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What happens if people decide to stop paying Mr. Myne to use his machines? Someone else invents it? The fallacy is the same one that most people in favor of "i

What happens if people decide to stop paying Mr. Myne to use his machines? Someone else invents it? The fallacy is the same one that most people in favor of "intellectual property" operate under: that Mr Myne is somehow so special that he's the only person who could have ever invented the machine. As history has repeatedly shown, even the very special are hardly ever truly unique. Most inventions and discoveries occurred at roughly the same time by different people around the world.

ctdonath 13y ago
Why would someone else invent it? If people decide to stop paying for the machines, or at least stop paying enough for him to suitably benefit from making/obtaining & maintaining the machines, why would anyone else fill in the gap if they're not going to benefit either? Such technologies are common: per-unit and per-use cost may be low, but price of reaching that cost level may be extremely high. Integrated circuits are individually very cheap (!), but the machines making them cost $billions - they're not something you are, on your own, going to construct just so you can have an iPhone. iPhones exist because Apple put enormous money into making their components in such volume as to reach commodity cost. Mr. Myne's machines may cost just a couple dollars a day to rent & run, but may have cost a billion dollars to produce to achieve that cheap cost - heck yeah he wants 4x retail price thereon because he needs to earn back that billion dollars and make enough additional profit to make the whole enormous activity worth his while. A thing is worth exactly and only what another is willing to pay for it. If people will pay $8/day for Mr. Myne's machines, that's what it's worth.
- npsimons 13y ago
  I feel the original thought experiment was not well phrased, and it felt a bit polemic, if not polarizing. I agree, the market will pay what it can bear, and if Mr. Myne doesn't react to that, the market will stop paying. But unless Mr. Myne is the only one with the capital to create the machines, I can't see how someone else wouldn't come along and make the machines for what the market will bear. As the saying goes, "demand creates its own supply."

ctdonath 13y ago

Why would someone else invent it? If people decide to stop paying for the machines, or at least stop paying enough for him to suitably benefit from making/obtaining & maintaining the machines, why would anyone else fill in the gap if they're not going to benefit either? Such technologies are common: per-unit and per-use cost may be low, but price of reaching that cost level may be extremely high. Integrated circuits are individually very cheap (!), but the machines making them cost $billions - they're not something you are, on your own, going to construct just so you can have an iPhone. iPhones exist because Apple put enormous money into making their components in such volume as to reach commodity cost. Mr. Myne's machines may cost just a couple dollars a day to rent & run, but may have cost a billion dollars to produce to achieve that cheap cost - heck yeah he wants 4x retail price thereon because he needs to earn back that billion dollars and make enough additional profit to make the whole enormous activity worth his while. A thing is worth exactly and only what another is willing to pay for it. If people will pay $8/day for Mr. Myne's machines, that's what it's worth.

npsimons 13y ago
I feel the original thought experiment was not well phrased, and it felt a bit polemic, if not polarizing. I agree, the market will pay what it can bear, and if Mr. Myne doesn't react to that, the market will stop paying. But unless Mr. Myne is the only one with the capital to create the machines, I can't see how someone else wouldn't come along and make the machines for what the market will bear. As the saying goes, "demand creates its own supply."