Comment by jambalaya8
1 day ago
All due respect, but how would anyone survive, no less find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN, in a world that made not just some 'patents' free but removed property and invention such as the extremities Doctorow's fiction often espouses? America is sorta known for pretense of mutual benefit. We sorta fumbled things after we, to put it bluntly, nuked the Japanese twice. Don't get me wrong, if you read my comments elsewhere you will see how I feel about people/companies claiming swathes of things for themselves too.
Everyone seems to think they either deserve more or they fall for believing people are inherently willing to remunerate fairly for what they use... Def. not my experience, at all... like what if people were all just assuming since your ideas exist, they were for sale or free, or 'offering' things you dont want or arent getting in return...? what if you dont want what they do with it in the first place? what if (heh) you just don't like the end user and you know they will irk you with it?
Doctorow is the furthest from a fair or good example, imho.
> find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN
a) This is not about trying to protect the incomes of people working in Big Tech
b) In his talk Doctorow gives examples of business opportunities that are actually being repressed by the laws against reverse engineering
It's not just about big tech. It's about what enables highly productive societies in general. Without IP, I suppose everyone could share to some limited extent what is already known, but why would anyone ever sink big dollars or time into coming up with something new that'd immediately get stolen by people who did nothing to contribute to it? Indeed, it's part of the problem with manufacturing in the West, there's no robust enforcement of IP with China due to political sensitivities so manufacturers have to have strategies to protect themselves from the fact that if they release a new product they've got maybe 90 days before a copycat hits the market.
I can't help but wonder how much stronger the core of the EU economy would be with actual robust management of their trade relationship with China. The US too but I think the EU is suffering a bit more in real time.
No doubt it makes Doctorow the star of certain types of intellectual circles but the theories have never made a people or country actually well off and never will. But, things don't have to work in the real world to be popular, or even to become policy.
Eh the dude who played Minecraft that named himself after that one Doctorow story couldn't even survive the first year of COVID.
Maybe in the past, but who in the present who isn’t already rich is or would have the income hurt by eliminating IP laws? Keep in mind that most indie projects make barely any money, most of those that do are free + ads or Patreon, any software not under expensive DRM is easy to pirate, and AI companies pirate to train LLMs.
> what if you dont want what they do with it in the first place? what if (heh) you just don't like the end user and you know they will irk you with it?
What if you don’t like what somebody does with “your” ideas in their own personal bubble? Why care? Try to ignore them. I’d rather that than have somebody restrict what I can do with whatever ideas they claim are theirs.
cool. as long as we are clear people are free to commit mass genocide and i dunno peel peoples' skin back or i dunno, something out of a robin wiliams scifi movie or phosphorus bombing or something with what you have invented. just trying to get some clarity on the concept of 'belongings' and property law.
> We sorta fumbled things after we, to put it bluntly, nuked the Japanese twice
What?
I believe OP is saying that the US has not been reliably sane in its public policy since ending WW II via nuclear warfare.
I don't know if I agree with the claim overall, but I certainly think nuking civilian populations was an execrable choice (even if the official targets were technically military ones).
They were already being firebombed to death by "regular" bombs and/or starving to death from various blockades. Why single out those attacks?
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actually my comment was not really about how america waited to get involved in ww2, then finally did, back almost a hunded years ago (that is, this is not a veiled reference to some other time or place); it was about the USA's quest for "empire" which ramped up once "d-day" occurred.
For a very brief window of time, USA did a little bit more good than bad.
Those of us wanting to believe USA was more better than not have struggled to recalibate our beliefs.