Once can just as trivially construct an argument demonstrating the issue with patents but the problem with this style of argument is that patents are not a simple thing. They have global far reaching effects. The government distributing a monopoly on information is a serious interference with the market, and due to patent harmonization efforts across the world, one person filing a patent in New Jersey affects even people in Kenya and Turkey and Thailand. The arguments for patents are often, as I see it, based on a deeply flawed understanding of the motivations of innovators and the affects of open information on innovation. For example most arguments in favor of patents cannot explain how open source works, and so are clearly incomplete or outright wrong.

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fluoridation 3 days ago | parent [-]

>For example most arguments in favor of patents cannot explain how open source works, and so are clearly incomplete or outright wrong.

Can you clarify this? Just curious about what you mean.

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SequoiaHope 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I often speak to people who say that no one would innovate without government-secured monopoly on information, and this is clearly false as open source works without this monopoly. As such it seems to me that people who make that claim don’t understand how innovation works.

Often I say that if we phased out patents and other IP restrictions, then investments would not stop but they would change from less frequent large investments to more frequent small investments. As long as designs can stay secret until release, there will always be first mover advantage and brand recognition. But you might get smaller investments to build out manufacturing for the next year, rather than bigger longer term investments. The flip side is that stagnant innovators who got lucky once will be subsumed by more agile competitors who can better deliver those innovations to market.

Thus investment and innovation wouldn’t stop - markets still ensure certain advantages for innovators - but the nature of investment and innovation wouldn’t shift towards more incremental moves and more diverse actors. A major upside to this is that those best suited to scale an existing nascent technology would be free to compete at doing so.

It should be noted that even die hard capitalists are against IP restrictions [1] as they are a massive government investment in the market. So proponents of IP restrictions must reconcile their arguments in favor of this government intervention with their potential interest in free markets.

[1] https://youtu.be/GZgLJkj6m0A

	▲	fluoridation 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I do agree with that. Same with the rationale for copyright.

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brookst 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean it sure sounds like the old “science can’t explain how bumblebees fly, therefore science is incomplete or outright wrong” argument. Which is of course just false.

	▲	SequoiaHope 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I replied so feel free to read that.