I don’t understand your point. You and LS are argueing that free market protection of IP is an impossibility and would not make sense. Coke is a real world example that proves you are wrong. Free market protection of IP is already taking place without any governement enforcement. The Coke example defeats your entire arguement.
No, it’s not a strawman. Your post refuses to acknowledge the importance of economic signals in an economy. Because of this, you treat the entrepreneur as if he is seperate from the system - some sort of superman… Of course, I am in some way going beyond what your post (but this is how you have presented yourself to me) said, but this why I don’t think you are grasping the relative pricing/ economic calculation argument.
Edit: I am speaking more of your lack of including the importance of relative prices, than of what you have actually written.
Do you think people haven’t tried to reverse engineer the Coke formula? Do you think you could you do it yourself? If we believe your arguement then the people at Coke must be insane to be protecting a worthless piece of paper, and all the other companies protecting formulas and designs are also insane. The market place is refuting your arguement. Please note that normally protection of formulas and design have nothing to do with government protection this is strictly the market place in action.
But Coke did share the invention, it is the formula/the process that is kept secret. Coke rightfully believes that keeping the process secret allows them to retain the value of the invention. So by protecting the idea, Coke is able to capture the value of the invention.
What is actually occurring in the marketplace is dismantling your pet theory.
Who is suggesting a guarantee of protection, nobody has made that claim. What we do see in the Coke example is people protecting an idea and this in fact has prevented people from copying the original invention despite your unfounded assertion that you have demonstrated that Coke can be reverse engineered. It is simply the market interfering with your delusions that you can’t handle.
i understand the role of the price system in the market place for real goods and services. you are right that i dont understand the relevance to it vis-a-vis things that are not real. what is the price of a unicorn? what is the price of love? what price of honour?
you seem to imagine that ideas can freefloat outside of physicality and that these free floating ideas need to be bought and sold in the marketplace just like physical books are bought and sold. you keep talking about ‘infinite goods’ .i.e. non-scarce goods. this is an oxymoron. to be an economic good is to be scarce. of course its a philosphical question what others goods outside of economics goods ‘exist’ but here we are talking economics
Fine, Mozart was a bad example. Let’s look at today. There are musicians today that like the fact that people can download their music for free, because it makes it easier for their name to get out, and they get more people coming to their concerts, and they make more money.
Eliminating IP would not eliminate creativity. Look at the recipe market. Recipes are not copyrighted, and there is a huge variety of recipes one can get on the internet. The markets that have strong IP laws are the ones stagnating.
obviously the only rational explanation for why coke would incur costs to protect the piece of paper in question is because they believe they receive a value from a) having it b) others not having it. the piece of paper has no objective value, only subjective value to them. LibStu’s best point is that IF an entrepeneur thinks some protectable knowledge is worth protecting to some degree they can do that. vis Max’s coke example coke. But this doesnt mean that it is propoerty being protected). if the entrepeneur thinks the costs would outway the benefits then they wont take protective measures.
IP law is counter rational sense because it removes the entrepeneur from doing a calculation of what the worth of protecting is (to him). This removes the entrepeneurs in the market from rationally/economicall determining how much resources should be spent on keeping competitors in the dark of , or unable to benefit from, their innovations. This is all compatible with them not owning the concept of their innovations, but only the means employed in realising the innovations etc.
Then you don’t understand the temporal disconnect surrounding all IP based goods. Real resources (time, labor, land, capital, etc) are expendend and used in the development of the IP based good while it is still super-scarce. Because of this, it fundamentally requires relative pricing so that entrepreneurs can properly determine what area of the ideas market (which is created by Mises’ complementary good assumption, which I quoted earlier) would best satisfy consumer demand. What you haven’t grasped yet is the concept of the super-scarce good becoming infinite in supply.
You also seem to imply that I am not speaking in terms of economics, in that case you are saying the exact same thing to Mises in “Human Action” where he lays out the concept for a complementary good that fetches no price on the market since it is of infinite supply. I could go so far as to say you have created a strawman of my argument.
“If on a competitive market” (or in this case, the perfect competition or infinite good) “one of the complementary factors, namely F” (which is the idea, or the concept previously defined by IP) “needed for the production of the consumers good G, does not attain any price at all (since it is non-scarce), although the production of F requires various expenditures (which is the scarce resources such as labor and time, etc.) and consumers are ready to pay for the consumers’ good G a price which makes its production porfitable on a competitive market, the monopoly price for F becomes a necessary requirement… The Public would not derive any advantage from the absence of monopoly prices for F. It would, on the contrary, miss the satisfaction it could derive from the acquisition of G.”–Once again the I am quoting Mises
ok say F is the Idea of the Combustion engine.
and lets say that F is needed for the production of the consumers good G (The automobile, airplane, motorboat etc)
now mises says :
if TheIdeaOfComubstionEngine does not attain any price at all although it cost resources for the inventor of the Combustion engine to invent it and consumers re ready to pay for cars, planes and boats a price which makes the production of cars planes and boats profitable in a competative market, the monopoly price for TheIdeaOfCombustionEnginge becomes a necessary requirement. The public would not derive any advantage from the absence of monopoly prices for TheIdeaOfCombustionEngine. It would on the contrary, miss the satisfaction that it could derive from the acquisition of cars,planes and motorboats.
Using Mises’ assumptions, then that line of argument would be correct.
Edit: I also think there are long run considerations… and also that the good itself “would” attain no price at all. Since, if the idea was already freely available (as in already an infinite good) then why would there be any consideration for the inventor, as there would already be manufacturing of “cars, planes, and boats”.
is there a positive price for TheIdeaOfCumbustionEngine?
Price is fundamentally determined by supply and demand (demand, through subjective value… and supply, without any IP, depends on the disonnect). On the developer side of the IP disconnect, the idea is super-scarce, and could be disseminated at a monopoly price chosen by the inventor (factoring in substitutes, etc.) On the market side of the disconnect there is infinite supply and thus has a price of 0.
So, on the market side, there is a price of 0 for “TheIdeaOfCombustionEngine”.
so with it being the case that there is a price of 0 for TheIdeaOfCoombustionEngine, and no less other such ideas, such as the idea for the wheel. is mises right to suggest that consumers are suffering from an underproduction of products with engines and wheels on?
and would it be for the good of the consumers if producers of these products be charged a fee to implement wheels and engine? like a wheel tax or an engine tax?
You might have to rephrase your question, but I believe you are making the assumption that “TheIdeaOfCombustionEngine” and “TheIdeaOfWheels” are both at a price of 0. Then you as ask if consumers are suffering from an underproduction of products with engines and wheels…
This depends on definitions of underproduction and on what side of the disconnect we are on. First let us assume we are on the market side of the disconnect, then the idea is non-scarce and all people can freely obtain this idea. In this case there will already be production of the good since everyone already has access the idea. But, if we are on the inventor side of the disconnect, then the idea is still super-scarce, but will fetch a price of 0 if released on the market, and thus will not be produced for the market.
Will there then be an underproduction of products with engines and wheels, assuming the idea is still on the scarce side of the disconnect? Only in the pragmatic sence of consumer benefit, which is Mises’ argument.
I have not suggested any law regarding IP, so don’t lump me in with that crowd. I merely state the obvious to the anti-ip crowd which is that ideas are perceived as having value in the marketplace. Things that have value are protected. In a society without any government intervention we would expect to see protection of IP by marketplace mechanisms. That is exactly what we see in the marketplace.
The marketplace clearly demonstrates that people will take measures to protect what they see as valuable, some of these will work some won’t. Your opinion is irrelevant because the marketplace has already sorted this out.
You are fucking clueless. You misconstructed what I have said not once, but twice. This is not what all I meant is all. It isn’t even a hypothetical at all.
The dude funded me because he wanted a game to play with or simply put, a better version of the game he played. I was selling my programming to a consumer, not an entrepneur who want to make extra cash.
That is the business model I was talking about. A regular boring old job where I get paid to create new things.
“I just enjoy talking past everyone because I have a lot of time to kill” - Max Liberty
“I’m very good at employing strawmen.” - Max Liberty
“The market is always right. You as an individual market participant are always wrong. We are Borg. Resistance is futile.” - Max Liberty
The first copy will fetch a very signifigant price.(At least those with very high demand) The coke forumla, for example, is a very valuable commodity in the eyes of would be imitators because it mean that they don’t have to spend time reverse engineering the product.
“This is an inquisition.” - Max Liberty
“If people do things I don’t agree with, they are insane. I am always right. Even when I am wrong.” - Max Liberty
“I think what we have is a free market. Everything is perfect. Keep voting for Obama.” - Max Liberty
“These are not the state laws you are looking for.” - Obi Wan Liberty
“I don’t like Pepsi. Or Vernors.” - Max Liberty
“How many times do I have to tell you, the market place we have now with state law and coercion is the real thing. A free market.” - Max Liberty.
“I say things I don’t know for sure one way or the other, and desperately hope no one calls me on the specialized knowledge I claim to have.” - Max Liberty
“Forget what is seen and unseen. I can see the unseen which is seen by everyone but you which is why I am a seer. Level 16 Arch-Mage Beotch!” - Max Liberty
Why can’t the labor cost be used as price signal for the production of digital goods?
Property rights exist to resolve the disputes that naturally arise over scarce goods. Ideas are not scarce.
If the cotton gin is patented and I create my own, no person has been wronged. No one has been deprived of their cotton gin, a new one has been created through my labor. Since me creating the cotton gin does not violate the NAP, the IP holder’s violence against me for having made it does.
The only “just price” for a good is that price agreed upon by both parties.
Your appeal to “economics” is laughable. You want us to prove that IP will flourish just as much without a government grant? That’s a matter of preference, not economics. Without the state involved in IP, consumers would benefit and producers would be hurt; the same result as would happen if the state got out of the postal service.
You can’t be for real. Prices for IP do not reflect consumer demand, they represent price controls.