Via Michelle Geis, Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan gets on board with links to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that "exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients' access to testing than it does to spur innovation."

Read his post here:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/when-patents-kill-innovation.html

The report itself can be found here:

http://journals.lww.com/geneticsinmedicine/toc/2010/04001

Patents do not kill innovation. What kills innovation is the actual patent system based on limited property. Let´s analyse three great soscial innovations which has allowed us to be here we are: --Money. It allows to stock and exchange work. Money is based on unlimited property and can be exchanged through money markets, that is Banks.

--The Corporation. It allows to focus massive collective action towards a given economic activity. Corporations shares (that is shares of economic activities, of sources of returns)are based on unlimited property and can be exchanged through shares markets, that is Stock Markets. --Language. It allows us to express and comunicate ideas (good or bad). But where are the ideas markets ? Nowhere! Why ? Because there is not unlimited property of ideas. As a result technological state of art is far from optimal and due to trade secret people has to rediscover ideas eternaly. In short, due to lack of unlimited property ideas production and exchange is highly inefficient and unequal. I see this as an obviuos statement, and i think i´m not the only one:http://www.intellectualventures.com/; these guys could feresee the future and have created a type of company we will see more frequently from now on.

But where are the ideas markets ? Nowhere! Why ? Because there is not unlimited property of ideas.

No, it's because ideas are not scarce. They're very cheap to copy.

What is scarce is people that can come up with new, brilliant ideas. And there is a market for those, as evidenced by the high salaries that accomplished and degreed people in certain fields can command.

http://www.intellectualventures.com/

A Ponzi scheme? Oh, come on. They're just a scam. Their patent portfolio, difficult to accurately appraise in value, is simply an instrument for inflating apparent worth, similarly to those infamous CDOs.

1. "What is scarce is people that can come up with new, brilliant ideas"

That´s talent, with no doubt the fourth factor of production. And its retribution should be benefits and not theft as it is now. Let me explain this again:

--natural ressources: its retribution is rent; interchanged in agriland, real state, mining grants markets etc...usualy unlimitedly owned by individuals or corporations. In this last case can be exchanged in stock markets based on unlimited property.

--work: its retribution is salary; stocked and interchangead as money in banks aka money markets) based on unlimited property.

--capital: its retribution is interest (which is fosilised work or fosilised talent). As natural ressources usually owned by corporations and exchanged in stock markets based on unlimited property.

--talent: its retribution is at present theft but should be these benefits that infamously economic theory does not know how to handle. Sometimes exchanged in reduced and highly ineficient and unequal markets due to unlimited property.

2. In any case i agree with your proposition, but it logically follows that new, brilliant ideas are scarce too. And i agree also that, no matter good or bad, their copies are becoming cheaper and cheaper. Fortunately the control of the use of ilegal copies is becoming also cheaper and cheaper...Both things are great: less cost for dissemination and a better guarantee that the benefits of goods ideas goes to their creator. This two things together with unlimited property makes almost all necessary conditions for a competitive monopoly market for ideas to exist. But not suficient: provided these three conditions are met, we still need to design a good market or mechanism for ideas (good or bad), which are singularities not commodities, to be traded.

3. "A Ponzi scheme? Oh, come on. They're just a scam. Their patent portfolio, difficult to accurately appraise in value, is simply an instrument for inflating apparent worth, similarly to those infamous CDOs".

Recently we had a case in my country that "against monopoly-like" people is trying to misuse as a firearm against patents:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/reportajes/Estafa/karma/elpepusocdmg/20100425elpdmgrep_7/Tes

But as with Intelectual Ventures i do not see where is the scam: CAVEAT EMPTOR ! The problem in this case was that the final decisor about buing a share in this business were some Tibetan Lamas. With all due respect, what do this guys up there can know about can openers or closers ? In any case i must admit that Intelectual Ventures seems to be quite fuzzy about their patent portofolio.

PooPatentTroll or however you spell it writes:

1. "What is scarce is people that can come up with new, brilliant ideas"

That´s talent, with no doubt the fourth factor of production. And its retribution should be benefits and not theft as it is now. [implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You are not making sense. Talent's reward is being able to command a high salary and, sometimes, fame and outright fortune. This has nothing to do with patents (or copyrights). And where does theft come into this? Nobody was discussing theft in this thread until you mentioned it just now in a mangled, grammatically-challenged phrase of uncertain interpretation.

--natural ressources: its retribution is rent; interchanged in agriland, real state, mining grants markets etc...usualy unlimitedly owned by individuals or corporations. In this last case can be exchanged in stock markets based on unlimited property.

You seem to be confused, among other things about the meaning and normal usage of the word "retribution".

Natural resources and other physical property tend to be bought, sold, and sometimes rented. Stock markets are about something else -- shares of ownership of businesses. The businesses in turn own other things, and derive much of their value from these assets, but it's not quite the same thing (the business selling something it owned is different from you selling some of your shares in it).

--work: its retribution is salary; stocked and interchangead as money in banks aka money markets) based on unlimited property.

And nobody here is talking about work no longer earning a salary.

--capital: its retribution is interest (which is fosilised work or fosilised talent). As natural ressources usually owned by corporations and exchanged in stock markets based on unlimited property.

You still seem to be somewhat confused. See above.

--talent: its retribution is at present theft but should be these benefits that infamously economic theory does not know how to handle. Sometimes exchanged in reduced and highly ineficient and unequal markets due to unlimited property.

This does not compute either. Indeed, you seem to be suggesting that the mere possession of talent should entitle one to some sort of remuneration in and of itself.

That is incorrect. It is the application of talent that should be rewarded, and the application of talent is a form of work, so it should be rewarded with a salary (or with wages, depending).

Talent unapplied is of zero benefit to society so why should society pay for it? On the other hand, talent applied is work and society already does pay for work.

In any case i agree with your proposition, but it logically follows that new, brilliant ideas are scarce too.

No, they aren't, because they can be communicated widely very cheaply.

The capability to produce novel ones may be scarce, but that's not the same thing.

Fortunately the control of the use of ilegal copies is becoming also cheaper and cheaper...

Incorrect. In 1960 the recording industry could control distribution of records for a small amount in legal fees and filing fees; now they spend millions on lawsuits every year and still can't control jack. It's a Sisyphean task.

Fortunately.

a better guarantee that the benefits of goods ideas goes to their creator.

It is unnatural to expect that all of the benefits of work will be captured by the worker. Ordinarily it is a positive-sum game; the hirer gets whatever they get done and the worker gets paid enough to be willing to do the work for that amount of money. Some of the value of the work output is captured by the worker and some by his employer. Imagine if it were otherwise! If all of the value was captured by the employer the worker would have no incentive to work (unless a negative incentive, like a slavemaster's whip -- let's not turn back the clock to those days!) and if all of the value was captured by the worker the employer would have no reason to hire the worker, ending up exactly as well off whether he did or did not.

Because it is unnatural for some category of worker to capture all of the value created by their work, it would require an artificial construction of law and enforcement to create that effect, at net cost to society. There is no net benefit, because of the side effects of destroying any incentive for anyone to hire that worker. In the worst case, the work is a type that is necessary to society and consequently either necessary work won't get done or the government will force it to be done and rob the public blind on behalf of the privileged class of worker.

It is also impractical, in reality. It's generally not even practically possible to identify all downstream value-generation resulting from the performing of some task, let alone to accurately compute all of that value and force it to be transferred to the task's performer.

This two things together with unlimited property makes almost all necessary conditions for a competitive monopoly market for ideas to exist.

"A competitive monopoly market"? WTF?

I suggest, in the strongest terms, that you desist from authoring blog comments while under the influence of wacky tobacky, lest you embarrass yourself even worse and in front of a bigger audience than this site gets.

Particularly don't post to Usenet while under the influence, I beg of thee, lest you find yourself crowned Kook of the Month or worse and a whole website erected dedicated to your public ridiculing.

But not suficient: provided these three conditions are met, we still need to design a good market or mechanism for ideas (good or bad), which are singularities not commodities, to be traded.

We already have "a good market mechanism for ideas to be traded". It's called the First Amendment, and it guarantees the free holding and communication of ideas. It's a shame it's gotten somewhat dented up and collected some rust since its inception; time for a restoration job if you ask me, which can start with the abolition of copyrights and patents.

Recently we had a case in my country that "against monopoly-like" people is trying to misuse as a firearm against patents

I can't even parse this. Too many grammatical errors among other things.

But as with Intelectual Ventures i do not see where is the scam

Well, maybe you'll do us all the world a favor and invest heavily in Intelectual [sic] Ventures and then lose the shirt off your back, not to mention your computer, and thus cease to bother us anymore with nonsense posts that need rebuttal.

The problem in this case was that the final decisor about buing a share in this business were some Tibetan Lamas.

Be very thankful that you did not post this spelling-challenged claptrap to usenet or you'd already be in the running for KotM and probably a half a dozen or more other auk "awards". :)

With all due respect, what do this guys up there can know about can openers or closers ?

Quoted for the record and the sheer amusement value. I've got to know who your drug supplier is! That must be some high-quality weed if you get this crazy while stoned!

In any case i must admit that Intelectual Ventures seems to be quite fuzzy about their patent portofolio.

"Intelectual" Ventures' "portofolio" belongs in a "porto-let" in my opinion.

End of line.

1. "This does not compute either. Indeed, you seem to be suggesting that the mere possession of talent should entitle one to some sort of remuneration in and of itself.

That is incorrect. It is the application of talent that should be rewarded, and the application of talent is a form of work, so it should be rewarded with a salary (or with wages, depending)."

Beeswax, except this two sentences i quote above, in the rest of your comment again you seem to beeing unable to find the point of what i´m saying and you loose yourself in irrelevant details. Maybe it is a problem of my bad english as you say. In any case, from your totally unability to abstract and get the point i guess you are a lawyer and not a scientist (of any kind, including social sciences) or engineer. Am i wrong ?

Since lawyers might (and must not) know anything about science and in order you understand what follows, first let me explain in short how theories in science are done. When developping any theory, many theoretical choices must be made sequentially. Sometimes some of the choices made are wrong but theorists do not realise about it since this choices bring good results in the short term. But as soon as you developpe the theory up to its final consequences you see that incoherences appear and that the theory is uncomplete, that is, that phenomenons which appear in reality can not be explained correctly by the theory. The unique solution at this stage is to backtrack and find out what choice went wrong. This is not easy usualy and therefore scientist stick to incoherent and uncomplete theories. I can understand this attitude but this not as science advances. This happens not only in social sciences as economics but also in hard sciences as physics: some theoretical choices where wrong there and as result quantum mechanics can not be merged in a coherent way with general relativity and since many years this fact puzzles physicists). Regarding economics, usually 3 factors are aknowledged: natural ressources (rent), work (salary) and capital(interest). But it tuns out that profits, innovations, entrepreneurs, corporations, managers, competitive monopolies (FYI that´s a kind of imperfect market)and many related things exist in reality but economic theories hardly can handle them. So current economic theories are at least uncomplete. Maybe not totaly wrong, but at least uncomplete.

Work is a commodity. The only thing which symmetrizes man, that make man equal for economic purposes is time. We all have the same 24 hours a day. That´s what salary pays. And the whole market economy is based on this. Without this principle no agreement in exchange price would be possible (and i´m aware that work-value was abandonned almost since Ricardo).

Talent is totaly different. It is the ability to produce innovation. So, as you say, what is paid in talent are its products, innovations. As i said in previous posts innovations are things that allow us to enjoy life and may take the form of creations (these allow us to enjoy life directly; an example could be art) or inventions (these allow us to enjoy life indirectly by reducing the time it take us to do something); think about any invention it comes to your mind, and you will see that it fits this definition. Yes some inventions allow us to do tings we couldn´t do before. If we could not do it, the time it took was infinite. Creations come in the form of expressions; inventions comes in the form of propositions and/or instructions. A famous artist has talent and the surplus he gets over the commodity salary reflects this; a manager has talent, he is a dayly inventor, his inventions comes in the form of decisions and/or instructions which are answers to dayly contingent problems which probably won´t reproduce, so no sense to protect it. But it turns out that nowdays the retribution of many talent applications is theft in stead of profit: people copy them or use them without paying a dime.

This why i insist so much about ideas market (or technology market). As it happened before with other factors at first people feels repugnance against the idea of unlimited property. But unlimited property is a precondition of any market so we need it for market ideas. As it happened before with other factors, a quick and commonly accepted method of valuation of assets is a second precondition for any market. We lack of this yet.

2. "Well, maybe you'll do us all the world a favor and invest heavily in Intelectual [sic] Ventures"

I guess this company will soon buy an asset that will greatly increase their market value.

P.d. Beeswax, greetings from my cousins: they like your comments!

in the rest of your comment again you seem to beeing unable to find the point of what i´m saying

It is difficult to find what isn't there.

and you [insult deleted]. Maybe it is a problem of my bad english as you say. In any case, from your [insult deleted] i guess you [insult deleted]. Am i wrong ?

Yes. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[much insultingly patronizing verbiage deleted] Work is a commodity. The only thing which symmetrizes man, that make man equal for economic purposes is time. We all have the same 24 hours a day. That´s what salary pays. And the whole market economy is based on this. Without this principle no agreement in exchange price would be possible (and i´m aware that work-value was abandonned almost since Ricardo).

Really? Supply and demand curves crossing over is what allows agreement in exchange price. It has nothing to do with the number of hours in a day or with the ancient notion of a labor theory of value.

Talent is totaly different.

Talent and skill are the reasons why not everyone gets paid the same for their working hours. Some people do work during that time that is worth more -- that is, scarcer and/or more in demand.

inventions (these allow us to enjoy life indirectly by reducing the time it take us to do something)

Inventions have occasionally even been known to enable one to do wholly novel things that were not previously possible given any amount of time.

A famous artist has talent and the surplus he gets over the commodity salary reflects this;

Ah, I see you're beginning to understand at last.

a manager has talent, he is a dayly inventor

No, a manager's talent lies in his ability to manipulate people. Hence the skill sets managerial positions invariably require, which can typically be summed up with the word "sleaze". (This goes double for politicians.)

But it turns out that nowdays the retribution of many talent applications is theft in stead of profit: people copy them or use them without paying a dime.

You are not making sense. Aside from your continuing misuse of "retribution" (that word means "punishment"), there is no theft if nothing is taken. If I take my own wood and use my own tools to whittle it into a chair that happens to be identical to a chair of yours, I have (obviously) stolen nothing in doing so. In particular, you are not missing your chair, or even your idea or design for your chair; you still have these.

Furthermore you are not missing your (hypothetical) talent at designing new varieties of chair, and that talent can get you employed at, say, a company in the business of selling fashionable furniture, since you can be a trend-setter and with your talent can help keep that company ahead of the competition. Without you, or someone like you, that company could only copy existing designs and therefore could not be at the leading edge of fashion. With someone with your talents they have a chance to be at that leading edge at least some of the time, where they can command higher prices from the more discerning trendy-furniture-buyers.

This why i insist so much about ideas market (or technology market).

Unless you are genuinely deluded, no, it is not; you insist so much because you want a monopoly that will let you use your talent just once to invent a hit product and then let you rest on your laurels being paid for life instead of having to actually keep working (whether using your talent or doing something else society finds useful).

In other words you want a free ride at society's expense.

But I don't see any reason why we should give you one, just because you have a talent. I see why we might pay you generously to use your talent, that is, give you a larger salary for work that uses it than for many other kinds of work, but you still should stop getting paid if you stop working, talent or no talent and regardless of what kind of talent.

If there should be a welfare program for artists, or inventors, or whatever other sort of talent you think should get automatic welfare, I say it should not be conditional on having any kind of particular talent nor on having already used it once, but should be available to all citizens regardless of creed or ability that lack current work. Of course it should be enough to enable one to survive in reasonable enough comfort that the fairly large unemployed minority of our population won't resort to crime or other destabilizing acts out of desperation to survive and make ends meet, whereas it should not be so high that working, if one can find a job, isn't more attractive for the larger amounts of money it can net one.

As it happened before with other factors at first people feels repugnance against the idea of unlimited property. But unlimited property is a precondition of any market so we need it for market ideas.

We don't need a "market ideas". Markets are needed to allocate scarce resources and ideas are not scarce.

The ability to create good, novel ideas may be scarce but we already have a market for that: that subset of the labor market that involves creative ability. We don't need a new one.

As it happened before with other factors, a quick and commonly accepted method of valuation of assets is a second precondition for any market. We lack of this yet.

No, we don't. The invisible hand has spoken, through Napster and its spiritual descendants: the correct market price of a piece of information is $0.00.

Furthermore, the accepted method for pricing assets is the law of supply and demand. This is universal; no new method needs to be invented for new kinds of things.

I guess [Intellectual Ventures] will soon buy an asset that will greatly increase their market value.

I doubt it very much.

1. "Supply and demand curves crossing over is what allows agreement in exchange price".

This is so abstract and vacuous that says nothing about reality. What allow agreement in exchange is the willing of economic agents to exchange. And people does not exchange unless the exchange mechanism or institution (market) provides freedom (free entry and exit), efficiency (every exchange can be made in the time agents wants it to be made), order (everybody uses the same conventions) and equality (equal opportunities). And only an exchange economy based on the labour commodity can provide the last one. Then assuming these conditions are provided, economic agents can specialize and exchange their outputs. The black box which is demand (can you realy measure consumer utility Beeswax?) and price mechanism will do the rest. This is not ancient labor theory, it is daily reality, even if current theories falls to observe it.

2. Regarding talent i see our views converge except regarding your statement "No, a manager's talent lies in his ability to manipulate people". No! Wrong! I see you have never beeing a manager. The function of a manager is to control the dynamics of such a complex thing a company is in order to reach the objectives he is given by the board of directors: that is, to get accurate information about the daily situation (to get true propositions), decide what´s best for the company (again to get true propositions) and give the correct instructions. Of course the ones who obeys instructions are human agents, so it is better the manager treat them accordingly (if you prefer to call this manipulate people, that´s your choice). Usually the objectives he is given comes in the form of MORE RETURNS WITH SAME RESSOURCES OR SAME RETURNS WITH LESS RESSOURCES. More returns with same ressources means that the manager and his team can convince more people to buy the goods they supply, that is to provide their client more joy, and therefore create. Same returns with less ressources means that the manager can do his team get the same output in less time, and therefore invent. To create and invent in a daily basis is talent. That´s why manager are so well paid. All this creations and inventions usually are answers to contingencies which does not reproduce anymore so this is why they do not protect them. So we´ve got some innovators such as managers which are getting their fair part.

3. But not all innovations (creations and inventions) are manager-like. So "If I take my own wood and use my own tools to whittle it into a chair that happens to be identical to a chair of yours, I have (obviously) stolen nothing in doing so". No! Wrong! If i was the first creator of the idea of chair and in our society there was a an IP with a rule of priority you should pay to me for the use of this idea. If you do not pay you are a theft. Every producer of chairs must pay. Once paid, you can do your chair, add whatever new design you like, protect it and then sell it. It is possible that because of your (hypothetical) talent the design you add is so great that everybody wants to pay for your chair much more than you paid to me for the use of the idea of the chair. That´s talent, that´s fair. If you have more talent left you even can create or invent an alternative to my idea, for instance the chesslongue and that might be better for you. Because to invent or create takes time even for the most talented of the agents, and the time i expend inventing the chair i can not expend inventing the chesslongue, so everybody has the opportunity to get its own "idea monopoly". That´s especialization. That´s the source of efficiency.

4. "you insist so much because you want a monopoly that will let you use your talent just once to invent a hit product and then let you rest on your laurels being paid for life instead of having to actually keep working (whether using your talent or doing something else society finds useful).

Yes you are right...Yes i want a monopoly and yes i would like i could rest on my laurels for the rest of my life, but unfortunately to rest on my laurels wouldn´t be a good idea. After publication competitiveness will arise anayway and with much more strenght than with limited property. Think why. It is not difficcult to reach this conclusion.

"In other words you want a free ride at society's expense".

No! You are wrong! I want that society does not free ride me or any other innovator.

5. "Markets are needed to allocate scarce resources and ideas are not scarce. The ability to create good, novel ideas may be scarce but we already have a market for that: that subset of the labor market that involves creative ability. We don't need a new one".

The equilibristic rethorics can not hidde the contradiction, so no need to discuss this point. So i just repeat once again: we do need market ideas. NOW!

Now, to end this repetitive discussion: Beeswax, i feel that everybody that is "against monopoly" are thinking about themselves as buyers of innovations in stead of as sellers of innovators. That´s a self-conscious attitude and that´s the wrong point of view. As soon as property rights are fully guaranteed and a valuation mechanism found (i´m currently trying to invent it to complete my theory) everybody will discover their little talent and use it to get its monopoly. Even you.

PooPatentTroll still hasn't figured out yet that he's supposed to shut up now:

1. "Supply and demand curves crossing over is what allows agreement in exchange price".

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Ah, every patent troll's answer to any rational argument: an ad hominem retaliation. Because they don't have any actually reasoned arguments against basic, well-known facts about economics. Because there are no such arguments.

The black box which is demand (can you realy measure consumer utility Beeswax?)

You don't have to measure it for the market to function. Consumers' own choices (buying or not buying) influence market prices and the market just sort of does the right thing without needing explicit measurements or planning. That's that whole "invisible hand of the market" concept that you still apparently do not get.

"No, a manager's talent lies in his ability to manipulate people".

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Ah, every patent troll's answer to any rational argument: an ad hominem retaliation. Because they don't have any actually reasoned arguments against basic, well-known facts about managers. Because there are no such arguments.

to control the dynamics of such a complex thing a company is in order to reach the objectives he is given by the board of directors: that is, to get accurate information about the daily situation (to get true propositions), decide what´s best for the company (again to get true propositions) and give the correct instructions.

Where the hell do you work where this is true? That's not how managers here behave. Managers here manipulate their way up the corporate food chain, leech off the company, sometimes outright drive it in flaming ruins into the ground, and then waft away on their golden parachutes.

You must be thinking of logistics engineers or other such roles that actually do something constructive.

Here, 99.9% of what managers do is politics rather than anything useful; jockeying for position among one another and lording it over the rank-and-file workers that actually get the company's actual business done. (Or at least try to, and sometimes even succeed at despite managerial interference.)

More returns with same ressources means that the manager and his team can convince more people to buy the goods they supply

No, more returns with the same resources means that the workers improved their efficiency, the manager took all the credit, and the manager now has the clout to vote himself a pay raise and bonuses that will, in all likelihood, more than offset the increase in profits. On top of that the workers that had the audacity to do something different will be the first to get pink slips when the expanding wad of managerial fat in the budget can no longer be sustained without layoffs lower down on the totem pole -- no good deed goes unpunished.

Same returns with less ressources means that the manager can do his team get the same output in less time, and therefore invent.

Non-sequitur.

Illogical, illogical, please explain, please explain!

To create and invent in a daily basis is talent. That´s why manager are so well paid.

No, because they can vote themselves pay raises and/or schmooze with those who do is why managers are so well paid.

All this creations and inventions usually are answers to contingencies which does not reproduce anymore

No, because they're mostly all past male menopause is why they "does not reproduce anymore". Besides, kids cost money to house and clothe, demand allowances, and if you're wealthy plot to kill you for the inheritance and/or insurance policy. Well, managers' kids often will, at any rate, given the sociopathic example set them by at least one parent (usually the father).

"If I take my own wood and use my own tools to whittle it into a chair that happens to be identical to a chair of yours, I have (obviously) stolen nothing in doing so".

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Ah, every patent troll's answer to any rational argument: an ad hominem retaliation. Because they don't have any actually reasoned arguments against basic, well-known facts about economics. Because there are no such arguments.

If i was the first creator of the idea of chair

then maybe you could go get a job inventing new kinds of furniture.

Or you could do it just once, then sit on your whiny little arse demanding gravy for life from society like a parasite.

Tell me, sir, are you by any chance a manager? Besides the mounting evidence that your mode of nutrition is parasitic there's also the minor little matter of how quickly you leaped to the defense of managers as a class when they were impugned, much unlike a normal human being aka rank-and-file peon but much like a manager.

in our society there was a an IP with a rule of priority you should pay to me for the use of this idea.

Because "our society" is ruled by politicians, and politicians are even sleazier and more parasitic than managers. Tell me, sir, are you perhaps even a politician? It would explain a great deal.

If you do not pay you are a theft.

Actually, no, though I did know a theft once. He was abducted from the hospital when he was only four hours old and only reunited with his birth mother when he was seven. Tragic.

Nor, of course, are you a thief, necessarily. I don't pay for the air I breathe. Does that make me a thief? I don't pay for a lot of things. But I do pay for things that had a nonzero marginal cost to provide to me. I do pay for goods and services my consumption of which requires marginal labor to be done on my behalf.

Every producer of chairs must pay. [rest of nonsense deleted]

How ridiculous. What for? What are they consuming? What is the scarce resource that they are paying for, that there's less of the more chairs they make until there'd be none left and a tragedy of the commons if the stuff (whatever it is) were free? Well, aside from wood, of course. I never suggested that they not pay for the raw materials that they consume.

everybody has the opportunity to get its own "idea monopoly". That´s especialization. That´s the source of efficiency.

Fuck off and read an Econ 101 textbook before you spout any more gibberish such as the above. Monopolies as a source of efficiency! Bahahahaha! One wonders how you'll embarrass yourself in public next. Maybe you'll claim that aliens abducted you? Or maybe that the real source of wealth and economic growth is elves cobbling shoes? Or perhaps it will be something particularly simple and stupid, like your pants falling down around your ankles on live TV in the middle of your Oprah interview. (Episode synopsis: "Oprah interviews pseudoscientific quacks. 'Distinguished' guests include alleged spoon-bender Uri Geller, several supposed psychics, Immanuel Velikovsky, Archimedes Plutonium, and PooPatentTroll, whose 'novel' theories of economics are particularly absurd.")

"you insist so much because you want a monopoly that will let you use your talent just once to invent a hit product and then let you rest on your laurels being paid for life instead of having to actually keep working (whether using your talent or doing something else society finds useful)."

Yes you are right...Yes i want a monopoly and yes i would like i could rest on my laurels for the rest of my life

Well, at least you're man enough to admit it. (1% man, 99% politician would be my guess. Beats 0%/100% I suppose.)

"In other words you want a free ride at society's expense".

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You even admitted above that you want a free ride at society's expense. You contradicted yourself within two sentences!

(Estimates revised: 1% man, 69% politician, and 30% complete psycho.)

5. "Markets are needed to allocate scarce resources and ideas are not scarce. The ability to create good, novel ideas may be scarce but we already have a market for that: that subset of the labor market that involves creative ability. We don't need a new one".

The equilibristic rethorics can not hidde the contradiction, so no need to discuss this point. So i just repeat once again: [calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You've now descended into neologistic pseudoscientific technobabble. That puts you squarely in the same netkook territory occupied by such luminaries as Archimides Plutonium and JSH. If this thread were taking place on usenet I'd be crossposting this article to auk and nominating you for KotM myself at this point.

Now, to end this repetitive discussion: Beeswax, i feel that everybody that is "against monopoly" are thinking about themselves as buyers of innovations in stead of as sellers of innovators.

Well, I should certainly hope that none of us are in the business of capturing people and selling them as slaves. Particularly not as supposed "innovator" slaves -- slaves are notoriously bad at doing any kind of work that the slavemaster cannot easily verify is being done correctly and not sabotaged, so any kind of creative job is right out, and such a business would therefore be not only immoral on slave-taking grounds, but also immoral on defrauding-buyers grounds, who would not be getting their money's worth.

That´s a self-conscious attitude and that´s [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Yours is the selfish attitude here, wanting society to wait on you hand and foot for life if you ever have a single idea that takes off.

As soon as property rights are fully guaranteed and a valuation mechanism found

Don't hold your breath.

No, wait! On second thought, do hold your breath. You'll be doing us all a big favor, believe me.

everybody will discover their little talent and use it to get its monopoly. [vicious insult deleted]

No! I'll NEVER turn to the dark side!

Beeswax, again your comments seem too focused in superficial trivialities and irrelevant details. So in stead of discussing again point by point i summarize here what i´ve said until now:

Human agents are freedom, order, symmetry (equality) and efficiency aware. Any social institution (beeing it an organization, a market or whatever) which does not take this into account will not emerge or will not last. There are four factors of production: natural ressources, labor, capital and talent. The three first factors are well accepted, and free, ordered, equal and efficient based on unlimited property markets for this has emerged. . Talent, the ability to innovate is the fourth factor of production. Innovation is anything that allow us to enjoy life. It usually comes in two forms: creations which directly allow us to enjoy life or inventions which allow us enjoy life by reduction of the amount of work needed to cover needs. Its payback should be profits.

Some forms fo talent (management and others) implies daily decisions and finding solutions to contingent irreproducible problems or needs, and these innovators gets its payback (commodity salary plus its sahre on profits) accordingly. In these cases it makes no sense to developpe a better intellectual protection system and market.

But some other forms of innovation (creations and inventions) are of a different kind. The present IP system does not protect them accordingly and as a result: the innovators payback is theft, trade secret rules and technological state of the art is far from the optimum.

As an example of how far form the optimum we can be, despite the explosion of publishing (due to the publish or perish system), science is going nowhere: physics is going nowhere (i.e no progress in the fundamental problem of physics, that is the merge of quantum mechanics and general relativity, since more than 40 years; sadly enough this is causing mental problems to some physicists which are experimenting delusions such as infinite unverses); biology is going nowhere (we know DNA code and its function since the fifties but no progress regarding its semantics); brain sciences are going nowhere (we have now trillions of beautiful and colourful pictures of brain activity which says nothing about how brain works) and social sciences in general and economics in particular are going nowhere (everybody in economics seems interested only in solving games which involves abstract agents, imagined utilities and weird situations that even the most disturbed physicist would not find in any of its infinite universes). This is not to diminish the work of all this talented people. Anyone which has think deep on any of these problems knows that all of them are deadly hard and can drive you crazy.

Another example regarding inventions, anyone who has tried to invent anything as an independent inventor knows how satisficing it can be to discover or invent new things but how slow and hard, or even impossible, it can be to appropiate later of the profits of his inventions. In summary how hard it can be to convert an idea into a marketable product, mainly due to intellectual property problems.

But it turns out that brilliant ideas can come from anyone and anywhere. You can not be predict where will born the next talented agent. Have you ever think that the guy with the great idea which can save the life of your son can be starving in any of the poor town neighborhoods of your country or in any of the underdevelopped countries ? So we do need an ideas market. Its design must take into account first real and general human agent awareness regarding freedom, order, symmetry or equality and efficiency. Order means that everybody must share same conventions in this market. That means preferably an unique language. Equality implies that this market only can work at an international level. Second cheap dissemination (that´s technologicaly possible in ourdays), cheap control of the use of ideas and cheap enforcement of infringements(i suppose that´s also technologicaly possible in ourdays, but i´m not sure); third unlimited property and quick valuation. This market must be as simple as that anyone having an (hypothetical) innovation (good or bad) can write it and publish it in a common electronic repository. No need an independent body to check if it is new, if it works or whatever. Market is the best decider; market will decide. If it is new, it works and is brilliant (it saves a lot of work) its price will rise accordingly. If it is not new, it is not true or correct or unfeasible nobody will buy it. Since economic agents are interested in economica assets sometimes for using it (use), sometimes for appropiating its future returns (investing and speculation) besides inmediate publishing this market should be able to deal with several operations: selling and buying innovations (for users or investors); renting innovations (licensing) and selling and buying shares of innovations (investing and speculation).

IMHO we need not more design than this. As soon as we have unique language, unlimited property and a way to enforce its infringements at an international level, an equal and efficient market will emerge, so that any idea which is avalaible in an human mind, is inmediatelly avalaible to all other human minds. As a result the optimum technological level (zero invention and indefinite amount of creations) will soon be reached.

PooPatentTroll strikes again:

Beeswax, again you [insults deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You still have not grasped yet that your only correct responses to what I've written are to agree or to shut up. What I have written is true to the best of my knowledge, and you have more than adequately demonstrated that you lack the capability to furnish cogent arguments against it, whether because it actually is true, because you are too ignorant or too stupid to disprove it, or (most likely, in my estimation) both. Therefore your posts attacking me cannot serve any useful purpose.

You may as well simply give up now.

Human agents are freedom, order, symmetry (equality) and efficiency aware.

Irrelevant, and smells suspiciously of content-free technobabble to prove "erudition" masquerading as substantive argument.

Verdict: "not even wrong" in the sense used famously by Wolfgang Pauli.

Any social institution (beeing it an organization, a market or whatever) which does not take this into account will not emerge or will not last.

Verdict: just plain wrong. I doubt any social institution yet exists that "takes into account" your babble above, and plenty have endured long times. Furthermore, plenty have violated one or more of the qualities you named, which may be what you meant to suggest shouldn't happen, and survived for long periods -- slavery, for one.

There are four factors of production: natural ressources, labor, capital and talent.

"There are four elements: earth, air, fire, water".

Verdict: wrong.

The three first factors are well accepted, and free, ordered, equal and efficient based on unlimited property markets for this has emerged. . Talent, the ability to innovate is the fourth factor of production.

Verdict: meaningless.

Innovation is anything that allow us to enjoy life.

Verdict: wrong. Moreover, wrong-by-definition. You're writing [word] is [definition] but picking one word and the dictionary definition of a different word!

It usually comes in two forms: creations which directly allow us to enjoy life or inventions which allow us enjoy life by reduction of the amount of work needed to cover needs. Its payback should be profits.

The payback of enjoyment of life should be profits? Say what?

Verdict: more PooPatentTroll babble unconnected with the real, empirically-observable world.

Some forms fo talent (management and others) implies daily decisions and finding solutions to contingent irreproducible problems or needs, and these innovators gets its payback (commodity salary plus its sahre on profits) accordingly.

Verdict: Misspelled and semantically questionable. I'm not aware of many (any?) managers that have innovated anything except, on highly infrequent occasions, new ways to a) be annoying, b) be stupid, c) outsource some function of the company and fire people, or d) actually defraud the company, customers, suppliers, workers, shareholders, or all of the above.

Mostly they're a very uncreative lot, doing everything by the bureaucratic book whether it makes sense or not, and even doing a), b), c), and d) in bog-standard ways, such as a) dragging everyone periodically into interminable, unproductive meetings when they might otherwise have used the time to actually get work done, b) dragging everyone periodically into interminable, unproductive meetings when they might otherwise have used the time to actually get work done, c) putting standard pink slips into standard envelopes and hiring a firm in India to handle tech support, and d) "value engineering", throttling BitTorrent, insider trading, tax evasion, claiming the broadband you're selling is "unlimited" when it isn't, skimming fractional pennies off accounts, bundling questionable securities into even more questionable financial instruments and lying to everyone that the securities' defaulting-or-not will be statistically independent, or simply writing themselves a check for fifty zillion dollars drawn on the company account, selling all their shares, cashing the check, wiring all the money to a Cayman account, and boarding the next plane to Rio before anyone realizes what's happening.

In these cases it makes no sense to developpe a better intellectual protection system and market. But some other forms of innovation (creations and inventions) are of a different kind. The present IP system does not protect them accordingly and as a result: the innovators payback is theft, trade secret rules and technological state of the art is far from the optimum.

They sure are: we should abolish copyright, patent, and trade secret law, make noncompetes unenforceable, make NDAs and most other elements of employment contract void upon termination of employment, substantially revise trademark law (in particular making it only misled consumers that have standing to bring trademark infringement suits, and requiring there to be many of them and the suit be class-action), and remove the DMCA's language regarding circumvention of copy protection and all IP-like laws such as design patents and protections of semiconductor layouts.

Then we shall quickly have a perfectly efficient market in ideas, as the above-listed market-distorting monopolies will be gone and the invisible hand will be unshackled and free to optimize pricing according to the law of supply and demand. Further, secondary distortion in the intellectually-talented-labor market will disappear; the effect will be to raise the average wages of those of moderate talent while lowering the currently sky-high amounts commanded by "superstars" like the Britney Spearses and Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. The unpredictable, lottery-like nature of whether such talents result in moderate or huge money will likewise be moderated. Particularly, the superstars will quit getting paid over and over again for work they only did once, and will have to actually keep working in order to keep the money rolling in, just like everyone else already does.

As an example of how far form the optimum we can be, despite the explosion of publishing (due to the publish or perish system), science is going nowhere

Wrong. To the extent that its progress may be being retarded, the "publish or perish" system is part of the cause, encouraging finding all kinds of trivial things and publishing them (or even publishing frank nonsense like you do) in preference to spending a lot of time actually investigating some actually complex, difficult, and worthwhile phenomenon.

physics is going nowhere (i.e no progress in the fundamental problem of physics, that is the merge of quantum mechanics and general relativity, since more than 40 years

First, physics is not "going nowhere"; new results in physics are published frequently. Second, even on the specific front of unification theory progress has been made: the devising of string theory, loop quantum gravity, and causal dynamical triangulation, and the continued refining of same. Last but not least, the main impediment to progress on unification is technological: we don't have a powerful enough collider to probe at the energy scales where quantum-gravitational effects are generally expected to become significant.

Progress in particle physics more generally tends to depend on the top collider's energy. That hadn't changed for quite a while, until the LHC finally became operational, and the LHC hasn't to my knowledge generated any results yet. There should be a flurry of new particle physics results over the next few years, tailing off again pending the next big jump in accelerator power.

sadly enough this is causing mental problems to some physicists which are experimenting delusions such as infinite unverses

Nonsense. Drivel. There is experimental evidence for an infinite universe, particularly, the strong evidence that the universe is below the critical density.

biology is going nowhere

Wrong.

we know DNA code and its function since the fifties but no progress regarding its semantics

Wrong. Ever heard of a little thing called the "human genome project"? You might want to Google that. New gene-functionality correspondences are announced fairly regularly in scientific journals, too, and epigenetics is a burgeoning young field, as is evo-devo.

brain sciences are going nowhere (we have now trillions of beautiful and colourful pictures of brain activity which says nothing about how brain works)

Wrong. More and more of it is reverse-engineered every year. We have fully reverse engineered much of audio processing and the first several steps of video processing and can make computer circuits that function identically. In the case of audio, such circuits are already contemplated as potential prosthetic cures for forms of deafness hearing aids and cochlear implants can't fix, and talk of curing blindness is becoming commonplace in certain circles.

and social sciences in general and economics in particular are going nowhere

Wrong.

everybody in economics seems interested only in solving games which involves abstract agents, imagined utilities and weird situations that even the most disturbed physicist would not find in any of its infinite universes

This is how science works, by developing a model and then using it to make testable predictions about reality. An economist's model of humans doesn't go to the atomic level of detail, just as someone designing an aerodynamic wing probably doesn't bother modeling individual gas molecules -- Navier-Stokes is good enough for all practical purposes unless the wing is going to be smaller than a gnat's (Brownian motion becomes important) or needs to work at ludicrously low pressures (when the discrete impacts of individual molecules will again become significant).

This is not to diminish the work of all this talented people. Anyone which has think deep on any of these problems knows that all of them are deadly hard and can drive you crazy.

On that last score, I suppose you are speaking from personal experience.

Another example regarding inventions, anyone who has tried to invent anything as an independent inventor knows how satisficing it can be to discover or invent new things but how slow and hard, or even impossible, it can be to appropiate later of the profits of his inventions.

It's quite common that physicists, say, make poor salespeople. This is why it is better to outsource managing the business side of marketing something to people that are good at that sort of thing and focus on innovating, or your art, or your craft, or whatever. You can come up with the designs, say, while others in your company figure out how to turn the design into a product that's actually compelling and will not flop in the marketplace (see: Segway) and still others figure out how to market it effectively instead of being beat by even inferior competitors (see: Betamax).

Of course, the lazy thing to do is to wish you could make your competitors magically go away instead of your having to actually compete, but in practice this will not save you even if you can. Reaching for the monopoly hammer is always a foolish move. Betamax probably had patents and you can bet the Segway does but patents didn't protect either from failing in the marketplace. Copyrights don't save movie studios from ever having box office bombs either. Having a monopoly does not ever seem to make the difference between unprofitable and profitable; only if something is profitable anyway does it help you in any way, and then all it does is maybe make it more profitable by letting you charge monopoly rents for it -- sometimes. If there's a functionally-substitutable equivalent from a competitor you still can't, and the sole effect of nearly all such monopolies thus ends up being simply to reduce the liberty of everyone else and, often, to force competitors to wastefully reinvent the wheel.

Many parts of the economy become vastly more efficient if these monopolies are abolished, and the "creative" industries do not actually suffer at all.

You may point to, say, the recording industry's present woes and argue that that's proof right there that the "creative" industries do suffer, but it is not. The recording industry has a monopoly and yet it suffers. It suffers because its business model is stupid and disruptive innovation is attacking it. Major threats come from quarters that have nothing to do with copyright infringement: artists using other business models and competing against the labels' artists, other forms of entertainment many of which didn't exist until recently offering increased competition for consumers' dollars and time, and an economic downturn that has shrunk most consumers' discretionary spending to boot. In fact, the monopoly the recording industry has is part of the cause of its suffering, for without it the recording industry would have long since developed business models that were much more robust and flexible and that would be better weathering not only the storm created by Napster, but also the storms created by video games, blogs, chat-rooms, Second Life, the mortgage meltdown, artists with non-traditional business models, and specific boycotting of the RIAA (the last of which they would simply have not motivated in the first place).

In summary how hard it can be to convert an idea into a marketable product, mainly due to intellectual property problems.

It is hard to convert an idea into a marketable product. Sometimes it is due to "intellectual property problems" such as a patent thicket that makes it difficult to market a product without getting sued. But the major difficulty is very general and has nothing to do with "intellectual property" and that's that ideas are easy, whereas execution is hard. Given any idea there are a ton of ways to package it up into a product and given any product there are a ton of ways to market it, and most ways to do either will fail in the marketplace however "good" the initial idea was.

But it turns out that brilliant ideas can come from anyone and anywhere.

Indeed; all the more reason they should not be rewarded with long-lived monopolies or, indeed, with any monopolies at all. They're not in the least bit scarce. The ability to turn them into working products that people will actually buy is.

You can not be predict where will born the next talented agent. Have you ever think that the guy with the great idea which can save the life of your son can be starving in any of the poor town neighborhoods of your country or in any of the underdevelopped countries ?

An excellent argument in favor of reducing poverty, expanding the reach of the social safety net, and expanding freedom and telecommunications.

So we do need an ideas market.

If by "an ideas market" you mean more-universal freedom and telecommunications, then I agree with you.

On the telecommunications front, the telecommunications industry has been expanding that for decades and shows no signs of stopping soon. Cellular phones are becoming common even in the third world these days, for instance.

On the freedom front, the globalizing economy is having an intrinsically deleterious effect on non-liberal-democratic governments everywhere, as it necessarily requires workforces to become more educated to be able to compete, and an educated populace tends to quickly remove despotic government, if not by actually overthrowing it then simply by eventually replacing it as the old guard retire or die off and the pool of replacements eventually only contains people raised with a more cosmopolitan worldview. The major impediments to free exchange of ideas that remain in the liberal democracies tend to be copyright law, noncompetes, NDAs-in-employment-contracts, "political correctness" and similar variations on the theme of taboos, and over-aggressive trademark law. But I've already explained how to fix these problems, with the exception of "political correctness", which should die of its own accord.

Its design must take into account first real and general human agent awareness regarding freedom, order, symmetry or equality and efficiency. Order means that everybody must share same conventions in this market. That means preferably an unique language. Equality implies that this market only can work at an international level. Second cheap dissemination (that´s technologicaly possible in ourdays), cheap control of the use of ideas and cheap enforcement of infringements(i suppose that´s also technologicaly possible in ourdays, but i´m not sure).

So, to summarize, you want to have everyone speaking Newspeak while Big Brother watches everyone and enforces his iron will.

I seem to recall one author describing the result of your policy recommendations as "a boot stamping on a human face forever".

I thus strongly recommend that nobody actually listen to you, PooPatentTroll, and certainly that nobody actually try to implement any of these ideas of yours, for fear of the consequences; much as I'd make similar recommendations if you had written "teh wrld suxx0rz. they shud jst push the nulclear buttun!!!1!1!1one" or suggested that I jump off a cliff without a parachute.

third unlimited property and quick valuation

Anyone promoting "quick valuation", in and of itself, as a virtue obviously either has not learned from the recent mortgage meltdown or relishes the prospect of another.

This market must be as simple as that anyone having an (hypothetical) innovation (good or bad) can write it and publish it in a common electronic repository.

We have that already. It's called the world wide web. Perhaps you've heard of it?

No need an independent body to check if it is new, if it works or whatever. Market is the best decider; market will decide.

Indeed, so let's unshackle it from the anticompetitive chains of so-called "intellectual property law" so that it can function at its best.

If it is new, it works and is brilliant (it saves a lot of work) its price will rise accordingly.

Indeed; demand will be high, so an un-monopoly-fettered market will price it relatively high and manufacturers should be able to turn a profit.

If it is not new, it is not true or correct or unfeasible nobody will buy it.

This, of course, tends to be the case anyway. Though with some notable exceptions. People buy poisons such as tobacco and worthless supplements and "remedies" all the time. Fraud is a substantial problem, exacerbated by addiction in some cases. The ultimate cause of fraud, though, besides insufficient regulation to assure neutral-third-party auditing, is information asymmetry and general ignorance in the population.

The latter might have something to do, at least sometimes, with the ludicrously high prices of textbooks, which are just one more evil consequence of the copyright monopoly, combined with educational publishers having cartelized (otherwise the near-perfect substitutability of distinct textbooks on identical subjects would have forced a competitive market and textbook prices wouldn't be much above cost, a result not presently observed; destroy copyright though and you destroy the cartel by lowering the barrier to entry into the textbook-publishing market from "has the resources to author completely new textbooks on everything" to "has the resources to print textbooks on everything" -- combine this with the half-lives of conspiracies being inversely proportional to the exponentials of their sizes, let simmer, and serve).

Since economic agents are interested in economica assets sometimes for using it (use), sometimes for appropiating its future returns (investing and speculation) besides inmediate publishing this market should be able to deal with several operations: selling and buying innovations (for users or investors); renting innovations (licensing) and selling and buying shares of innovations (investing and speculation).

Sheer nonsense. It does not make sense to speak of renting information, or of speculating in shares of information. It makes sense to speak of paying for the production of novel information (a form of labor), of paying (much less) for the copying of information (also a form of labor, but now automatable very cheaply), and of speculating in shares of a company whose fortunes are intimately tied to a particular invention (e.g. Kamen's Segway-selling company that has few or no other products).

IMHO we need not more design than this.

Indeed, we need less.

As soon as we have unique language, unlimited property and a way to enforce its infringements at an international level,

Big Brother will emerge and I will shoot myself.

But not before shooting y ... no, wait. I can't think of any more suitable punishment for you, given such a scenario, than leaving you to live with the consequences of your actions. It clearly violates both the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Convention to do so, but in the circumstances in question, both the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Convention will have been abolished, so ...

an equal and efficient market will emerge, so that any idea which is avalaible in an human mind, is inmediatelly avalaible to all other human minds.

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

On the other hand, maximizing the availability of information to those who want it is easily achievable by a combination of three simple expedients: 1. Expanding freedom of speech to everyone. 2. Expanding Internet access to everyone. 3. Abolishing copyright law.

Well, simple in principle; actually implementing these, politically, is freakishly complex. In fact, achieving world peace is solved as a mere eventual side effect of achieving one of these, and that is generally regarded as being the politics equivalent of NP-hard.

As a result the optimum technological level (zero invention and indefinite amount of creations) will soon be reached.

"Not even wrong." Physically meaningless. Even assuming a well-defined technological maximum exists, "indefinite amount of creations" and "zero invention" are mutually exclusive by definition, since a) "indefinite amount of creations" means the number of inventions must change over time and, furtheremore, there must at any time always be a change in the number that's still in the future, while b) the number cannot go negative and must remain finite, so in any sufficiently long sequence of changes one will necessarily find changes that increase the number, and c) changes that increase the number constitute instances of invention happening.

Alternatively, think of it this way: if after a certain time you have "zero invention" from that time onward, the amount of your "creations" can no longer increase after that time. If it changes at all it must decrease, but this cannot continue forever for the number is a finite, nonnegative integer and after finitely many decreases it would have to either quit decreasing or else hit zero and then quit decreasing so as to not go negative. But this means that the number of "creations" also stops changing after some finite time, and past that time can therefore no longer be said to be "indefinite".

By this time, unless you have an IQ in the single digits you must be coming to realize that you're far outmatched in this argument; comparable to a kitten attempting to out-box Muhammad Ali. You're a crackpot with a half-baked pet theory and little or no grounding in the sciences, with an at-best-normal and I suspect lower-than-normal IQ, up against a guy who, it should now be becoming apparent, is a polymath with a 9th-dan black belt in logic-fu.

I strongly suggest in no uncertain terms that you give up now and cease to post your long, rambling diatribes that laughably fail to support your contentions vis-a-vis "intellectual property". Your sole alternative, as has now I am sure been more than adequately demonstrated, is to embarrass yourself in public yet again and receive another sound thrashing by your black-belted opponent in front of thousands of screaming fans.

"First, physics is not "going nowhere"...even on the specific front of unification theory progress has been made: the devising of string theory"

"Progress in particle physics more generally tends to depend on the top collider's energy. That hadn't changed for quite a while, until the LHC finally became operational, and the LHC hasn't to my knowledge generated any results yet. There should be a flurry of new particle physics results over the next few years, tailing off again pending the next big jump in accelerator power"

String theory was just the theory i had in mind to assert that physics is going nowhere. Regarding the LHC what if after several years of running it, no Supersymmetry and no Higss ? What then ? These two are a proof of what may happens to public (State) driven science (or communism which is what "against monopoly people are ultimately defending). None of this two projects would have had chances to prosper under 100% market driven science (that´s what i´m ultimately suggesting) and probably we would have now the correct unification theory. You can cheat a bunch of civil servants wasting public money but not economic agents acting through market mechanism.

"Ever heard of a little thing called the "human genome project"?"

I´ve even heard of Craig Venter. That was another proof that what you defend (public or state driven research, or communism), is much less effcient that what i defend, market driven research. In any case it seems you do not know what semantics mean. I can read DNA as i can read iberian, but i can not understand what i read in either of those strings of symbols. It is not me that says this, it is the geneticists.

In summary, as with other economic activities, there is no reason why R&D must be effected by a public (state) central decision mechanism in stead of by the decentralized mechanism (where everyone can act as a researcher, can choose freely what to research and will get returns only and only if someone is interested in buying, renting or speculating on his results) we call market. Of course for this, you need unlimited intellectual protection.

P.d. Regarding the rest of your comment, you are not even willing to understand what i´m saying: your dogmatism does not allow you to do this, and therefore your arguments are, as i said, just equilibristic rethorics, no matter how many "screaming fans" acclaims, you as well as no matter how many screaming fans acclaims this blog and its theory, it is just false communism: that is defence of totalitarism (no respect of property rights) and public or state interevention in stead of free market.

PooPatentTroll is apparently obsessed:

String theory was just the theory i had in mind to assert that physics is going nowhere.

Hardly surprising, given that you're clearly insane. You probably consider the "Earthrise" photo to be evidence of a faked-moon-landing hoax, too.

Regarding the LHC what if after several years of running it, no Supersymmetry and no Higss ? What then ?

Then we'll have significant evidence against certain theories. That would constitute further progress. Lack of a Higgs would be very surprising, quickly upending the Standard Model and forcing a lot of rethinking.

None of this two projects would have had chances to prosper under 100% market driven science (that´s what i´m ultimately suggesting) and probably we would have now the correct unification theory.

Really. You think that less funding and no large instruments would have led to more data, by some kind of magic?

I think a hypothetical world of nothing but profit-motivated corporate actors wouldn't have made any progress at all in fifty or more years on fundamental physics, not seeing any short-term profit in such research. Higgs bosons won't enable more bandwidth or faster computers or smaller cell phones, so f*@! 'em.

You can cheat a bunch of civil servants wasting public money but not economic agents acting through market mechanism.

Who's being cheated here? The beauty of things like the LHC is that they can't fail. Progress is inevitable. Any findings at all are progress, and so is nothing. If they run it for years and see nothing new it tells physicists that nothing new happens within a certain range of energies, which itself rules out some theories and promotes others.

I don't see any cheating here.

It does seem unlikely that market mechanisms alone would ever fund basic research. Had an anarcho-capitalist world developed in the wake of, say, the Civil War era, so by 1900, we probably would not have relativity theory, quantum mechanics, cell phones, computers, and a host of other things, including some of the (eventual) practical fruits of theories developed originally with public money. Shortsighted corporate investors would never have funded the basic research from which many modern technologies (anything involving transistors or lasers or magnetic storage, these days, depends on QM in particular) eventually derived.

So while patents and copyrights are evil, there IS a role for the state in these things, and it is in funding research and possibly awarding prizes (e.g. the DARPA red balloon challenge concluded relatively recently).

I´ve even heard of Craig Venter. That was another proof that what you defend (public or state driven research, or communism), is much less effcient that what i defend, market driven research.

Error #1: you accuse me of defending communism. I do not. Error #2: you wrongly conflate "state driven research" and communism. Error #3: you assume absent the government's genome project, Venter would have done anything. There's no evidence of this and plenty of evidence that the competition between Venter's team and the government drove both projects forward rapidly.

In any case it seems you [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

In summary, as with other economic activities, there is no reason why R&D must be effected by a public (state) central decision mechanism in stead of by the decentralized mechanism (where everyone can act as a researcher, can choose freely what to research and will get returns only and only if someone is interested in buying, renting or speculating on his results) we call market. Of course for this, you need unlimited intellectual protection.

Nonsense. That kind of crap is the surest way to stifle progress. Anything you try to investigate you'll find has a barbed-wire fence around it with NO TRESPASSING signs, in your hyper-IP-infested world.

The best is to get rid of IP completely, continue to publicly fund basic research, and continue to have prizes both publicly (DARPA) and privately (X-Prizes) administered.

Regarding the rest of your comment, you are not even willing to understand what i´m saying

I understand exactly what you are saying (save the brief passages where you lapse into outright incoherence or have too many grammar/spelling errors to be intelligible); I simply do not agree with you.

your [insult deleted] does not allow you to do this, and therefore your arguments are, as i said, [insult deleted]

NO! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

It is the pro-IP side of this debate that is arguing from faith and being dogmatic. The anti-IP side is the side supported by real evidence; when the pro-IP side even bothers to muster something resembling evidence, it tends to be alarming-looking but bogus stats that usually are based on counting every infringing copy of something as a lost sale (balderdash!) and then counting every single person employed by their industry as a lost job if IP were abolished (double balderdash!) and imagining that if they could only turn back the clock with some magic technology that would make unauthorized copying magically impossible, they could get people to pay ridiculous prices for things again (absolute bullshit!), conveniently ignoring the increasing amount of $0.00 competition from CC-licensed and open source competitors that don't use copyrights or patents OR infringe them.

no matter how many "screaming fans" acclaims, you as well as no matter how many screaming fans acclaims this blog and its theory, it is just false communism

I don't think you'll find an average value system further from communism anywhere else on the 'net.

You're cracked.

that is defence of totalitarism (no respect of property rights)

Are you mad!? The people at this site, except you and Lonnie, are all about property rights. That's one of the reasons they dislike copyright and patent law: copyright and patent law tread on their property rights.

and public or state interevention in stead of free market.

Most people here are strongly against state intervention in the market -- several to the point of erring on the OPPOSITE side than you accuse (Stepp, Kinsella, probably others, anarcho-capitalists all). This is basically a libertarian blog. It's about as un-communist as it can get short of the anarchists taking over completely. :)

You're cracked.

1. ""String theory was just the theory i had in mind to assert that physics is going nowhere". Hardly surprising, given that you're clearly insane. You probably consider the "Earthrise" photo to be evidence of a faked-moon-landing hoax, too".

So you beleive on extradimensions, infinite parallel universes each one with his own physical forces etc...and you call me the crackpot ? Hmmm...

"Then we'll have significant evidence against certain theories. That would constitute further progress". && "Who's being cheated here? The beauty of things like the LHC is that they can't fail. Progress is inevitable"

Yes, both comments are correct but couldn´t you get the same results throught theoretical methods with less expending ? have youi ever heard about the cost of oportunity ? LHC cost is close now to 10 USD billions. You know who is paying ?

From this site: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/12/10-things-about-the-large-hadron-collider-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

"The United Kingdom, for example, contributes £34 million per year, less than the cost of a pint of beer per adult in the country per year (Source).

The United States contributed approximately $531 million to the development and construction of components for the LHC (with the US Department of Energy shelling out $450 million and the National Science Foundation kicking in the remaining $81 million)". 2. "Anything you try to investigate you'll find has a barbed-wire fence around it with NO TRESPASSING signs, in your hyper-IP-infested world".

NO ! DEFINITIVELY WRONG ! WHY ? YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF !

"Error #3: you assume absent the government's genome project, Venter would have done anything. There's no evidence of this and plenty of evidence that the competition between Venter's team and the government drove both projects forward rapidly".

GREAT! You are now catching the whole idea ! Venter was working for his own profit; he was trying to get patents for the human genome. So others (in this case the public consortium) had to work hard in order to avoid this. Wouldn´t this kind of competition happens in a much great scale if UNLIMITED PROPERTY RIGHTS were granted ??. As soon as you get a new result you will have very strong incentives to publish it, in order to get the unlimited property. The fact that you get the unlimited property means that others can not free ride you waiting, let´s say 5 years until the patent has expired (as it happens today). Also this result will be surelly uncomplete. And tird let´s suppose that even if uncomplete, it is succesful in the idea´s market so that a lot of agents wants to buy an option on a share of the returns of your result. As a consequence of these three facrs, houndreds of other agents will have strong incentives to try hard to find, first results which can improve and/or complement yours and second, try other avenues to get the same result.

3. "So while patents and copyrights are evil, there IS a role for the state in these things, and it is in funding research and possibly awarding prizes (e.g. the DARPA red balloon challenge concluded relatively recently)" && "I don't think you'll find an average value system further from communism anywhere else on the 'net".

Hmmm...your whole narrative seems so uncoherent that the better i could do is no answer anymore. I have to admit that the best attacks to your system are... your own assertions !!

But to summarize again, we have three systems: NIPCSD: NO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY combined with CENTRAL STATE DECISION (NIPCSD). LIPCSD: LIMITED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (that is, a central authority first concede you a property, and then in an arbitrary term, now 20 years, and without any good reason they take your property back) combined with CENTRAL STATAL DECISION (you pay taxes, part of these taxes goes to NSF and other R&D agencies, and the civil servants on these agencies decide, God knows how, what is worth to research). UIPMD: UNLIMITED PROPERTY combined with MARKET DECISION.

I´m not saying that present system (LIPCSD) isn´t or can not produce anything of value. I´m not saying that under the URSS regime people were dying (even if and some were). The regime worked. Their only problem was that there was a better regime: UNLIMITED PROPERTY WITH MARKET DECISION (UPMD).

But i insist: NIPCSD is by definition COMMUNISM (as well as i don not consider to be a lawyer an insult, i do not consider to be communist an insult; i hope you neither). If you have doubts, go, take your economy dictionary and check.

Present system LIPCSD, which is just decaffeinated communism and as any communism system it does not give enough incentives to agents and lacks of direction.

The system i´m suggesting UPMD will be better for all. How many experiments do, you communists, need to realize that NPCSD, that is communism, works always worst than UPMD ?

The unique problem (and i agree with you it is a hard problem) is that UIPMD can only be implemented in an international level and only will work adequatelly with an unique language. Besides all the benefits of UIPMD i´ve already there are two consequences other consequences of this system, one i think is good: since everybody will be able to earn money from ideas, everybody will be well informed (that is education level will rise up to unexpected levels); the second i do not know how to judge it: as soon as unlimited property is stablished, there will be a gold rush for ideas (people will let their works, they will refuse to lie down with their wifes, your thousands of screaming fans will abandon you etc...). Everybody will devote all their time to produce ideas. Is that good ?

P.d. I´ve read all avalaible academic literature on technological or ideas markets but I´m not aware of any scholar which has gone so far as to defend UIPMD, not even Friedman. I´m not in this for scientific priority, only for social change, but if anyone who reads this thread is aware of any scholar which has defended previusly UIPMD, please let me know in order to cite them in next comments.

PooPatentTroll writes:

So you beleive on extradimensions, infinite parallel universes each one with his own physical forces etc...and [implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I didn't say I believe in anything in particular. I said progress is being made. Theories are being made and constrained, and at some point they will be tested.

You, on the other hand, were supposed to shut up yet you have failed to do so. Why?

Yes, both comments are correct but couldn´t you get the same results throught theoretical methods with less expending ?

I can't say I'm surprised to discover that you haven't a clue how science works.

Theorizing without testing the theories is not science; at best it's philosophy, and at worst, religion.

LHC cost is close now to 10 USD billions.

And I expect it will eventually prove to have been worth every penny.

I wrote, in regard to the effects of pervasive "IP" as proposed by PooPatentTroll,

Anything you try to investigate you'll find has a barbed-wire fence around it with NO TRESPASSING signs, in your hyper-IP-infested world.

To which PooPatentTroll had only this to say in response:

NO ! [insult deleted] ! WHY ? YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF !

A cogent argument. Not.

Firstly:

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Secondly: look at the problems we have already seen with researchers barred from investigating certain computer security concerns due to the DMCA, or certain genes due to the Myriad patents, or similarly.

You propose not only allowing things like the Myriad patents, but also (implicitly) software patents and others, and with no expiration date. One guy finds an interesting gene in your world and he can deny anyone else the right to investigate it or test his claims about it or anything. He can create a snake oil remedy and point to the patent he has as "proof" of his "credibility", and use that patent against anyone trying to disprove his claims; he can discover a real cure for something and price it sky-high and nobody can ever go head to head with him and force the price down to something reasonable. And so forth.

All human knowledge would get carved up into little fiefdoms with fences around them -- forever. Anything that could not be discovered without reference to knowledge from multiple such domains would never be found. Science and the march of technological progress would quickly grind to a halt; more and more money would be diverted from R&D and grants into lawyers arguing (at $100 an hour or more) over who owned what. I can't think of a more effective way to throw sand in the gears of progress than what you are proposing to do.

GREAT! You are now catching the whole idea ! Venter was working for his own profit; he was trying to get patents for the human genome.

Spoken like a true ignoramus. Go forth and educate yourself, troll. And don't come back here until you do!

Wouldn´t this kind of competition happens in a much great scale if UNLIMITED PROPERTY RIGHTS were granted ??

No. Not if by "UNLIMITED PROPERTY RIGHTS" you mean intellectual monopolies. Monopolies stifle competition, you idiot; they do not promote it.

[a long, rambling, incoherent and badly misspelled diatribe deleted] As a consequence of these three facrs[sic], houndreds[sic] of other agents will have strong incentives to try hard to find, first results which can improve and/or complement yours and second, try other avenues to get the same result.

Those "agents" won't be able to actually do so, though, not without permission and a few gazillion dollars, or else they'll get sued for patent infringement.

Such a shame.

Or, we can abolish patents (and copyrights) entirely and put an end to this nonsense. Progress can continue unfettered by tollbooths and arguments over ownership and pointless wasted spending on lawyers, and propelled by real competition in the actual marketplace of actual goods and services.

I wrote:

So while patents and copyrights are evil, there IS a role for the state in these things, and it is in funding research and possibly awarding prizes (e.g. the DARPA red balloon challenge concluded relatively recently) ... I don't think you'll find an average value system further from communism anywhere else on the 'net.

The response to this was:

Hmmm...your whole narrative seems so [insult deleted] that the better i could do is no answer anymore.

Pot, kettle ...

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You're right about one thing, though. The best thing you could do right now is shut the hell up. So, I dare you to actually do so. You yourself just admitted that it's your own best course of action so go ahead -- do it!

I have to admit that [insult deleted] !!

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

But to summarize again, we have three systems: [long, rambling, incoherent pile of bullshit deleted]. The system i´m suggesting UPMD will be better for all.

Bullshit.

In fact, your so-called "UPMD" is physically impossible; you might as well try to flap your arms and fly as try to create "UPMD". You can't have intellectual monopolies without the state to create and enforce them, you idiot.

The unique problem (and i agree with you it is a hard problem) is that UIPMD can only be implemented in an international level and only will work adequatelly with an unique language.

But trying to force everyone in the world to accept Newspeak is doubleplusungood. Hadn't you heard?

since everybody will be able to earn money from ideas, everybody will be well informed (that is education level will rise up to unexpected levels

Where by "rise up to unexpected levels" you presumably mean "decrease to levels unprecedented since the end of the Dark Ages", since that is what will actually happen if "IP" on every teensy little fact or discovery is granted and consequently being any kind of "well informed" at all costs into the seven or eight figures annually to license and pay for all that well-informedness!

as soon as unlimited property is stablished, there will be a gold rush for ideas

There will be a gold rush for existing ideas, and then any kind of work on ideas will become impossible for all but the super-rich as getting to anywhere where new ideas might be discovered will require going through sixty zillion tollbooths!

I don't understand why nutjobs like you can't apparently think more than one move ahead and see the consequences of what you're proposing. It's ludicrous! If you had your way you'd doom us all! The lawyers would still be arguing about who owned what concepts in rocketry when the doomsday asteroid hit! (Not "got detected", "hit", since nobody would be able to build a telescope without paying about $400,000 for all the highly-polished mirrors and whatnot and another $4,000,000,000 to license mirror-making, lens-making, telescopy itself, gimbals, the wheel, sprockets, gears, iron, concrete, and whatnot. Probably being billed separately for every useful fact they used, such as the tensile strength of steel and the melting point of glass and such.)

(people will let their works, they will refuse to lie down with their wifes ... Everybody will devote all their time to produce ideas. Is that good ?

If you're an evil alien bent on the destruction of the human race, maybe. Though after the humans all stopped reproducing you'd still have to wait a century or so for the last of us to die off.

P.d. I´ve read all avalaible academic literature on technological or ideas markets but I´m not aware of any scholar which has gone so far as to defend UIPMD, not even Friedman.

That's because they're all smarter than you, and in fact smart enough to have figured out that your so-called "UIPMD" (or was it "UPMD"? You've used both) is a really bad idea.

You'll likewise find that no geologists will "go so far" as to defend young-Earth creationism, nor will geographers defend the notion of a flat Earth, nor will you find a single astrophysicist willing to defend a thesis on the topic of the green-cheese composition of the Moon.

Nor will you find an aeronautical engineer contemplating the possibility of flapping your arms and flying, for that matter.

I suggest you defer to us experts on this one, PooPatentTroll.

I´m not in this for scientific priority

Oh, thank goodness, since the only scientific priority you might get is "first to be laughed out of the auditorium during the colloquium" if you tried to present word one of this nonsense in front of an actual sober gathering of reasonably accomplished economists.

As it stands, you are heading rapidly towards a fate of being laughed off this blog, then off the Internet, and then quite possibly off the planet. Or at least laughed directly into the nearest funny farm, do not pass "go", do not collect 200 patents.

if anyone who reads this thread is aware of any scholar which has defended previusly UIPMD, please let me know in order to cite them in next comments.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if there is any "scholar" who has defended "previusly"[sic] "UIPMD", he, she, or it will turn out to have gotten their "degree" from Kinko's. Or at the very least it will be in some subject other than economics. Dentistry, perhaps.

1. "Theories are being made and constrained, and at some point they will be tested".

String theory tested ? Hmm...Improving the scientific level you have aknowledged during the whole thread.

2.The best thing you could do right now is shut the hell up. So, I dare you to actually do so. You yourself just admitted that it's your own best course of action so go ahead -- do it!

This and your whole attitude during this thread does not surprise me from someone which supports a communist ideology. Where should i go to a Siberian camp ? Pls clarify.

Sorry, i was interrupted by some urgent affair.

3. Beeswax, so i see you are an economist, and i assume you are representing in this thread the view of the authors of this blog. Right ? Do they understand better than you what i´m saying ? I have the feeling you get so excited by my comments that you misunderstand continously the point. Since i´m only interested in the interchange of ideas and not in the interchange of insults (althougth it seems that´s what you are looking for i consider this a waste of time), i repeat again. I suggest you to relax, read carefully, try to control your excitement while reading, and you will see it is very simple to understand. Once you finish reading there is no need to insult. Have you evere heard of the sentence "ladran, luego cabalgamos" ? After each insult that´s the impression i and the few readers get. I know that what i´m proposing is new (i´m disappointed that Friedman (Milton) did not went as far; he was not as liberal as i thought), maybe radical, but if what i´m saying is so wrong and laughable as you say no need to insult, the few readers we have will realise and laugh. So now i repeat:

The system we have now to manage innovation is one with limited property and central decision making, by the state (yes there is some private R&D, more in some countries as USA and less in others. And in fact there is a correlation: the more piracy is tolerated as in Europe, the less private research). If you have checked in your dictionary, that is by definition, a communist system of knowledge management. The consequences of this system, not surprisingly are: trade secret (as Boldrin and Levine prove in their book), academics loosing their time writing applications for grants and incremental if not trivial papers that not even the author is interested in reading (yes, due to the publish or perish system, as you told previously in this thread); moreover as i have prooved the system is inefficient and unequal, lacks of scientific direction (that does not mean zero progress) and huge and continous investment in dead ends such as string theory.

I do developpe the alternative defended in this blog, no intellectual property rights combined with central decision by the state, because Boldrin and Levine developpe it in their libellum and in this blog.

I assert that a system of unlimited property combined with market decision will be much more efficient and equal for producers, and as a byproduct, researchers will have incentives to produce good science and technology (i do not insist with the concept of technological optimum, that is the zero level of invention because i see it is over your understanding ability), agents will have incentives to be well learned about science and technology. No need of patent offices, no need of science statal agencies: just a market as i have explained before (of course the demond is in the details and it must be much refined). The talented agents will survive and prosper under this new environment; those not talented will also survive and doing commodity jobs, and getting commodity salaries; finally a few of them, very few, the most self-conscious, unable to produce or even recognize good ideas, will not even get this commodity salary and will end taking a pseudonimum such as...hmmm...let me think....aha!...i´ve got it, it wasn´t hard...such as none of your beewax, and start insulting other people in blog comments.

p.d. Beeswax, who the heck is this Lennie you are always talking about as if he was my brother ? Just curious.

PooPatentTroll just doesn't know when to quit:

String theory tested ?

Yes, eventually.

I wrote:

The best thing you could do right now is shut the hell up. So, I dare you to actually do so. You yourself just admitted that it's your own best course of action so go ahead -- do it!

Unsurprisingly, PooPatentTroll is too cowardly and hypocritical to put his money where his mouth is:

This and your whole attitude during this thread does not surprise me from someone which supports a communist ideology.

I do not support a communist ideology -- you do. You're the one who supports the state-granted monopolies of patents and copyrights, remember? You're the market-interventionist in this debate. And you have the gall to call me a communist? When on the point of disagreement I favor a free market and you favor state interference in the market? You're quite mad.

Beeswax, so i see you are an economist, and i assume you are representing in this thread the view of the authors of this blog.

I'm representing my own views, which agree with the blog authors' on matters of patent and copyright but disagree with some of them on some other matters.

I think it worth pointing out, once again, that multiple recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics have come out in favor of abolishing so-called "intellectual property" or at least severely questioned it.

I have the feeling you get so excited by my comments that you [insult deleted].

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I am certainly not the least bit "excited" by your suggestions; "alarmed" is more like it, or would be if I thought you had a snowball's chance in hell of actually achieving what you try to threaten. In practice copyright law is becoming increasingly unenforceable and before long the same problems will beset patent law, once "fabbing" becomes commonplace and more and more physical tool designs can be Napsterized by more and more of the general populace.

Perhaps it's more a matter of "saddened and disappointed" at this point, that there are still a few nuts out there that just don't get it. Either economics or which way the wind is blowing.

Since i´m only interested in the interchange of ideas and not in the interchange of insults

That's funny, because nearly every post from you contains multiple insults. Your latest insulted me just two sentences prior to your claim not to be interested in the interchange of insults, in the very same damn paragraph.

althougth it seems that´s what you are looking for

It's not. I'd much rather you shut up.

i consider this a waste of time

Then why keep insulting? Indeed, why keep commenting at all? All you do is wind up with egg on your face every time you comment on this blog. It would be easy enough for you to avoid this fate: either a) quit commenting here or b) get your damn head screwed on straight.

So I figure maybe you're some weird sort of masochist or something. That, or genuinely insane.

i repeat again. [implied insult deleted]

No, you're the imbecile. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Once you finish reading there is no need to insult.

I can't help myself. You're either crazy or a moron, and quite possibly both, and it's long since reached the point where if I pretended not to notice these traits of yours I'd be being actively dishonest.

Have you evere heard of the sentence "ladran, luego cabalgamos" ?

I'm monolingual English, and this is an English-language blog and one whose topic is not comparative linguistics or anything related; therefore the answer is "no, and besides that's irrelevant".

I know that what i´m proposing is new (i´m disappointed that Friedman (Milton) did not went as far; he was not as liberal as i thought)

The problem is that what you're proposing is insane. You'd get a similar reaction, and a similar lack of endorsement by experts in the field, if you proposed "solving" the problem of cancer by shooting cancer patients in the head to put them out of their misery.

but if what i´m saying is so wrong and laughable as you say no need to insult, the few readers we have will realise and laugh.

And, indeed, that is what you have observed. People realizing and laughing, and a distinct lack of any support.

That's why it's mystifying that you haven't given up on your wacky ideas, or at least on the notion of promoting them via this blog.

The system we have now to manage innovation is one with limited property and central decision making, by the state (yes there is some private R&D, more in some countries as USA and less in others. And in fact there is a correlation: the more piracy is tolerated as in Europe, the less private research).

Nonsense. Europe is about as strict about copyrights and patents as the US, on average, and the reason the US has more R&D is that a) it has more people, b) it has more businesses, and c) it has some specific research clusters like Silicon Valley. Furthermore d) it has better government funding of R&D.

On the other hand the "research gap" you imagine is much larger than what's really there. Europe contains CERN and the LHC; Europe is the center of creativity for the thriving fashion industry. (And, significantly, this thrives without the dubious "benefits" of any kind of "IP protection".)

If you have checked in your dictionary, that is by definition, a communist system of knowledge management.

No, having a central Ministry of Truth would be a communist system of knowledge management. North Korea may have one of those.

Having information-bearing media and bandwidth bought and sold in the open market without government intervention at all would be a capitalist system of knowledge management.

What we currently have here and in Europe is neither; there is no central Ministry of Truth, nor is the market unfettered by government intervention. Instead there are various defamation, obscenity, copyright, and patent laws interfering in the market for information. A side effect of this is artificially high prices for many kinds of information.

The consequences of this system, not surprisingly are: trade secret (as Boldrin and Levine prove in their book)

No. Trade secrecy would exist anyway, and its primary abetters are copyright law and enforceability of noncompetes and NDAs post-termination. If noncompetes and NDAs in employment contracts were unenforceable past the termination of employment and there was no copyright, and there were no specific laws for protecting trade secrets, trade secrecy would be a toothless problem.

academics loosing their time writing applications for grants and incremental if not trivial papers that not even the author is interested in reading (yes, due to the publish or perish system, as you told previously in this thread)

Partly this is inevitable: private markets won't tend to fund basic research, so the grant system's only real alternative is that that research doesn't get done at all. Your system is much, much worse; those same academics wouldn't be able to do anything much without paying and consulting lawyers and defending occasional lawsuits over "ownership" of ideas.

As for the "publish or perish" system, this is yet another consequence of evil copyrights. This system serves the interests of exactly one type of organization: the big journal publishers that charge exorbitant fees to universities. These big publishers are parasites that have distorted all of academia to funnel large amounts of money to themselves, and it's copyright that has enabled them. Abolish copyright and this system will begin to reform itself, quite quickly in all likelihood.

moreover as i have prooved the system is inefficient and unequal

Requiring people pay "license fees" just to use information is inefficient and unequal. It's long proven that an efficient market prices information at near zero, except maybe for real-time information on certain matters, and makes access to information a much more level playing field than in the current copyright-hobbled situation.

huge and continous investment in dead ends such as string theory.

Are you a physicists?

No?

Then what makes you so sure that it's a dead end, when thousands of physicists that know more about physics than you do clearly disagree with that assessment?

I do developpe the alternative defended in this blog, no intellectual property rights combined with central decision by the state, because Boldrin and Levine developpe it in their libellum and in this blog.

That is not the alternative defended in this blog or promoted by Boldrin and Levine. Complete absence of "IP" and no intervention in the "information marketplace" by the state is what's promoted. You invented the "central state control of information" alternative as a straw man to attack.

I assert that a system of unlimited property combined with market decision will be much more efficient and equal for producers

It will not be "much more efficient and equal" for society; it will be much less of both. It might be of (short-term?) benefit to "producers", at everyone else's expense.

researchers will have incentives to produce good science and technology

Nonsense. Even basic mathematics, in your world, won't be doable without coping with the patent thicket from hell or something similar!

i do not insist with the concept of technological optimum, that is the zero level of invention because [insult deleted]

No, you're the imbecile. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

No need of patent offices, no need of science statal agencies: just a market as i have explained before (of course the demond is in the details and it must be much refined).

Such a market will drive the price of information rapidly to zero. The only way for it not to is with something like patents and copyrights, and the state to legislate and enforce them. So yours is the proposal that requires "statal agencies". Including a patent office.

The talented agents will survive and prosper under this new environment; those not talented will also survive and doing commodity jobs, and getting commodity salaries; finally [implied insult deleted]

Under a proper system (i.e., no "IP") the first two are true. Under your system, the only people that will prosper will be those that make out well in the initial gold-rush to "own" pre-existing basic knowledge and technologies. After that everyone else does quite poorly indeed.

Beeswax, who the heck is this Lennie you are always talking about as if he was my brother ? Just curious.

You mean Lonnie? I never claimed he was your brother. But he's a nut much like you, and quite likely he's just another pseudonym of yours, or vice versa.

Beeswax, i liked the tone of your last comment (in your previuos comment i had the impression that if we were in front each other physically you would kill me ! We are just discussing ideas...Now i feel safer), but you still need some improvement in the understanding of what i´m saying. First, please clarify: What are my insults ? Communist ? Lawyer ? Why do you consider these insults ? Second, in my country we like to mix humorades with serious matters. I hope that you can distinguish the former from the latter.

Now let´s go to the discussion of ideas. You insist in some ideas which are clearly wrong, but are key points in this debate:

"You're the one who supports the state-granted monopolies of patents and copyrights, remember? You're the market-interventionist in this debate. And you have the gall to call me a communist?"

Are you then defending the dismantlement of judicial enforcement of any property right (i´m not refering only to intellectual property)? That´s what we have now in all the world prosperous economies and i do not know any economist which defends this. On the contrary starting with Adam Smith and i suppose including Boldrin and Levine, passing through Milton Friedman, every economist, in fact every human agent except maybe some anarchists, accepts the idea of a minimum State which grants property rights and enforce its infringements. The only intervention i´m claiming for the intellectual property field i´m claiming is this one. That is, first to extend the limited intellectual property grants we have now to unlimited (unlimited regime is the one we have now for all other kinds of properties; having shown that knowledge is not more public than a potato, it seems reasonable to claim this) as any other property; second to enforce it. Why you call this interventionism ? On the other hand with present system, most of the finantial aid to innovation is channeled through statal agencies, and you say that´s good or at least inevitable: that´s interventionism. Huge interventionism without private property rights is communism, by definition. Now that we know you are not an economist (as we all expected), ask any, for instance Boldrin or Levine.

"since nobody would be able to build a telescope without paying about $400,000 for all the highly-polished mirrors and whatnot and another $4,000,000,000 to license mirror-making, lens-making, telescopy itself, gimbals, the wheel, sprockets, gears, iron, concrete, and whatnot. Probably being billed separately for every useful fact they used, such as the tensile strength of steel and the melting point of glass and such".

How do you explain then the fact that any piece of technology you buy is full of patents (please read the label of your laptop for instance) and they are sold cheaper and cheaper ? How is this possible. I´m asking this since my first comment, and no replay from you. Some thing must be wrong in your argument. Once again, can you explain me this fact?

"No. Trade secrecy would exist anyway".

How do you know ? Have we ever tried the system i´m suggesting ? No ! Trade secrecy, as any other human agent action will depend on the incentives. With unlimited property i can not see what will be the incentives for the agents to keep new knowledge in secret. Can you explain me this ?

"private markets won't tend to fund basic research, so the grant system's only real alternative is that that research doesn't get done at all"

Again, how do you know ? have we ever tried the system i´m suggesting ? No ! Private markets don´t fund basic and even applied research just because under present system you can not appropriate it. But if you could, they would do. No doubt. For example, Craig Venter. Or Human Genome is not basic research ?

2. "Are you a physicists?

No?

Then what makes you so sure that it's a dead end, when thousands of physicists that know more about physics than you do clearly disagree with that assessment?".

How do you know i´m not a physicist ? In any case this thread is not for the discussion of string theory. For those interested in the positions of physicists regarding string theory, i direct readers to:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

Years ago there was a very interesting debate, called "string wars" about this in this blog. Also you can buy Smolin´s great book "The trouble with physics". You say thousands of physicists: sad, sad, depressing...

3. "I think it worth pointing out, once again, that multiple recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics have come out in favor of abolishing so-called "intellectual property" or at least severely questioned it." && "No, you're the imbecile" = Argumentum ad verecundiam && falacia ad hominem.

None of these two kinds of arguments have never convinced me. But good empirical evidence and wise logical arguments can (you´d better try these). According to these, i assert that all these Nobel prizes are wrong on this subject. History will judge. 3. ENOUGH for the (embrionic) theory. Our few readers (surelly including you now) may ask: ok, i´m convinced that present system (LIPCSD) is not the best one and can be improved; i´m convinced that the system proposed by Boldrin and Levine will be worst (NIPCSD); i´m convinced that Unlimited Intellectual Property with Market Decision is the best option, as with any other economic field. But, the may ask, how can we go from LIPCSD (present state of affairs) to UIPMD (the best system ? Here i suggest the following program called "From LIPCSD to UIMPD (regarding copy rights, i grant free copy of tis program to every individual agent, political party specially to conservatives, liberals, promarket, but even communist political parties are allowed, lobbies, etc...For authorship, just cite: prionpropatentuiq).

First step, at the international level: include UIMPD in the G20 agenda. If the G20 accepts it, all the other countries will follow.

Second step, at the international level: create an International Innovation and Market Ideas Organization or Agency. UN frame might be acceptable. We already have IMF and WB (please note that i refer to World Bank, not Warren Buffet) for the free and equal movement of capitals; we already have an International Organization for Migration, for the free and equal movement of agents; we already have WTO for the free and equal international movement of commodities; we need an organization for the free an equal international movement of ideas. Its mision will be to harmonise and integrate IP legislation, enforcement of infringements and the promotion of an unique language (i do not think UNESCO is fulfilling these tasks). Third step, at the national levels: Triplicate (from 20 to 60) the period of validity for patents (of course some retroactive principle must be implemented so as the new system includes patents for living inventors in general, and me in particular). I admit that maybe the transformation from limited 20 years to unlimited is to hard to diggest in one step. A gradual transition might be better. 60 years seems enough so as to create market ideas liquidity and to test if the system works as expected. If after let´s say 10 years of trial, we see it does work, then inmediately implement the unlimited regime.

Fourth step, at the national levels: Dismantle NSF statal agencies and pay people working int the public innovation fields (that is academics working in state owned universities, state owned R&D institutions etc...the commodity salary. The talent plus should be paid only after their intellectual products has been sold in the market. A great share of this plus must go to the inventor, and a little share to the institution. This measure must include people who is working in ideas or Technological Markets. An optional measure that i highly recomend is to fire directly all people working in string theory. Regarding people working in private corporations, the corporations can do whatever they want.

Fifth step, create a private organized and publicly regulated Ideas Market: the model for this can be the organised markets we already have for corporation stocks. Ocean Tomo is an embryonic step for this.

Beeswax, until now you had a hobby. But I feel i have convinced you, so now have a mission: convince Boldrin and Levine. Ciao!

PooPatentTroll blathered again.

No. Wrong. F*@! OFF!

[false accusation of attempted murder deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

but you still [vicious insult deleted]

No, you're the imbecile. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

First, please clarify: What are my insults ?

Repeatedly accusing me of stupidity, for starters. Not to mention insanity and, on one memorable occasion, attempted murder.

Why do you consider these insults ?

If you have to ask, then you're even stupider than I thought.

Second, in my country we like to mix humorades with serious matters.

Strange, then, that I have yet to see anything remotely amusing in any of your posts, except for occasional laughable spelling, laughable grammar, or laughable stupidity, none of which I think were intentional jokes on your part.

Now let´s go to the discussion of ideas. You [vicious insult deleted].

No, you're the imbecile. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I thought "Now, let's go to the discussion of ideas" meant you were done with the petty namecalling, but apparently either it means something else or you were simply lying. I'm mystified, though, as to what else it could mean.

"You're the one who supports the state-granted monopolies of patents and copyrights, remember? You're the market-interventionist in this debate. And you have the gall to call me a communist?"

Are you then defending the dismantlement of judicial enforcement of any property right (i´m not refering only to intellectual property)?

That's different. Without the state, property rights in tangible things can still be defended. I can stop someone coming onto my land and stealing my lawnmower by brandishing my shotgun, or by putting a fence around my property and a lock on my door, or whatever.

On the other hand, the only way I, as a hypothetical holder of a music copyright, can stop John Smith from sending a copy of the mp3 to Jane Doe over Bittorrent, is by getting the cooperation of the state in surveilling Internet traffic, bullying ISPs into giving up subscriber info, and suing John Smith or something. Hell, that doesn't even stop it, but merely punishes it after the fact. To truly stop it would require a totalitarian surveillance state straight out of Orwell.

A copyright cannot be defended against infringement the way a lawnmower (or even a printed copy of a book) can be defended against theft. A copyright is therefore not property the way a lawnmower or a book is, and moreover it cannot ever be. And the only way to make it seem as if it were requires making the sacrifice of all those Allied soldiers in WWII have been in vain!

If you want an anarchist (no state intervention) society with copyrights and patents, you want to have your cake and eat it too. It's that simple.

That's why I said a couple posts ago that what you want isn't physically possible, nevermind the question of whether, if it were, it wouldn't be a really, really bad idea.

That´s what we have now in all the world prosperous economies and i do not know any economist which defends this. On the contrary starting with Adam Smith and i suppose including Boldrin and Levine, passing through Milton Friedman, every economist, in fact every human agent except maybe some anarchists, accepts the idea of a minimum State which grants property rights and enforce its infringements.

Tangible-property rights.

Which so-called "intellectual property rights" trample on. With those, I can buy a pen, some ink, and paper but not write what I please with them; I can buy some parts and tools but there are some things I'm forbidden to assemble with them; I can buy a computer but there are some calculations I need permission to perform on it.

That is not acceptable to me.

On the other hand with present system, most of the finantial aid to innovation is channeled through statal agencies, and you say that´s good or at least inevitable: that´s interventionism.

I say that basic research is not going to be invested in by private businesses that only plan one fiscal quarter ahead and won't sink billions into projects that may, or may not, pay off twenty years in the future.

This remains true no matter how many patents and copyrights you allow them to slap on the fruits of such research.

Huge interventionism without private property rights is communism, by definition.

But we do have private property rights. It's not communism unless there's no private property rights in tangible goods.

Now that we know [implies that I lied]

We do not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"since nobody would be able to build a telescope without paying about $400,000 for all the highly-polished mirrors and whatnot and another $4,000,000,000 to license mirror-making, lens-making, telescopy itself, gimbals, the wheel, sprockets, gears, iron, concrete, and whatnot. Probably being billed separately for every useful fact they used, such as the tensile strength of steel and the melting point of glass and such".

How do you explain then the fact that any piece of technology you buy is full of patents (please read the label of your laptop for instance) and they are sold cheaper and cheaper ?

Your average computer is mostly free of patented parts, actually; that's why there are so many clone manufacturers. For something that really does have a lot of patents, look at an iPhone. And note that they cost $6-800 unless you get some kind of rebate or plan that knocks something off the price, far out of proportion to their computing power.

Further, note how research and development in the smartphone space is being hindered by a major patent thicket, and that many companies in the space, including Apple, are having to waste money on lawyers to defend incoming patent suits.

Without patents, we'd probably have had something like the iPhone a decade ago.

How is this possible. I´m asking this since my first comment, and no replay from you. [insult deleted].

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"No. Trade secrecy would exist anyway".

How do you know ?

Because it would. People will always know things they aren't telling. You can't wave your patent magic wand and make this inconvenient fact go away, nor can you believably claim you can.

Besides, plenty before have argued that patents should give companies an alternative to trade secrecy and thus cause no more trade secrecy and it simply hasn't happened. Trade secrecy is as common as it ever was. And there's no evidence whatsoever that tightening up patents even more would change that.

"private markets won't tend to fund basic research, so the grant system's only real alternative is that that research doesn't get done at all"

Again, how do you know ?

Because no company answerable to shareholders is going to spend $40 billion funding some research project that may or may not pay off 20 years from now, that's why. No reasonable model of the behavior of corporations predicts any other outcome than zero corporate funding for basic research, absent some kind of kickback such as publicity of some sort. Businesses chip in a bit of money toward universities from time to time in return for those universities renaming whole buildings after them or advertising them prominently; meanwhile those universities get the lion's share of their funding from government, and specific research projects, other than ones that show promise of near-term payoff, get direct funding solely from grants from organizations like the NIH and NSF.

Private markets don´t fund basic and even applied research just because under present system you can not appropriate it.

That's not the reason why. The reason why is because dropping $40 billion down a hole on a long shot which won't pay out, if at all, for decades is a quick way to get strung up from a lamppost by an impromptu gathering of your shareholders! And if you don't know this, then I sincerely hope you are not in any position of major authority at any business, unless maybe it's Microsoft, which I'd dearly love to see get its comeuppance. Or Apple, same reason.

And if you could appropriate the results of basic research it would be a travesty. Education, already inflated in cost, would become unattainable except for rich heiresses, for one thing.

But if you could, they would do. No doubt.

They would not; and you are being exactly as stupid or crazy as someone who says "Pi is exactly equal to 3; no doubt".

"Then what makes you so sure that it's a dead end, when thousands of physicists that know more about physics than you do clearly disagree with that assessment?".

How do you know i´m not a physicist ?

For the same reason I know Forrest Gump isn't.

Because a person can't possibly be that stupid and yet succeed in that field.

Years ago there was a very interesting debate, called "string wars" about this in this blog. Also you can buy Smolin´s great book "The trouble with physics".

Smolin, of course, is the chief proponent of a rival theory. Of course he'll diss the competition. His career and reputation take a major hit if they turn out to be right.

I'm not taking sides here; the evidence at this point is equivocal. I'm pointing out that, because the evidence is equivocal, neither should you.

"I think it worth pointing out, once again, that multiple recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics have come out in favor of abolishing so-called "intellectual property" or at least severely questioned it."

[insults deleted, including a highly ironic accusation of ad hominem arguing]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You're the one who has repeatedly resorted to ad hominems in this argument, bub.

None of these two kinds of arguments have never convinced me.

Irony alert. Double standard alert. Hypocrisy alert. String theory is wrong because Lee Smolin says so; yet four economics Nobelists are anti-patent is a bogus argument from authority?

You're once again trying to have your cake and eat it too. If my argument from the four Nobelists against patents is invalid, your argument against string theory was equally invalid.

I did warn you I had a 9th-dan black belt in logic-fu a few posts ago. (Why is it that they never listen when I warn them of that? It never ends well for them, and it won't for you either; if you don't stop soon, then by the end of this you'll be the laughingstock of this blog and quite possibly of the entire Internet.)

But good empirical evidence and wise logical arguments can ([implied insults deleted]).

Evidently not, or you'd be against copyrights and patents. Unless you never even read any of the arguments and evidence on the subject. Such as the long, long list (still growing) of musicians who have profited from eschewing restricting copying of the music they've authored, just for one example.

Actually, I suspect you wouldn't know good empirical evidence if some fell out of the sky and conked you on the head. As for wise logical arguments, I'd probably have better luck getting a turnip to recognize those.

According to these, i assert that all these Nobel prizes are wrong on this subject.

Ah, so now you claim to be smarter than the Nobel-awarding committee, as well as several thousand economists, several thousand physicists, and numerous other people. Soon will come the megalomaniacal "a god am I" speech and you'll reveal your plans for ruling the world, no doubt; along with an attempt to kill me with some elaborate death trap that I'll escape using three toothpicks, a pair of tweezers, and my watch; then I'll blow up your secret underground lair, escape the blast, and ten years later you'll turn up again like a bad penny this time with some crackpot scheme to make a fortune off land speculation that involves nuking Nevada or something and I'll have to do the whole heroism thing again.

Well, now that you've outed yourself as a budding supervillain, you need to go read the Evil Overlord List. Google for it. I think the list needs one extra item though: "101. I will limit myself to feasible evil plans, like knocking over a major casino or taking over the world through demagoguery and vast Legions of Doom; none of that impractical nonsense like gassing the planet from my secret moonbase or creating a superhuman AI while somehow maintaining control over it or loosing a zombie plague to which only I know the cure, thus holding the world's governments ransom, and certainly not locking all information up forever by creating a totalitarian surveillance state that will sue everyone who fails to respect the invisible boundaries of intangible property, then patenting addition and the combining of letters into words and a bunch of other crap like that and laughing all the way to the bank."

History will judge.

Unfortunately for you, it will indeed. History is written by the victors, and Evil Overlords with low-double-digit IQs are never the victors.

Our few readers (surelly including you now) may ask: ok, i´m convinced that present system (LIPCSD) is not the best one and can be improved; i´m convinced that the system proposed by Boldrin and Levine will be worst (NIPCSD); i´m convinced that Unlimited Intellectual Property with Market Decision is the best option

No. I'll NEVER turn to the Dark Side!

But, the may ask, how can we go from LIPCSD (present state of affairs) to UIPMD?

As I mentioned a couple of times already, the recipe to cause that is:

1. Wait for a convenient financial crash or other major crisis, much worse than the current one; large swathes of the population must fear for their food supply.

2. Use clever demagoguery (probably impossible for you, so you'll need a henchman that's smarter than you to do that) to rise to a position of leadership.

3. Inflaming the people's passions, ride their support to the polls and thus take over a small country with a proportionately large industrial capacity.

4. Manufacture a pretext and then invade a neighbor.

5. Over time, conquer more nations and tear up more and more of their constitutions until you are the leader of a worldwide totalitarian state.

6. Add total surveillance, Big Brother style.

7. Have your goon squads enforce all those copyrights and patents you're so in love with.

8. Simmer for ten minutes.

9. Stir gently.

10. Serve.

Well, actually this kind of trips up at step 2. The problem is to complete that step you'll need to hire a henchman that's smarter than you (much, much smarter than you), and would-be Evil Overlords that do that don't tend to live very long afterward.

First step, at the international level: include UIMPD in the G20 agenda. If the G20 accepts it, all the other countries will follow.

No, no, that will never work. You'll be laughed out of there faster than you can say "oh, crap".

Second step, at the international level: create an International Innovation and Market Ideas Organization or Agency.

Why not jump directly to creating a Ministry of Truth?

The problem is, people kind of like their freedom. You can't just propose, or vote for, or even legislate a totalitarian surveillance state; you have to actually work hard for it, amass a Legion of Doom, conquer and pillage, and all of that stuff first!

We already have IMF and WB (please note that i refer to World Bank, not Warren Buffet) for the free and equal movement of capitals; we already have an International Organization for Migration, for the free and equal movement of agents; we already have WTO for the free and equal international movement of commodities; we need an organization for the free an equal international movement of ideas.

We have one. It's called the IETF. You might have heard of it; if not, Google it.

Its mision will be to harmonise and integrate IP legislation, enforcement of infringements and the promotion of an unique language (i do not think UNESCO is fulfilling these tasks).

That's not an "organization for the free an[sic] equal international movement of ideas", that's "a cross between WIPO and Big Brother", you moron.

The "unique language" thing particularly dooms you; you'll never get any agreement in an international forum to any proposal that includes forcing a single world language down everyone's throats. I guarantee it.

Third step, at the national levels: Triplicate (from 20 to 60) the period of validity for patents (of course some retroactive principle must be implemented so as the new system includes patents for living inventors in general, and me in particular).

Ah, and now we get to the quux of the matter. You really just want one of your own evil, monopolistic patents to live on. Probably one that's just about to expire. You greedy sonofabitch.

I admit that maybe the transformation from limited 20 years to unlimited is to hard to diggest in one step. A gradual transition might be better.

The gradual transition I'd like to see is from 20 to zero at a rate of one year per year.

Fourth step, at the national levels: Dismantle NSF statal agencies

Why? We got our cellphones and wind farms and cures for most infectious diseases. Why do you want to deny our grandchildren their brain backups and fusion plants and cures for cancer?

The talent plus should be paid only after their intellectual products has been sold in the market. A great share of this plus must go to the inventor, and a little share to the institution.

This sounds suspiciously like you intend to take Bayh-Dole, which has already severely fucked up scientific research at universities all across America, and make it much, much worse.

What do you have against our grandchildren that you'd take away their brain backups and fusion plants and cancer cures in such a cruel manner?

I'd really like to know.

An optional measure that i highly recomend is to fire directly all people working in string theory.

Why string theorists? It's more effective to make a public scapegoat out of a group many people already love to hate or look down upon or, especially, fear. Then you can use this to help propel you to leadership and to make them fear the unknown more than they fear your (mis)rule.

The usual groups to target would be Jews, or inner city blacks, or gays, or Hispanics, or something like that. You can convince people Jews are after their money, or blacks their women, or some such. I don't know what you could get people to fear string theorists will do. I doubt you can even convince them that they're going to blow up the world with a miniature black hole or something, or even if you could that they'd really fear them enough to persecute them and dread the thought of your not being there anymore to keep them in line. Tiny black holes are so much more abstract to the average man in the street than someone stealing their wallet or girlfriend or ripping them off with high prices. There's a reason Hitler didn't persecute aeronautical engineers, nor Stalin bricklayers. Nobody's afraid of aeronautical engineers or bricklayers, nor of string theorists; they are, unfortunately, often afraid of blacks or Jews or gays.

I'm afraid, PooPatentTroll, that you really don't have what it takes to be a successful Evil Overlord. Tsk, tsk. You should shelve those ambitions and set your sights a bit lower, on something a bit more realistic. Rather than "I will take over the world, abolish all languages except English (which I really suck at), and lock away all information behind tollbooths, muahahahahaha!" perhaps you should try "I will clean my bathroom today" or "I will smile when I say 'would you like fries with that' at work today" or even "I will stop bothering the nice people at Against Monopoly with stupid, pointless, error-riddled comments and find something more constructive to do with my Internet time".

Fifth step, create a private organized and publicly regulated Ideas Market: the model for this can be the organised markets we already have for corporation stocks. Ocean Tomo is an embryonic step for this.

And here I thought Ocean Tomo might be some brand of fruit drink.

Mental note to self: tell broker to sell all stock in Ocean Tomo and put it all into Google.

Beeswax, until now you had a hobby. But I feel i have convinced you

Error #6,144. I wonder how long before you post Error #6,145?

so now have a mission: convince Boldrin and Levine.

Not long.

I very much doubt either of them will turn to the Dark Side either.

You wannabe Sith Lords are all alike: your ambitions exceed by orders of magnitude what even a genius could realistically achieve, while said genius equally vastly exceeds your IQs.

Again excited Beeswax ? Didn´t like the Prionpropatentuiq programm ? Maybe are you one of those state "apaniguados" academics ? I don´t think so. Not elegant enough.

Ok let´s stop the fight for a moment and chat casualy. Again try to relax. Try to control yourself and to savor what´s coming. What are the scientific subjects you like the much besides string theory ? One of mines is the origin of life. I´ve bought recently a book: "The emergence of life, from chemical origins to the synthetic biology", from Pier Luigi Luisi. I´ve found a very important part relevant for our discussion. I expose it in what follows.

It seems there are two general views for explaining the origin of life (you know that i´m a proud atheist so i definitely exclude creationism, intelligent design and other pseudoscientific explanations; i hope you do not support none of these): the deterministic and the contingent.

Deterministic: Those that support the deterministic explanation says that life is encoded in the laws of physics and therefore it is inevitable and will appear as soon as its appearance is possible. It will happen with high probability anyway, it will happen everywhere, unconditionaly. So that in if we had the opportunity of starting the history of the universe in parallel universes (unfortunately we have not this chance), it will appear always and at the same time. Some of them (Schwabe) even support the view that life has originated many times in the Earth, even that each spiece is an independent "origin of life" event. Right ? Got it ? The equivalent view regarding inventions is that any innovation will be effected anyway, everywhere, unconditionaly. At the same time in every parallel universe (gedanken right ?). The metaphoric CKMMMS´s are everywhere so we do not have to worry of missing oportunities. Let the poor genius starve. The sooner, another will arrive with the same great idea. Got it ?

Contingent: On the other hand, those that support the contingency explanation says that the origin of life is contingent. Contingency can be defined as the simultaneous interaction of several independent factors which are necessary to produce a given spacetime result, event or state. In other words, contingency is an spacetime asymmetry, the casual and impredictable convergence in time and space of several independent deterministic threads which are necessary to produce an event. If the contingent conditions change, even in one factor, the event, the state, the novelty, the result will be different. It could happen one month later or never. This view is not contrary to the laws or physics nor equivalent to a miracle: it is just an stochastic view of how physical laws happens in reality. So that in if we had the opportunity of start the history of the universe in parallel universes (unfortunately we have not this chance) in some cases life would appear soon, in other cases latter and in some other cases never. The equivalent view regarding inventions is that the contingent Eureka situation, the CKMMMS is singular. Let the poor genius die and possibly the great idea is lost forever.

Reality: I have to confess that i have not clear which is the of the two positions is correct. I´m confused. It seems that biologists tend to believe in the contingent explanation. In fact at present we just do not know which one is correct neither for the origin of life nor for the inventions. For instance Gladwell seems to be a defendant of the deterministic side for inventions, but AFAIK there is no scientific evidence to support one view or the other. In front of this situation, and not knowing yet which view is the correct, what must we do ?

Action We must not lost any opportunity: every idea, comming from anyone, from anywhere must be avalaible to anyone, anywhere. It must be registered inmediately; it must be avalaible to the public; the public must scrutiny each idea and must select the best ones. Only an international, unilingual, descentralized market based on unlimited property GIVING INCENTIVES TO ANYONE ANYWHERE can do this. If we have bad luck, if it turns out that the contingent view is correct and that the CKMMM event occurs only once we must be prepared. Beeswax, we must be prepared....he can be around.

P.D. I´m just not saying that Nobel prize winners are always wrong. I only say that they can be wrong. Don´t be dogmatic; they are not Gods. Moreover i´m not saying that anyone must impose the unique language. This can be done through democracy. I will explain this another day.

PooPatentTroll, ever the glutton for punishment, got back up off the mat and begged to get thrown down by the sensei again:

Again excited Beeswax ?

No; as calmly rational as ever. You cannot hope to defeat me. My logic is undeniable.

Didn´t like the Prionpropatentuiq programm ?

No sane person would, if they realized the full consequences that would ensue were it to be implemented and some of the methods that would have to be used to get it implemented.

Maybe are you one of those state "apaniguados" academics ?

I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell you're even talking about. Please speak English.

The answer to your question is probably no, but lacking much knowledge of Spanish (or is it Portugese?) I cannot be completely certain at this time.

I don´t think so. [insult deleted].

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Ok let´s stop the fight for a moment

I now brace myself, for your last post started with an insulting preamble, followed by a statement stating or suggesting that you would cease to insult me and get to the quux of your post, followed by an additional volley of insults before you actually did so.

and chat casualy. Again [implied insult deleted]. [implied insult and implied threat deleted].

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I don't respond well to threats.

I'd say "If I can now successfully predict the actions of my enemy, then I have already beaten him" except that I'd beaten you pretty much as soon as you first opened your mouth and posted pro-patent nonsense to this blog; the problem I have isn't in defeating you, it is in convincing you that you have been defeated and that you will never win, no matter how many rematches you challenge me to.

[begins a massive digression] creationism, intelligent design and other pseudoscientific explanations; i hope you do not support none of these

Indeed I do not. I, unlike you, am not irrational.

Deterministic: Those that support the deterministic explanation says that life is encoded in the laws of physics and therefore it is inevitable and will appear as soon as its appearance is possible. It will happen with high probability anyway, it will happen everywhere, unconditionaly. So that in if we had the opportunity of starting the history of the universe in parallel universes (unfortunately we have not this chance), it will appear always and at the same time.

This seems highly improbable. Life is a complex consequence whose possibility is implicit in the laws of physics, and it may also be highly probable given certain initial conditions, but it is doubtful that it is guaranteed.

Some of them (Schwabe) even support the view that life has originated many times in the Earth, even that each spiece is an independent "origin of life" event. Right ?

Wrong; every species examined has proven to share common ancestral DNA with other Earth-life. All of the evidence thus far examined points to Earth-indigenous biota having descended from a single common ancestor that lived circa 4Gya and probably resembled present-day thermophile archaea; its ancestors further back probably were self-replicating RNA strands in liposomes; further back, in naturally-occurring "reaction vessels" like pores in zeolites; further back, possibly proto-living (but non-hereditary) metabolism-like autocatalytic reactions keeping themselves away from equilibrium in such pores.

The equivalent view regarding inventions is that any innovation will be effected anyway, everywhere, unconditionaly.

Also nonsense, but closer to the original topic. But many of them may be highly probable once certain conditions are reached.

[more massive digression deleted] So that in if we had the opportunity of start the history of the universe in parallel universes (unfortunately we have not this chance) in some cases life would appear soon, in other cases latter and in some other cases never.

This seems likely. The only things that might not be contingent are the laws of physics themselves.

The equivalent view regarding inventions is that the contingent Eureka situation, the CKMMMS is singular. Let the poor genius die and possibly the great idea is lost forever.

First of all, "let the poor genius die" is a straw man of your invention. None of the anti-patent crowd are proposing that; only that the genius work for his pay, perhaps at a place like Xerox PARC once was, rather than invent once and then be set for life.

Furthermore, most such ideas can be expected to be arrived at repeatedly, even though they are contingent. Most will be highly probable once the conditions are right. The historical record bears this out; there are many examples of reinvention of the same thing under similar conditions by different people, neither copying off the other. The sailing ship was invented independently by several cultures, for example, centuries apart. Two people came up with calculus nearly simultaneously, working from a common body of contemporary mathematical knowledge. And so on.

Action We must not lost any opportunity: every idea, comming from anyone, from anywhere must be avalaible to anyone, anywhere.

The surest way to arrange this is complete freedom of speech and widely-available telecommunications, particularly net access.

To this end, abolishing copyright as a gross hindrance to freedom of speech seems wise.

It must be registered inmediately

Already taken care of. We have web.archive.org, groups.google.com, and other large archives of anything posted to the net.

it must be avalaible to the public

Google strikes again. Though availability of printed works and some others is marred by an artificial price barrier. The abolition of copyright will solve that problem, though.

the public must scrutiny each idea and must select the best ones.

The more widely available it is and the better our search tools (Google), the more this will be the case. Of course, "select the best ones" requires testing, and more people/companies can test more ideas more cheaply if certain artificial legalistic hindrances, including both copyrights and patents, go away.

Only an international, unilingual, descentralized market based on unlimited property GIVING INCENTIVES TO ANYONE ANYWHERE can do this.

Wrong! See above.

P.D. I´m just not saying that Nobel prize winners are always wrong. I only say that they can be wrong.

I expect them to be wrong far less often than someone who can't even spell "P.S." correctly.

Don´t be [insult deleted]

Don't worry, I'm not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Moreover i´m not saying that anyone must impose the unique language. This can be done through democracy. [threat deleted]

No, actually, it cannot, at least not now or in the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, I don't respond well to threats.

Thanks for your answer. This conversation seems more civilized now.

1. ""creationism, intelligent design and other pseudoscientific explanations; i hope you do not support none of these" Indeed I do not. I, unlike you, am not irrational".

Great ! Considering that you are defending a communist system and accept the possibility of string theory (extra dimensions, real parallel worlds with differen physical laws) beeing right, i had doubt about his.

2. Beeswax until now, as a patent holder, i have adopted the role of a social activist, motivated by what i believe is an unfair an ineficient system. From now i´ll rather adopt the point of view of the social scientist, interested in study the organization and performance of innovation systems in order to compare them.

To introduce biology in my previous comment was just an interdisciplinary analogy in order that the idea of contingency, which is key for the theory of inventions, is better understood. Personaly i´m deterministic in the results (that is the results obtained will be always the same, invariant), althought the route to obtain these results might be contingent. That is, in all parallel worlds (in all planets) we will have the same atoms, the same cells, the same brains and the same technology. Regarding the last one depending on an important contingency (the fact the the society in this planet has adopted Unlimited Intellectual Property System with Unilingual Market Decision or has sticked to No Intellectual Property with Central State Decision), different planetary civilisation might be more or less advanced. In case they have adopted the UIPUMD, some should have already reached the optimal technological level (zero invention) and are probably exploring the Universe.

I think Hawkings share this vision, and this is why he is worried

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece )

by the fact that a visit from aliens might not be as friendly as we would desire, and considering our technological bakcwardness due to having adopted the LIPCSD, as well as you are loosing this debate, we will lost this potential war intergallactic war.

Having finished this disgression, thereafter I select the pieces of your comment i find more relevant for the discussion:

"Most (inventions) will be highly probable once the conditions are right".

Yes, but the concept of contingency i´ve tried to explain unsuccesfully to you implies that we do not have any information (probabilistic or of other type) about these right conditions.

"The historical record bears this out; there are many examples of reinvention of the same thing under similar conditions by different people, neither copying off the other. The sailing ship was invented independently by several cultures, for example, centuries apart. Two people came up with calculus nearly simultaneously, working from a common body of contemporary mathematical knowledge"

I think we lack of a complete scientific multicultural study about this. It is truth that there are well known cases of simultaneous or independent discoveries. Please note that in almost all these cases people shared the same information, as you say. On the other hand there are other notorious cases where independent civilizations has not discovered even the most evident inventions. I refer for instance (i´m not judging if one civilization is better than another) to Pre-Columbian American, Australian or New Guinea Civilizations, which has been the most isolated until recently. Maybe they did not invent some things, just because they didn´t need them, but maybe they needed them but weren´t able to produce them. As another example, to equilibrate against western societies, many famous chinese inventions were not independently rediscovered in Europe

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions ),

and specialy my favourite invention of all times,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pointing_Chariot )

although some would have been of great practical interest. In conclusion the proposition "when needed, everything can be discovered by anyone" implicit in your narrative is at least unproved (by the contingency argument, i beleive it false, but at least unproved), historicaly and theoreticaly. This gives us a first principle: A good invention system is one that guarantees that the inventions space is searched in a systematic way. That means that every possibility avalaible from the state of the art in time (t) is explored.

"only that the genius work for his pay, perhaps at a place like Xerox PARC once was",

What i´m trying to say is that it is not impossible, indeed it is quite possible (unless all geniuses are born in developped countries), that the potential creations or inventions of many geniuses of our time are lost. Many must be starving at this precisely moment in an unknown place, or working in a totaly different task in stead of beeing inventing. Internet (the hardware network wich connect us), the web (the software network which allow us to communicate) and searching engines as google are great, no doubt, are a necessary technical condition for what we need, but it is not what i have exactly in mind. They are too noisy. And what is more important, they do not solve the problems of incentives. The fact that there is technicaly possible to publish does not mean that everyone will publish. That´s that the unlimited property and the ideas market will solve. In conclusion the present situation regarding publishing, dissemination and scrutiny is no satisfactory. This gives us a second principle: a good invention system is one such that everyone able to have at least one idea must be able to publish it and must have strong incentives to publish it, in such a way that many experts has incentives to check and test the potential of this new idea .

2. "I'd say "If I can now successfully predict the actions of my enemy, then I have already beaten him" except that I'd beaten you pretty much as soon as you first opened your mouth and posted pro-patent nonsense to this blog; the problem I have isn't in defeating you, it is in convincing you that you have been defeated and that you will never win, no matter how many rematches you challenge me to".

Vacuous triunphalism of a "9 dan logic-fu holder" with mosquitoe sized brain. At present i have the impression that nor you can convince me, nor i can covince you. Why ? Because we lack of a general theory of inventions, which includes a realistic model and a scientific way of measuring its performance under several the four possible extremal IP regimes (NIPCSD, NIPMD, UIPCSD, UIPMD). Please note that the present LIPCSD is just an intermediate regime, whose convenience comparing with other regimes can be derived once you know the performance of the other regimes.

I have already an embrionic model in my mind of how this theory could be. It must include:

--a space of inventions (this is the hardest part, and i would say the most important since many of the propositions derived of models of invention are based on assumptions of the structure of this inventions space which might be wrong). I would say that a good abstract model would be a graph, were the vertices are individual propositions/instructions and its subsets and two vertices are connected if we can pass from a set propositions (invention) to another set of propositions with let´s say an average amount of research. To summarize a sparse hypercube ?.Let´s call it IS. This space can be enriched in order to include the fact that some inventions are substitute of others, some are complementary, some are improvements, some are just embelishment.

--a set of agents, which explores this space, in a diferent way depending on the IP regime. Think of them as tokens which move in the graph according to decision rules. The agents can decide to invent or not invent (and then reverse engineerring or copy), can decide to publish or not publish. In any case let´s call the set of agents I(i1,i2,....in) and we can consider different rules (homogeneous or heterogeneous) for agent behaviour: random, or structured in some different ways.

--a communication network which connect agents. This is a network on which if an agent decide to publish, he can publish. If he publish the information is inmediately transmited to all agents connected to the network. The performance model can be studied under several kind of networks: several networks with diferent protocols (languages) or a global unilingual network. In the market decision regimes, the network is a market where besides of publishing the agents can effect market operations (sell, licencing, sell and buy options of shares. So N or N1 (i1,i2...in-x) N2(in-x+1,...in).

--an special agent, the regulator, which can decide to grant and enforce property rights or not, and can decide adopt and finance research decision and operations or not. According to these decisions, he might need to impose more or less taxes. Let´s call this agent R. R can be in four positions, the different innovation regimes. Each regime affects, through incentives, agents actions.

The innovation system starts at state 0 and evolves according to the agents behaviour rules. We start with an invention space where some vertices are coloured as "invented" and others as "not invented yet". Agents start from a same vertices, move trough the invented sapce (that´s education) and then start to move in the non invented part.

As a last piece of the model we need some measure of the performance of the system: i´ve got not clear yet this. Eficiency of production (i.e. the fact that agents do repeat inventions is one) equality (the fact that all agents has the same information about what is invented or not since the state 0) is a second one. Output, that is the amount of inventions made and published in total and per inventor, after a given time might be others.

Well, this comment is becoming now too long so i let refinments for the future. I admit the model is to abstract and therefore i predict you won´t understand it and you will answer with a long list of pointless comments. But i do not deduce from this prediction that "I have already beaten" you. This or a better model must decide who wons. That´s science !.

P.D (Post Data, Latin). About the Nobels, when using the argument of authority please do it correctly: names and references ? Thanks in advance.

Ever the hypocrite, PooPatentTroll wrote:

Thanks for your answer. This conversation seems more civilized now.

You're fricking welcome. :P

"I, unlike you, am not irrational".

Great ! Considering that you are defending a communist system[rest deleted]

I am not; you are. Patents are market interventions by the state; their abolition would thus be a move away from, not towards, communism.

and accept the possibility of string theory (extra dimensions, real parallel worlds with differen physical laws

Parallel worlds are a natural consequence of the existing, well-tested quantum field theory anyway. You need a magical unobserved untested FTL non-unitary non-linear time-asymmetric Lorentz-invariance-violating collapse fairy waving her magic wand over your wavefunction to avoid having parallel worlds in quantum theory.

[implied insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Beeswax until now, as a patent holder, i have adopted the role of a social activist, motivated by what i believe is an unfair an ineficient system.

No, as a patent holder, you have adopted the role of a lobbyist, motivated by greed and a desire to a) keep, and b) squeeze even more money out of, your patent.

From now i´ll rather adopt the point of view of the social scientist, interested in study the organization and performance of innovation systems in order to compare them.

Unfortunately, you're blinded by a variety of cognitive biases, many of which stem from the fact that you have a vested interest in the outcome. You seem incapable of evaluating the evidence objectively and fairly.

To introduce biology in my previous comment was just an interdisciplinary analogy in order that the idea of contingency, which is key for the theory of inventions, is better understood. Personaly i´m deterministic in the results (that is the results obtained will be always the same, invariant), althought the route to obtain these results might be contingent. That is, in all parallel worlds (in all planets) we will have the same atoms, the same cells, the same brains and the same technology.

Weren't you the one that was just calling me a lunatic for suspecting the existence of parallel worlds? Hypocrite.

Of course, what you've said above is nonsense. "The same atoms" is a concept of questionable meaningfulness; under quantum theory, indistinguishable particles are actually identical, not even just interchangeable but without any distinct identities even in principle. The same cells and the same brains? Evolution will have taken many wildly varied paths on different worlds; even on many of the nigh-infinite alternate Earths that overlap with ours invisibly as decoherent quantum duplicates.

The one thing that's not contingent here is that any given style of brain or innovation that is the least bit plausibly useful and "evolvable" will have developed in at least one of these parallel worlds.

Regarding the last one depending on an important contingency (the fact the the society in this planet has adopted Unlimited Intellectual Property System with Unilingual Market Decision or has sticked to No Intellectual Property with Central State Decision)

Unfortunately, no society I know of currently has "No Intellectual Property".

In case they have adopted the UIPUMD, some should have already reached the optimal technological level (zero invention)

UIPUMD will lead pretty rapidly to "zero invention" alright but I don't think I'd call that optimum. Unless you're one of those radical greenies that think we should turn back the clock and live as hunter-gatherer tribes, your UIPUMD (whose name, I notice, changes constantly, often even within a single one of your posts) will not have the effects you seem to desire; indeed, it would blow up in your face in short order.

I think Hawkings share this vision, and this is why he is worried

Hawking is smart much of the time, but in this particular instance he really screwed up. Oh, his suggestion for caution in making too much noise in our little corner of the galaxy is reasonable, as is his suggestion that we get all our eggs no longer in one planetary basket. But he apparently didn't realize that making a speech like that (a speech about aliens!) would act like a kook magnet, getting quoted and interpreted in amusingly wacky ways by every crackpot, lunatic, and nut on the Internet and instantly halving the net's signal-to-noise ratio; it will probably remain depressed for weeks, if not months, following that speech.

No doubt Archimides Plutonium has already pontificated upon it at length, and JSH claimed that it proves he was right all along in his 100%-evidence-free claim that NP = P. The assortment of trolls and crazies in rec.arts.tv has of course seized on it; one wacko, calling himself "The Starmaker" in standard arrogant-anonymous-coward fashion, has somehow twisted it around into a character assassination of Einstein that hinges on a thesis that Einstein was singlehandedly responsible for developing the atom bomb. (Objection: relevance? Well, he's a netkook -- he doesn't need relevance. A statement about quarks might have sparked off a rant about global warming, except that quarks wouldn't have gotten his attention; aliens would. And did.)

And now we have our local patent troll claiming it vindicates his pro-patent position, even though of course it does no such thing.

you are loosing this debate

You have a funny definition of "loosing"; rather than "releasing from confinement" you seem to be using it to mean "winning with an overwhelming weight of logic and evidence".

I suggest you take your dictionary back to the bookstore and demand a refund. :)

"Most (inventions) will be highly probable once the conditions are right".

Yes

Well, there you go, then.

but [implied insult deleted].

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

We do not have any information (probabilistic or of other type) about these right conditions.

Sure we do, summed up in the oft-heard phrase "necessity is the mother of invention".

"Two people came up with calculus nearly simultaneously, working from a common body of contemporary mathematical knowledge"

I think we lack of a complete scientific multicultural study about this.

Nonsense. It's a well-documented historical fact.

It is truth that there are well known cases of simultaneous or independent discoveries.

Well, there you go, then. Now you admit it.

Pre-Columbian American, Australian or New Guinea Civilizations, which has been the most isolated until recently. Maybe they did not invent some things, just because they didn´t need them

Indeed. Hunter-gatherers don't need much at all. Inventing much beyond the arrowhead and similar tools won't tend to happen until the population density gets much higher and/or the climate gets dryer, as a rule. Note that agriculture, historically, was invented a) in the Middle East several thousand years ago when that area began drying out after the completion of the retreat of the ice sheets and b) in the New World about a thousand years ago, at least twice independently, when there was a general dry spell throughout that area, associated with a natural instance of global warming. (The same warming led to the abandonment of cliff dwellings in the American southwest and to the rapid expansion of the Norse civilization across the North Atlantic. A subsequent cooling collapsed that same civilization and had other consequences.)

but maybe they needed them but weren´t able to produce them.

There's no evidence whatsoever that anything of the sort has ever happened.

although some would have been of great practical interest. In conclusion the proposition "when needed, everything can be discovered by anyone" implicit in your narrative is at least unproved (by the contingency argument, [calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You are attacking a straw man. I never said "everything can be discovered by anyone"; I said useful things will usually be discovered by someone.

A good invention system is one that guarantees that the inventions space is searched in a systematic way.

That's what agencies like the NSF are for, plus the market rewards for innovators of useful things. (No, not patents; "invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door".)

"only that the genius work for his pay, perhaps at a place like Xerox PARC once was"

What i´m trying to say is that it is not impossible, indeed it is quite possible (unless all geniuses are born in developped countries), that the potential creations or inventions of many geniuses of our time are lost. Many must be starving at this precisely moment in an unknown place, or working in a totaly different task in stead of beeing inventing.

You won't fix the problem of poverty by imposing worse copyright and patent regimes. The existing levels of poverty are partly a result of both: copyright artificially inflates the cost of education, and rising education is strongly causally correlated with falling poverty rates, and patents make drugs and some other tools artificially unavailable to the poor, increasing their disease burden and reducing their access to things like clean drinking water; this exacerbates the vicious cycle that maintains poverty in third world environments.

Internet (the hardware network wich connect us), the web (the software network which allow us to communicate) and searching engines as google are great, no doubt, are a necessary technical condition for what we need, but it is not what i have exactly in mind.

Of course not. I know exactly what you do have in mind: destroying the web and the search engines by putting up roadblocks and tollbooths everywhere. Fortunately, you'll fail miserably.

But you asked what would achieve your claimed goals of increasing accessibility to invention and the like, and I said what would do so. You may not like the answer, because it's very different from the (wrong) answer that you came up with, but that's just too bad; I'm honest, sometimes to a fault, and gave the correct answer rather than telling you what you wanted to hear.

They are too noisy.

Irony alert. Part of that noise is the ravings of netkooks like you.

And what is more important, they do not solve the problems of incentives.

There is no "problems of incentives". The first mover advantage and the inherent joy of discovery and creativity provides sufficient incentives. They provided sufficient incentives for all the thousands of years we had civilization before some moron invented the concept of a patent or a copyright and they will continue to do so long after those stupidities are abolished.

The fact that there is technicaly possible to publish does not mean that everyone will publish.

No; unfortunately, some might choose not to if they have reason to fear they'll be attacked and publicly ridiculed by crackpots like you.

Also, as long as there are patents and copyrights, a few might greedily refuse to do so until they can obtain some sort of stupid monopoly, thus delaying publishing while waiting for a patent to be issued or whatever. Get rid of the patent system, of course, and you get rid of this temptation.

Last, but certainly not least, the risk of being sued for allegedly stepping on someone else's copyright or patent is non-negligible if you publish, invent, sell, or do pretty much anything. Getting rid of "IP" will of course get rid of this obstacle too.

That´s that the unlimited property and the ideas market will solve.

No, that's what the "unlimited property" would destroy. The likelihood of being sued by every Tom, Dick, and Harry as soon as you try to build anything new would be a colossal disincentive. (Look at the ludicrous lawsuits currently flying in the smartphone space. Or at the music industry: you can't innovate a new internet music-related service without being sued by entrenched interests in the recording industry. Our existing system already disincentivizes innovation. Creation, too; things like the Grey Album, original sequels to The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter lexicons, and dancing baby YouTube videos keep getting banned, suppressed, sued, or otherwise attacked by jealous copyright holders guarding their monopoly turf. And you propose to make this even worse while I propose to fix it. And yet you claim to be the pro-innovation one??? Amazing!)

In conclusion the present situation regarding publishing, dissemination and scrutiny is no satisfactory.

Indeed it is not; copyright must be abolished posthaste.

This gives us a second principle: a good invention system is one such that everyone able to have at least one idea must be able to publish it and must have strong incentives to publish it, in such a way that many experts has incentives to check and test the potential of this new idea .

Getting rid of the pointlessly-existent risk of being sued if you do either would of course help tremendously.

"The problem I have isn't in defeating you, it is in convincing you that you have been defeated and that you will never win, no matter how many rematches you challenge me to".

[insults deleted]

Ah, the predictable ad hominem response.

No, you're the imbecile. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

PooPatentTroll is such a sore loser!

At present i have the impression that nor you can convince me, nor i can covince you. Why ?

Because I'm right and you're a lunatic.

Because we lack of a general theory of inventions

You mean, because you lack a general theory of inventions. I have no such lack, as it turns out.

I have already an embrionic model in my mind of how this theory could be.

People who cannot argue cogently or even spell "embryonic" correctly (or even use a dictionary or a spellchecker or Wikipedia correctly!) should stick to flipping burgers and leave the theorizing to us scientists.

I would say that a good abstract model would be a graph, were the vertices are individual propositions/instructions and its subsets and two vertices are connected if we can pass from a set propositions (invention) to another set of propositions with let´s say an average amount of research.

Well, what do you know? A stopped clock really is right twice a day.

Of course, any sane person of reasonable intelligence must realize what happens if every damned edge on that graph grows its own cutesy little tollbooth labeled "Patent #5,105,186,385,788..." -- it quickly starts to cost a fortune to do any work anywhere near the growing edge of the graph. Research becomes artificially way too expensive; just the education needed to understand a field well enough to contribute one iota of anything new to it would go from costing an already-unfortunate several tens of thousands of dollars to costing millions, perhaps billions.

Bill Gates's heirs and Donald Trump's heirs had better be damned prolific at inventing if they're going to be the only ones who will be permitted to even try. And they'd better hire lawyers, because no matter how many stupid and pointless "rights" they "clear" they're still gonna get sued, and sued, and sued...

Why do you think a world with lucrative lottery windfalls to anyone who successfully invents something, but where a) instead of tens of thousands, there's only about two dozen people in the world inventing anything and b) they're all already rich, will have more invention than our present world?

Oh yeah, that's right, I totally forgot -- you think that because you're a lunatic. :P

To summarize a sparse hypercube ?.Let´s call it IS. This space can be enriched in order to include the fact that some inventions are substitute of others, some are complementary, some are improvements, some are just embelishment[sic].

And one of those is the spellchecker. I'd tell you to be thankful you don't have to put a quarter in a slot every time you use one, but you clearly don't use one (despite desperately needing to). If you pro-IP nuts had your way nobody could spell check anything without paying a fortune for a "license" for a spell checker, or even paying by the word spell-checked. (Microsoft and others have seriously made attempts to push usage-based fees for software use on one's own local hardware, using one's own local resources only; seriously. Thankfully, they have failed.)

--a set of agents, which explores this space, in a diferent way depending on the IP regime. Think of them as tokens which move in the graph according to decision rules.

Yeah; in a no-IP regime, they move quickly to the edge of the graph and explore rapidly; in the present IP regime, they move slowly to the edge of the graph while hemmorhaging money on sky-high tuition fees and expensive textbooks, go deep into debt, explore rapidly, and then get sued; and in your maximal-IP world, they almost all cluster about the center node of the graph representing near-total ignorance, corralled there by a thicket of tollbooths and their own lack of startup cash, except for a handful that mostly represent rich heirs, which move very slowly to the edge of the graph, poke about cautiously there, and then get sued.

The agents can decide to invent or not invent

I've never yet heard of anyone driven to invent or be creative making a conscious decision to not do so. Not anyone, in the entire history of the human species.

can decide to publish or not publish

In my experience, everyone with a neato idea wants to tell the world. The main 3 reasons for them not to are:

* They have no means to broadcast their idea far and wide; it's too expensive.

* They are embarrassed; they fear they'll be laughed at and ridiculed.

* They expect to get sued.

The first of these was solved by the invention of the Internet. Making broadband markets more competitive and access more universal will still help.

The second of these requires solving a complex social issue -- that of bullying. People being laughed at and ridiculed systematically is a closely related matter. People being more empathetic and treating one another with respect is key, but it's a hard problem and it will probably take two generations to solve, one to figure out how and fix the school system and then one more for a whole generation of kids to grow up in the fixed school system.

The third one is, thankfully, easier to fix: Impose true freedom of speech. Get rid of copyright especially, and make the bar to proving defamation higher. Eliminate the concept of legal protection of trade secrets and require all NDA terms in contracts to be scoped to the duration of employment. Get rid of all regional laws against particular speech, from the (well-intentioned but misguided) no-Nazi-stuff laws in Germany to the laws against disparaging the rulers and Islam in Iran and similar places.

Still a big political hurdle in practice though.

--an special agent, the regulator, which can decide to grant and enforce property rights or not, and can decide adopt and finance research decision and operations or not.

And here I thought you thought you could create some kind of "anarchy with IP", which is impossible. I guess you finally realized that, though it's a bit cheeky and disingenuous of you to disguise the addition of a state with a patent office to your world-domination scheme in this manner instead of just coming right out and admitting that you were wrong about not needing a state.

As a last piece of the model we need some measure of the performance of the system: i´ve got not clear yet this.

Here's a helpful suggestion: give this part your undivided attention for a few decades or so. That means no lobbying, blog-comments-trolling, or other extracurricular activities; just eat, sleep, do your day job, and work on your pet project until you've solved it.

equality (the fact that all agents has the same information about what is invented or not since the state 0) is a second one.

Better get rid of copyright, then, unless you expect all your agents to be filthy rich.

Well, this comment is becoming now too long

It took you a while to notice that; it had already been "becoming now too long[sic]" for roughly half an hour before you did. :P

I admit the model is to abstract and therefore i predict you [implied insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

P.D[sic] [implied insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

1. Answering to a comment about string theory, Beeswax said "Parallel worlds are a natural consequence of the existing, well-tested quantum field theory anyway.You need a magical unobserved untested FTL non-unitary non-linear time-asymmetric Lorentz-invariance-violating collapse fairy waving her magic wand over your wavefunction to avoid having parallel worlds in quantum theory". I add the implicit deduction: and therefore string theory is right.

You think you ave impressed me or anyone ? This argument only shows how falacious your way of thinking can be. I´was talking about string theory and you talk about QFT. Even in this particular physical theory, in order anyone can understand three quotes from an easy source Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation):

"Many-worlds is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the wavefunction, but denies the reality of wavefunction collapse. It is also known as MWI, the relative state formulation, Everett interpretation, theory of the universal wavefunction, parallel universes, many-universes interpretation or just many worlds".

"MWI is considered by some to be unfalsifiable and hence unscientific because the multiple parallel universes are non-communicating, in the sense that no information can be passed between them. Others[51] claim MWI is directly testable. Everett regarded MWI as falsifiable since any test that falsifies conventional quantum theory would also falsify MWI"

"According to Martin Gardner, MWI has two different interpretations: real or unreal (the latter in which the other worlds are "not real"), and claims that Stephen Hawking and Steve Weinberg both favour the unreal interpretation.[72] Gardner also claims that the nonreal interpretation is favoured by the majority of physicists, whereas the "realist" view is only supported by MWI experts such as David Deutsch and Bryce DeWitt. Hawking has said that "according to Feynman's idea", all the other histories are "equally real" as our own[73], and Tipler reports Hawking saying that MWI is "trivially true" (scientific jargon for "obviously true") if quantum theory applies to all reality.[74] In a 1983 interview Hawking also said he regarded the MWI as "self-evidently correct" but was dismissive towards questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, saying "when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun". In the same interview he also said, "But, look: All that one does, really, is to calculate conditional probabilities in other words, the probability of A happening, given B. I think that that's all the many worlds interpretation is". In other words, parallel wolrds in QFT are a mathematical technique, not an ontological reality. (as an aside comment have i´ve seen Tegmark in this wikipedia article ? Hmmm...)

In any case, i repeat, i was talking about string theory and extra dimensions....But, again Beeswax, althought i may use scientific examples, this thread is not about physics or any other science. It is about intellectual property. Why do you insist in constantly showing-off your ignorance of science ?

Another sample of falcious and misleading interpretation of what i´ve said:

I said "Two people came up with calculus nearly simultaneously, working from a common body of contemporary mathematical knowledge" I think we lack of a complete scientific multicultural study about this" Beeswax said: "Nonsense. It's a well-documented historical fact" when by the context it can be seeing that i was refering to the lack of good scientific research about independent discoveries in general, not about calculus. Unelegant demagogy not suprising about someone so arrogant to say: "You mean, because you lack a general theory of inventions. I have no such lack, as it turns out". Your theory please ? That´s his theory,

"In my experience, everyone with a neato idea wants to tell the world. The main 3 reasons for them not to are:

* They have no means to broadcast their idea far and wide; it's too expensive.

* They are embarrassed; they fear they'll be laughed at and ridiculed.

* They expect to get sued"

To summarize, a world full of intellectual exhibitionists !! Beeswax, you complained that i "Repeatedly accusing me of stupidity, for starters. Not to mention insanity...". After this three new examples what do you want me to think ? I´m really sorry, but except the fact that you guessed this CKMMMS easy puzzle, i´ve not read from you anything that can make me think differently...

4. Since you do not show us a better model than above´s i assume that the model i´ve presented, as unperfect as it is (its just the rock piece which must be polished in order to obtain the sculpture) is at least acceptable for people interested in IP, i.e. it serves as an common frame which abstracts everything relevant to discuss about IP systems performance, right ?.

Additional comments about this model:

About the invention space. First it seems too static. When a true proposition is discovered some edges must be cutted from the graph and maybe some added. The edges within vertices must be questions. The avalaible knowledge make us pose questions, and the positive or negative answers to this questions of the type (Is this right ? Will this work if i did this way, following these instructions ? And positive and negative answers to present conjetures always lead to new questions that before this nobody could even ask. Second, not every set of propositions or instructions is right, nor every true or correct set of propositions will lead to products. That´s what the price mechanism must to decide about. After an invention is made, a vertex reached, a price is assigned inmediatelly (in an ideal perfect market, at least).

The agents must be worst case agents, that is rational (freedom-order-equallity and efficiency aware)and selfish, so the "irrational (stupid?) intellectual exhibitionist" of your presumed theory is not valid.

Regarding the network/market, before you said "(some inventors do not communicate their inventions because off) They are embarrassed; they fear they'll be laughed at and ridiculed". The inverse problem is that the inventions of some others are accepted as correct only because they had a correct invention in the past (i.e a Nobel prize winner). This is why the network/market must be anonymous, blind to identities, beeing it biological identities (such as race, family), social (class, curriculum), cultural (language, hence it must be unilingual) or ideological (inventions from communists as you must be accepted also.

5. I repeat again. You asserted that several Nobel prizes are pro-NIP. Could you please inform about its names and references ?

PooPatentTroll just can't get enough of being demolished in front of a worldwide audience:

Answering to a comment about string theory, Beeswax said "Parallel worlds are a natural consequence of the existing, well-tested quantum field theory anyway. You need a magical unobserved untested FTL non-unitary non-linear time-asymmetric Lorentz-invariance-violating collapse fairy waving her magic wand over your wavefunction to avoid having parallel worlds in quantum theory". I add the implicit deduction: and therefore string theory is right.

I didn't say that. I said that it shouldn't be penalized for postulating parallel worlds, since stock quantum theory does so as well. As far as I am concerned, there are currently three strong contenders for a theory of quantum gravity; the other two are loop quantum gravity and causal dynamical triangulation. None of the three has a strong edge over the other two, as far as I am concerned, pending new developments in one of the theories, new evidence cropping up, or the emergence of a fourth theory.

You think you ave impressed me or anyone ? This argument only shows [insult deleted]

No, it does not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You, on the other hand, have shown (once again) an inability to follow the actual argument your opponent is making. This is part of why you keep losing.

"According to Martin Gardner, MWI has two different interpretations: real or unreal (the latter in which the other worlds are "not real"), and claims that Stephen Hawking and Steve Weinberg both favour the unreal interpretation.[72] Gardner also claims that the nonreal interpretation is favoured by the majority of physicists, whereas the "realist" view is only supported by MWI experts such as David Deutsch and Bryce DeWitt.

In other words, the experts reject the "unreal" version. (It adds an extra, extraneous feature to the theory: some mechanism for selecting one of the worlds as privileged. We should be deeply suspicious of any ad hoc modification to a physics theory whose sole purpose is to privilege particular observers! Or to prevent the theory from conflicting with conventional "wisdom". The lesson of Einstein's cosmological constant blunder; he could have predicted the expanding universe and background radiation had he avoided that one.)

Hawking has said that "according to Feynman's idea", all the other histories are "equally real" as our own[73], and Tipler reports Hawking saying that MWI is "trivially true" (scientific jargon for "obviously true") if quantum theory applies to all reality.[74] In a 1983 interview Hawking also said he regarded the MWI as "self-evidently correct" but was dismissive towards questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, saying "when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun".

With which paralyzed hand? one is tempted to ask him in response. :)

In other words, parallel wolrds in QFT are a mathematical technique, not an ontological reality.

The only way for them not to be an ontological reality would be if either a) this world is not an ontological reality (none of them are) or b) this world is, but the others aren't (one world -- one set of observers -- is privileged, a bright-line violation of a major relativity principle).

Cogito, ergo sum, ergo a) is wrong, and b) is highly suspicious due to the privileging of observers, so I say they have ontological reality.

In any case, i repeat, i was talking about string theory and extra dimensions....But, again Beeswax, althought i may use scientific examples, this thread is not about physics or any other science. It is about intellectual property. Why do you insist in constantly showing-off your [insult deleted]?

I do not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

You will stop lying about me in public or I may eventually be forced to seek legal remedy.

It is you who keeps introducing tangents and bringing up distractions, by the way. You were the first to bring up physics, for instance, when you randomly asserted that physics was "going nowhere" (despite the easy falsifiability of that statement -- checking arxiv.org at intervals will prove it wrong in at most a few weeks).

Another sample of [insult deleted]

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I said "Two people came up with calculus nearly simultaneously, working from a common body of contemporary mathematical knowledge" I think we lack of a complete scientific multicultural study about this" Beeswax said: "Nonsense. It's a well-documented historical fact"

And it is.

[insult deleted]

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

exhibitionists !!

Please at least try to stick to the topic, PooPatentTroll. Your sexual fantasies are not at all what I want to be reading about at Against Monopoly. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Beeswax, you complained [insults deleted]

No, you're the moron and the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

4. Since you do not show us a better model than above´s i assume that the model i´ve presented, as unperfect as it is (its just the rock piece which must be polished in order to obtain the sculpture) is at least acceptable for people interested in IP

It is not. I blew it out of the fricking water, remember?

Oh, yeah, I forget: you tend to conveniently ignore and forget anything that actually refutes your crackpottery and just steamroll on with more and more useless comment posts as if you'd not just been proven not only wrong but completely out to lunch.

About the invention space. First it seems too static. When a true proposition is discovered some edges must be cutted from the graph and maybe some added.

Don't be ridiculous; the graph itself can't be dynamic. Just the membership in the explored subgraph.

Second, not every set of propositions or instructions is right, nor every true or correct set of propositions will lead to products. That´s what the price mechanism must to decide about.

No, price mechanisms are for matching a scarce good's (or labor's) supply to its demand. Science is for determining what is correct. You can't replace science with some system full of tollbooths and exclusive rights without destroying science, which is inherently dependent on the open sharing and publishing of information. Its self-corrective nature rapidly breaks down in the absence of open communications. We're already seeing some bad consequences along these lines due to Bayh-Dole; things like the Woo Suk Hwang stem-cell fraud might have been abetted by the atmosphere of proprietary secret unpublished details created among researchers (especially in the applied biosciences!) by Bayh-Dole's perverse incentives.

After an invention is made, a vertex reached, a price is assigned inmediatelly (in an ideal perfect market, at least).

An ideal perfect market, of course, "inmediatelly"[sic] assigns to easily-duplicated information objects a price of exactly $0.00.

The agents must be worst case agents, that is rational (freedom-order-equallity and efficiency aware)and selfish, so the "irrational (stupid?) intellectual exhibitionist" of your presumed theory is [insult deleted].

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

There is nothing irrational about sharing information, unless you assume (wrongly) that information is a zero-sum game (once you give it away, you no longer have it anymore). In the real world, information is of course a positive-sum game; not only do you still have it, but the rising tide floats all boats. Everyone having better information improves things for everyone (except cheaters of various kinds; light is the scourge of error) and indeed makes markets more efficient.

Lack of information, meanwhile, can among other deleterious consequences create a market for lemons, and you, by promoting making access to information much more expensive, have been promoting lack of information.

Light is the scourge of error, and here you are doing as much as you can to narrow the scope of every light and make light very expensive so that the default state will be darkness. What is it that flees from the light and craves the darkness? Why do you? Inquiring minds want to know just what pies you plan to stick your fingers into once those lights go out.

Regarding the network/market, before you said "(some inventors do not communicate their inventions because off) They are embarrassed; they fear they'll be laughed at and ridiculed". The inverse problem is that the inventions of some others are accepted as correct only because they had a correct invention in the past (i.e a Nobel prize winner). This is why the network/market must be anonymous, blind to identities, beeing it biological identities (such as race, family), social (class, curriculum), cultural (language, hence it must be unilingual) or ideological (inventions from communists as you must be accepted also.

Nonsense. Sheer and utter nonsense. The progress of science depends significantly on a reputation system, which anonymity would destroy. Furthermore, anonymity is also incompatible with your own precious IP regime, since nobody can identify the copyright holder to pay up (and if he sues or demands payment, he gives up his anonymity in so doing).

You asserted that several Nobel prizes are pro-NIP. Could you please inform about its names and references ?

Oh, I'm sorry, I must've forgotten that you weren't smart enough to use Google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=nobel+economist+patent

Second hit is for an anti-copyright Nobelist and further down the list you'll find one that's anti-gene-patent, one that's anti-software-patent, and one that's anti-pharma-patent.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050817/0314229.shtml

A Nobel economist that's against the patent system in general.

http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100208/0041208073#c416

Comment link to multiple anti-patent Nobelists.

Checkmate.

"With which paralyzed hand?"

Sorry, i can not stand this bad tasted comment even in a half humorous thread like this one (but i repeat i´ve been serious about the proposal that UIPMD system is better than the present system we have, and of course of the system the authors of this blog are proposing. From now on I leave any interaction with you.

PooPatentTroll's incontinence continued:

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

i´ve been serious about the proposal that UIPMD system is better than the present system we have

Then you've been seriously wrong. And you still are.