artificial scarcity. But it doesn't really matter. What matter

• rayiner 14y ago
  > Private land works. Mostly. With a few caveats. Tell that to all the people who could easily live on the vast swaths of property suburbanites have set aside for doing absolutely nothing with (lawns). > Usually "governments and friend monopolists" are to blame, too. I assume you let homeless people pitch camps in your yard, and are thus not part of the problem? > Do patents work? Not sure. Sometimes maybe. The U.S. is the most technologically productive society in the history of the world, and we have had patents since our founding. Much of the valuable technology around us was funded either by: 1) patent monopolies; 2) natural or government-sanctioned monopolies; 3) government research funding. Much of what wasn't was funded by other mechanisms for reducing competition (for example, Intel's trade secrets to keep its manufacturing edge). Ultimately, there is no money in highly competitive markets. Competition drives prices towards the marginal costs of production, which not only saps R&D budgets in capital-intensive fields, but without IP protection reduces any incentive to engage in capital-intensive R&D when the results can be easily copied by competitors. Look at one company we consider innovative today: Google. Google benefits from several features of its industry that tend to undermine perfect competition: network effects, a government granted monopoly (over the trademark Google--imagine if Samsung could redirect "Google Searches" to their own search engine), a privately-granted monopoly (domain names), government-monopolies over their copyrighted-software, etc. And of course, the half-trillion dollar advertising industry from which it derives nearly all its revenue would collapse if trademark monopolies didn't prevent companies from free-riding on advertising investments. As a result, Google makes a ton of money, and can use it to do cool things like research Google Glass and self-driving cars that don't immediately turn a profit. If Google was trying to eke out an existence in a perfectly-competitive market based purely on the quality of its search results, none of this would happen.
  • CamperBob2 14y ago
    The U.S. is the most technologically productive society in the history of the world, and we have had patents since our founding. "Post hoc, meet Propter hoc. I'm sure you two will have a lot to talk about."
  • fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
    >Tell that to all the people who could easily live on the vast swaths of property suburbanites have set aside for doing absolutely nothing with (lawns). People could not "easily live on the vast swaths of property suburbanites have set aside for doing absolutely nothing with (lawns)." For one, lawns serve a useful purpose (groundwater / aquifer recharge, flood control, etc). For two, https://www.google.com/search?q=kowloon+walled+city https://www.google.com/search?q=kowloon+walled+city
• belorn 14y ago
  Private land can be viewed from many angles. One can see it as a privilege given by the state, and others as property owned by the person living on it. The biggest difference is how one want to look at it. If the state owns it, then they decide what to do with it. Build a road through the house? No problem! If its a property owned by the individual who lives on it, then no way a road can just be built there. The person arguing that land is owned by the state then must accept that the state then has ll the right to do what ever they want with the land. Its theirs after all.