(Yet another) IP question

[hmkpoker]

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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.

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I'm not going to start scouring the dictionary, but I believe that something can only be considered a science when it follows the scientific method. Information is ascertained empirically from a rigidly constructed experiment that provides a control group and experiment, each of which are isolated and either identical, or in sufficient quantities to produce an accurately descriptive mean.

Economics and social sciences cannot do this. Say you want to prove, for example, that instituting socialized medicine lowers the murder rate of a country. To do this scientifically, you would need a large series of nearly identical countries that were completely isolated from each other...enough to overcome intra-group variance...to implement socialisn in the experimentals and not in the controls, and observe the results. This is so impossible that nothing short of God could concoct such an experiment. We would literally need to create hundreds of worlds to accurately overcome third variables (of which there are many).

So what does an economist do? He slugs around facts and figures in a manner that makes it seem like he did something meaningful. This countries have 21.45% less this, the poverty rate is down 16%, the "mean quality of life" is better in this country, etc. This works wonders because the status quo has no grasp of theory, and lacks the intellectual capacity to ask critical questions about these factoids. Can these results be attributed to the cause you claim, or to a third variable? Do these results exist because of the proposed source, or in spite of it? What would the results be if a different variable were implemented, all else being equal?

These are important questions, and without these considerations, facts are irrelevent. Given what politicians want us to swallow as scientific truth, you could prove that anything causes anything; just find a few obscure variables that you want to correlate mildly (not being concerned about statistical accuracy,) make a lot of references to important-sounding sources, and present it with zeal. If a biologist did that, he would be laughed off the stage. When an economist does that, he gets appointed a new position.

And to answer your last question, Austrian economics is most definately not science.

[pvn]

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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).

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Software patents are really bothersome, mostly because software has already been traditionally covered by copyright.

Imagine if, in addtion to the copyright on "Oops I did it again" Britney Spears (for some reason I doubt she wrote that song but let's go with it) also got a patent on "Teenybopper bubble-gum pop music".

[jogger08152]

You're (wrongly) presupposing the telephone gets invented in the first place, absent IP protection.

Aside: I f*cking hate cell phones. The one good point about anarcho-capitalism is that it offers the prospect of a (legal) market solution to the problem of "accident-waiting-to-happen" drivers racing around in Hummers while yammering away on cell phones: bazookas.

[Brainwalter]

You should look up what a bazooka is.

[ShakeZula06]

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You're (wrongly) presupposing the telephone gets invented in the first place, absent IP protection.

Aside: I f*cking hate cell phones. The one good point about anarcho-capitalism is that it offers the prospect of a (legal) market solution to the problem of "accident-waiting-to-happen" drivers racing around in Hummers while yammering away on cell phones: bazookas.

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Then surely you can show that the phone wouldn't have been created, right?

[jogger08152]

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You should look up what a bazooka is.

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ba·zoo·ka [buh-zoo-kuh]
–noun Military
a tube-shaped, portable rocket launcher that fires a rocket capable of penetrating several inches of armor plate, as of a tank or other armored military vehicle.

[Brainwalter]

Edit: I get it now, nevermind, obv you're right and road owners will let drivers use bazookas.

[jogger08152]

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You're (wrongly) presupposing the telephone gets invented in the first place, absent IP protection.

Aside: I f*cking hate cell phones. The one good point about anarcho-capitalism is that it offers the prospect of a (legal) market solution to the problem of "accident-waiting-to-happen" drivers racing around in Hummers while yammering away on cell phones: bazookas.

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Then surely you can show that the phone wouldn't have been created, right?

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I can surely show that it wouldn't have been incented. It isn't automatic, merely likely, that it wouldn't have been invented. "The most valuable patent"

Now you answer the same question: please show support for the argument that the cell phone would have been invented without IP protection.

[jogger08152]

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Edit: I get it now, nevermind, obv you're right and road owners will let drivers use bazookas.

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So you're saying AC is useless even in this example? Goddammit, go figure.

[ShakeZula06]

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You're (wrongly) presupposing the telephone gets invented in the first place, absent IP protection.

Aside: I f*cking hate cell phones. The one good point about anarcho-capitalism is that it offers the prospect of a (legal) market solution to the problem of "accident-waiting-to-happen" drivers racing around in Hummers while yammering away on cell phones: bazookas.

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Then surely you can show that the phone wouldn't have been created, right?

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I can surely show that it wouldn't have been incented. It isn't automatic, merely likely, that it wouldn't have been invented. "The most valuable patent"

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Your post nor your link offers no reasoning for why it likely wouldn't have been created.
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Now you answer the same question: please show support for the argument that the cell phone would have been invented without IP protection.

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No I don't. Your the one that wants to create artificial and arbitrary constructs and enforce them with violence. It's all on you.