(Yet another) IP question - Page 2

bobman0330 · #11 05-27-2007, 12:44 PM

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If all you're worried about is EV, you're going to be incredibly frustrated. The economy is not a scientific laboratory. There's no control group. You have a smaple size of one. Trying to calculate policy A = EV $X and policy B = EV $Y is impossible. Give it up.

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Just because the numbers are (accepting your argument) immeasureable doesn't mean they don't exist. It's a hypothetical. Do you deny that there could ever be a situation such that those numbers, or numbers standing in a similar relationship to each other, could exist? No one's saying that we should have patent examiners roaming the country and assessing the marginal cost and expected sales of proposed patent devices. The example is just pointing out that in a very large category of cases, the numbers will be such that a firm would be incentivized to not invest in research in a non-patent world even though certain measures of economic well-being indicate that patented research would be superior.

Copernicus · #12 05-27-2007, 01:08 PM

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If all you're worried about is EV, you're going to be incredibly frustrated. The economy is not a scientific laboratory. There's no control group. You have a smaple size of one. Trying to calculate policy A = EV $X and policy B = EV $Y is impossible. Give it up.

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That is how every investment decision a company makes is analyzed. You give it up, you have no answer to IP and that has been obvious for the 2 years that Ive read AC threads here.

pvn · #13 05-27-2007, 01:27 PM

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Just because the numbers are (accepting your argument) immeasureable doesn't mean they don't exist. It's a hypothetical. Do you deny that there could ever be a situation such that those numbers, or numbers standing in a similar relationship to each other, could exist?

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No, I don't deny it. But they're still immeasurable.

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No one's saying that we should have patent examiners roaming the country and assessing the marginal cost and expected sales of proposed patent devices.

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That was basically what the OP was getting at.

pvn · #14 05-27-2007, 01:27 PM

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If all you're worried about is EV, you're going to be incredibly frustrated. The economy is not a scientific laboratory. There's no control group. You have a smaple size of one. Trying to calculate policy A = EV $X and policy B = EV $Y is impossible. Give it up.

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That is how every investment decision a company makes is analyzed. You give it up, you have no answer to IP and that has been obvious for the 2 years that Ive read AC threads here.

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Oh, so there are never any bad investment decisions? because, you just plug the numbers in, right?

pvn · #15 05-27-2007, 01:27 PM

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If all you're worried about is EV, you're going to be incredibly frustrated. The economy is not a scientific laboratory. There's no control group. You have a smaple size of one. Trying to calculate policy A = EV $X and policy B = EV $Y is impossible. Give it up.

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That would be true if policy B ("no IP protection") offered any advantages to offset its massive disadvantage ("sh*t doesn't get invented in the first place"). Does it?

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See, this "calculation" stuff is exactly what I'm talking about.

Policy A has advantage X and disadvantage Y.

X-Y=Z

Policy B has advangate L and disadvantage M.

L-M=N

Now, you assert that one of these two is greater than the other, but you have NO WAY of assigning ANY value to X, Y, L or M. It's total pulling numbers out of your ass.

EDIT: Specifically, in this case, jogger points out that policy B has a negative, but ignores that his favored policy A *also* has a negative.

EDIT: Also, his assertion that "[censored] doesn't get invented" is demonstrably false. DUCY?

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I'm still waiting to hear the disadvantage of Policy A.

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vs.

hmkpoker · #16 05-27-2007, 02:00 PM

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If all you're worried about is EV, you're going to be incredibly frustrated. The economy is not a scientific laboratory. There's no control group. You have a smaple size of one. Trying to calculate policy A = EV $X and policy B = EV $Y is impossible. Give it up.

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That is how every investment decision a company makes is analyzed. You give it up, you have no answer to IP and that has been obvious for the 2 years that Ive read AC threads here.

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The problem is that ACists corner themselves in with that goddamn stupid non-violence principle. The market will provide what people are willing to pay for, aggressive or not. If there is a hit man offerring a murdering service, and someone values the service more than the costs (both direct and indirect, like the risk of being attacked or imprisoned for your dealing with the hit man), then there will be mercenaries for hire. Heck, that's how it works in the real world.

People are not going to pay for most violent services when resources expand, because the cost goes up too high. However, this may not be the case with IP and patent law. Not too many people are really opposed to patents, and if the threat of having your ideas ripped off really does stifle innovation, then there will probably be a demand for IP and patent law enforcement.

Richard Tanner · #17 05-27-2007, 03:34 PM

I was listening to Stef on FDR and he had a set of podcasts on IP, but the problem was they were all about Music. That (entertainment) is a totally different beast the other industries. Now I know this most of this board has disavowed Stef (and rightly so) because his views are either skewed or outright wrong, but I'd still like to hear about how patents and harder-to-develop property would function in AC.

Cody

tolbiny · #18 05-27-2007, 04:28 PM

timotheeeee,
It's true, Patents add incentives to inventors. Incentives don't come out of no where, so who or what is on the receiving end of the disincentives? There you will find your answer about the negatives of IP law. IMO they are the innovators, instead of the inventors and those who research non patentable things.
Invention is just one step in creating a useful product, take Windows for example. Xerox came up with the original idea for the interface which Windows was based on, but because of a series of things that they didn't do well (marketing) no one wanted to buy it. Microsoft and Apple come along and co-opt it, make a few adjustments and the product takes off. IP makes it harder to improve on where a product is lacking since you need the creators permission.

clowntable · #19 05-28-2007, 05:08 AM

I can only speak for patents in the field of IT.
I believe the way it is handled currently (in the US) is a tax on the software industry as a whole.
Or maybe a transfer program from the software industry to the law industry (of course I will not mention that a lot of legislators come from a law background).

clowntable · #20 05-28-2007, 05:39 AM

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If I were an ACist, I wouldn't slag on economics.

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Who is slagging? All I said that it's not science; that doesn't mean that it's wrong or useless. The methodology employed in economics is deductive in nature, not inductive. There has ever been a scientifically valid macroeconomic experiment in the history of mankind.

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I agree with you that the "mainstream" empirical economics can hardly be called science.

I would however like to know your definition of what constitutes a science and then I would like to know if you think if maybe Austrian economics (using deductive reasoning instead of induction) would qualify.