P.S.
IP forces people to pretend that something is scarce, thus valuable; in the same way that price ceilings force people to pretend that something is cheap, thus plentiful.
You know the first thing that went through my head was thinking is scarce…
But seriously…
Do you think eliminating IP will have the result desired, that is progress in science for example?
Intellectual capacity is scarce. But an idea is infinitely reproducible, it can exist in every mind simultaneously.
Who’s job is it to decide what result is the best? Value is subjective.
As for my valuation, science is only useful for improving our material lives. Patents and copyrights deprive people access to technology in order to progress it. What then is the point?
Would the world be better off without IP? Considerably.
No. Doesn’t have to occur, unless, the criminals don’t want to recognize legal restitution. How is legal restitution backed up? If it’s an honor system for the criminals to leave the restitution in the mailbox, then I’d say we’re in a pretty darn good society. Yet, what happens when somebody doesn’t want to pay restitution?
Actually all science depends upon repeatable experiments and peer review. That’s science working. Science never works if ideas are kept hidden. It’s totally counter to what science does. Science needs to be confirmed by the largest number of people possible to show the hypothesis is valid. And by having a hypothesis placed under the most diverse experiments, which means a large diverse number of labs that have a variation of equipment depending upon the lab, this greatly improves the ability of the hypothesis. This opens the door for a huge amount of discoveries cause now so many people are able to test the hypothesis under various conditions and it can show just how applicable the hypothesis really is. This would be a boom, let’s say, for technology.
The internet for all intents and purposes has no real enforeable IP.
Look at it go.
Although “desired result” is a value term. The important thing is that IP necessitates state violence to be workable in it’s current form.
If we trust in the market process, and I do, then we’re inclined to believe that if there is a need or desire for some sort of IP, it will come about through competition and entrepreneurship.
Good point…