Wal-Mart Is Right

[tracysaboe]

So I should spend years and millions of dollars making a drug and then have someone copy the drug and then I don't get to recoup my investment?  What incentive do I have to make more drugs?

The vast majority of the costs to making an researching drugs are imposed by the FDA and a meriod of other regulatory hurtles.

2ndly, many companies when it comes to producing things and researching things that AREN'T patentable do quite well. Kodak did very well for itself w/ constant R & D and improving instead of reliing on coersive patents to shut the competition out.

3rdly. Laws about morality aren't subject to utilitarian concerns. Either stealing is right. Or it's wrong. Either coersion is right, or it's wrong. Coersion -- using guns to disallow people from doing w/ their own private property what they wish -- is immoral even if it DOES benifit the greator good.  Patents use government force to prevent people from doing with their own private property what they want by creating an abritrary legal claim invented on your property to not build what an inventor built -- even if you figured out how to do it indepentantly on your own and you're useing your own personal resources.

To take a stab w/ reducto absurdism. If patents were a legitimate property right (In other words a legitimate right. Legitimate rights don't disapear just because some law says they do at some point in time.). The first person to ever invent a house would own the idea of a house and we'd all owe omage to their decendents everytime somebody built a house.

Or heck, if patents existed at the time the wheel was invented we'd all owe tribute to the decendents of the first inventor of the wheel everytime we built one.

Your kid/wife/mother is going to die if you don't

The fact is medicine is extremely stagnant because of government. It would progress much more rapidly w/o government interference.

You are correct. "They will most likely be dead before it's finished anyway." In fact more likely.

Tracy

[tracysaboe]

As an aside, the author's tone seems to have this conservative protectionist mentality that, "greedy manufacturing corporations that love cheap . . . Labor [from China]" are bad, and that Walmart is just playing with the cards these companies give them.

But it's not bad. The division of labor is a good thing. And WalMart's done a lot to teach many of it's Chinese suppliers how to keep their costs down, so it's not like WalMart doesn't have clout w/ many of these manufacterors.

Reese is way to conservative -- in a PaleoCon way -- for my taistes. (He's more principled the Pat Buchanan, but that's not saying much.) I always take his articles w/ a grain of salt (And usually I don't read them, actually.)

But thanks to whoever posted this one.

Tracy

[Pat McCotter]

Patents use government force to prevent people from doing with their own private property what they want by creating an abritrary legal claim invented on your property to not build what an inventor built -- even if you figured out how to do it indepentantly on your own and you're useing your own personal resources.

Patent law is "first come first served" as it pertains to parallel inventions.

To take a stab w/ reducto absurdism. If patents were a legitimate property right (In other words a legitimate right. Legitimate rights don't disapear just because some law says they do at some point in time.). The first person to ever invent a house would own the idea of a house and we'd all owe omage to their decendents everytime somebody built a house.

Or heck, if patents existed at the time the wheel was invented we'd all owe tribute to the decendents of the first inventor of the wheel everytime we built one.

Patent exclusivity has a time limit. I do not know what it is now, but once the patent runs out a person can use it for commercial purposes. Patents can be used for personal purposes at any time.

[tracysaboe]

Patent exclusivity has a time limit. I do not know what it is now, but once the patent runs out a person can use it for commercial purposes. Patents can be used for personal purposes at any time.

Those patent limits are arbitrarily defined by the state.

Read what I wrote. If a patent was a "natural" right it would legitimately be somebody's property forever, and inhereted on down, untill it was completely abandend and availible for homesteading again.  That's why I pointed out the reduocto-absurdism.  If a patent was a natural right, we'd ALL be owning tribute to all the people who came before us.

If I built a chair, in my garage, with my own wood that I bought w/ my own money. It would be illegal unless I had permission from the people who inhereted the patent on chair making.  But such an idea is obviously ludicrious. AND that's NOT how the law works.

Hence, patents, are not natural rights. They are inventions by the state. State granted monopoly privelidges. When the patent office clause was written into the constitution there wasn't any language talking about it in terms of property rights. The founders new better. (Go Read it) it talks about the state using it as a form of social enginearing to "promote the arts and sciences."

Bengimen Franklin was offered a patent for his stove. He thought the whole concept was ridiculous. People should be allowed to freely compete in the production of the type of stove he invented. Otherwise the market would stagnate and no improvements in the quality price or other efficiencies would take place untill the patent ran out. (And if patents were a natural right -- that would mean never.)

However, any good libertarian knows that the state shouldn't be in the business of promoting anything one way or the other and it should be as value neatral as possible.

Here another proof against the legitimacy of patents (and copywrites as far as that goes.) This is a proof by contradiction.

1 World government is evil.

2 However if patents are a natural right. (Meaning the first person to invent something "OWNS" that idea to the exclusion of everybody else.) then somebody inventing something in Germany before the American person invented it, implies that the American person "STOLE" it (even thought he came about it independently.) Indeed. The Telephone was invented by a German scientist before Alexander Bell invented it. If the German inventer actually OWNED the idea of the telephone, then Bell technically STOLE it.

But the only way to enforce such "property rights" is to assume global government.

So, if patents are a natural right. Then global government was be a neccessity for their enforcement.

But global government is evil.

So patents are an evil natural right.

But a natural right can't be evil. Can it?

Q.E.D.

The bottom line, is that patents (ideas) are not scarce. The simple fact that myself making the same type of thing that you invented, does not take away from the fact that you still have that thing.

Indeed, why do you have a right to tell me what I can't do with my REAL property, just because you made it first and I may or might not even know about it.

Property rights are developed naturally through common law because it's the most efficient and just way to organize property and settle disputes between scarce resources.

Ideas aren't scarce. We can have multiple people with the same idea. And you telling me about an idea (or me inadvertently coming across the same idea myself) does not in anyway diminish the integretty of the idea that you have. Hence there's no need to settle disputes between scarce resources, and hence it's not something that would EVER develope in a free market through common law. The ONLY way such "rights" could be created is by government fiat, and as such they're not natural, and should be abolished so we can return to a free market.

For more on this see my "Free market Environmentalist case against Intellectual property."
http://www.geocities.com/TracySaboe/fiatproperty.html

Tracy

[Ron Helwig]

Another consideration: AFAIK, patents (and other forms of intellectual property) are strictly interference in trade. Patents apply to commercial production, but if you build your own copy of a chair that has been patented, for your own use, that isn't considered a violation of the patent. Its only when you try to sell the chair that it becomes a violation.

[tracysaboe]

Good point Ron,

Technically, if a patent was a legitimate form of property, the act of building the chair would be the act of stealing. And Selling it then would be selling stolen property (Or a stolen idea.).

But that's not the way it works. So apparently the current laws don't see patents as "property rights" the way people imagine them to be.

Tracy

[Tunga]

Tunga seems to remember that Ben Franklin had to do with the creation of the Patent process, though most of the stuff he invented was either not patented ever or destroyed in the great patent office fire of ____(?).


Scientific American once ran a graphic (before they were bought out by the STAZI) of Franklins discovery that cast Iron rods when heated, produce an electrical current.

This discovery was confirmed to Tunga a few days ago by an auto mechanic who says that although the current in question might be miniscule, it is the basis for operation of the oxygen sensor mounted on the manifold of your car.

Now, electrical generation created by tremendous heat and pressure is responsible for the earths magnetosphere via the liquid iron core at the center should be patentable. Unless you have to have proof that you invented the process rather than just being the first to document it's observance. ???

[Dreepa]

Tunga seems to remember that Ben Franklin had to do with the creation of the Patent process, though most of the stuff he invented was either not patented ever or destroyed in the great patent office fire of ____(?).

1836

[KBCraig]

I understand the dislike of the patent system. I don't understand the dismissal of intellectual property rights.

It's a tenet of free market thinking that whenever someone has something, he has the right to set his own value, and to not be deprived of it without compensation that he finds acceptable.

"It" could be a raw material, a finished product, or his own labor.

To declare that every invention/creation/work of art, once exposed to the public, becomes part of the commons and open for everyone to exploit, amounts to theft of the labor and skills of the inventor/creator/artist.

The orginator may set his own price for the product, even if that price is, "Duplication is restricted to X, Y, Z Terms."

I do support getting the government out of the process, though.

Kevin

[Russell Kanning]

Walmart is still right.

I agree with Jefferson that we should be free to copy each others work. I would not force a person to reveal his secrets though.

[Dreepa]

What about books?

If someone writes a book can someone else copy the book and then resell it?

[Zork]

What about books?

If someone writes a book can someone else copy the book and then resell it?

Well, yes.  If you make something and then sell it to me, then I own it and can do whatever I want with it, because now I own it.  You own what you didn't sell to me, so you can continue to sell your book to other people, but now I own your book too, so I can sell it also.

[president]

What about books?

If someone writes a book can someone else copy the book and then resell it?

Well, yes.  If you make something and then sell it to me, then I own it and can do whatever I want with it, because now I own it.  You own what you didn't sell to me, so you can continue to sell your book to other people, but now I own your book too, so I can sell it also.

But what if when I sold it to you there was an agreement that you would not copy it and sell it without my permission?

[AlanM]

What about books?

If someone writes a book can someone else copy the book and then resell it?

Well, yes.  If you make something and then sell it to me, then I own it and can do whatever I want with it, because now I own it.  You own what you didn't sell to me, so you can continue to sell your book to other people, but now I own your book too, so I can sell it also.

Shakespeare did not have Copyright Protection, yet he wrote, as did many, many others in his day and before.

[Dreepa]

Let's take real life:

Stephen King writes a book. A publisher prints the book and then sells it for say $20.
They give Mr King some money.

Should you be allowed to copy that book using a photocopier and then charge $10?