Kapitalism
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This meme shows a complete misunderstanding of patent law. A patent is a social contract that allows for a limited amount of protection for an invention being copied (usually 20 years) in exchange for it becoming public domain after that. This enables people to make a living inventing things. Are games played with the system, sure, does it work perfectly- no, but it’s better than the alternatives. (Source, am inventor)
I'm not super familiar with patents themselves, but I used to work in genetics back when human genes were able to be patented, and Myriad Genetics used their patent of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to lock genetic testing for these common factors in breast cancer predisposition behind a massive paywall. Even after gene patents were no longer allowed, they refused to share their previous test results with researchers trying to develop a more comprehensive, accurate, and cost-effective test, slowing down medical research.
Research eventually progressed without Myriad Genetics' help, and within a few years after the genes stopped being patented, genetic testing for the BRCA genes and many more was down to an affordable price, even for people without insurance coverage. We now learn more and more about these genes quicker than ever, and can offer tests that cover many genes at once for a low price and with high accuracy, due to the sharing of test results between labs that never would have happened while genes were patented.
This may be an outlier in patent usage - though I doubt it - but it still shows that big companies can use patent laws more to bully fair competition than to offer a better product. Patents are a good idea for helping small businesses and individuals protect their right to make a new product without a big company swooping in, but there are still massive issues with the process that need to be fixed to keep those same big companies from using the process in reverse to keep small businesses from growing into the competition necessary for a healthy economy.
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Surely anyone who dares criticize the great Soviets is a straight up Nazi! There can be no other explanation!
I don't think that's what they're saying. There are countless pieces of Nazi propaganda that were taken as fact at some point in the intervening 80 years. Famously, the number of people killed in the Dresden bombing was hugely inflated by the Nazis to smear the Allies, and those numbers were accepted for a very long time.
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Someone gets it.
Lets instead do this:
Every citizen, irrespective of their nationality, skincolor, gender has the right to:
- living quarters
- work
- maximum of 7 hours of work
- free healthcare
- paid vacation
- equal pay and treatment for women
- freedom of religion and speech
This is directly taken from a 1936 constitution. Today one could improve on it but we're so much worse, everywhere.
Now guess which one.
Luckily, the Soviet union treated homosexuals to a similar standard. /s
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As opposed to the current time of surplus and abundance where it is if "you don't work you don't eat". Which is morally a lot worse considering there is more than enough food to feed everyone
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Technically IP law covers patents, trademarks, copyright, and designs (sometimes also called design patents). Patent protection is 20 years (plus a little bit extra under certain conditions. Trademarks is indefinite in theory. Copyright (in many jurisdictions) is 70 yrs after death or 50 yrs for certain works (e.g., music recordings). Designs, I'm not really sure.
Copyright (in many jurisdictions) is 70 yrs after death until next time Disney extends it
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This meme shows a complete misunderstanding of patent law. A patent is a social contract that allows for a limited amount of protection for an invention being copied (usually 20 years) in exchange for it becoming public domain after that. This enables people to make a living inventing things. Are games played with the system, sure, does it work perfectly- no, but it’s better than the alternatives. (Source, am inventor)
If it were a misunderstanding, why do we always see a spike in innovation once a patent expires? According to capitalist ideology, isn't competition the best that could happen, instead of having an unlimited monopoly for 20 years?
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during a famine
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Luckily, the Soviet union treated homosexuals to a similar standard. /s
The Soviet Union didn't particularly treat homosexuals any worse than most countries at the time. Sure, it should have done better, but there are limitations to ideology when lessentially your entire ideological base members die in the struggle against the Nazis due to being the first to volunteer.
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If it were a misunderstanding, why do we always see a spike in innovation once a patent expires? According to capitalist ideology, isn't competition the best that could happen, instead of having an unlimited monopoly for 20 years?
I think their point was that in a way, patents are supposed to be more equitable because it allows the inventor to meet their basic needs by being the one to invent the patent.
There's also the argument that while innovation skyrockets after a parent opens up, there would be less incentive to invent new things if Walmart could just copy it for cheaper the day after you show how you make it.
Or people would be super secretive with instructions for how to make their products that innovations could die with their creators since they have no incentive to release it.
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As opposed to the current time of surplus and abundance where it is if "you don't work you don't eat". Which is morally a lot worse considering there is more than enough food to feed everyone
Yeah... no. Very little in modern history is morally worse than Soviet management of the famine of 1930-1933 (which they caused, too). That shit was at least on par with the Irish Famine in terms of sheer moral depravity.
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Yeah... no. Very little in modern history is morally worse than Soviet management of the famine of 1930-1933 (which they caused, too). That shit was at least on par with the Irish Famine in terms of sheer moral depravity.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I don't know choosing to not feed people when there is enough food to feed everyone seems a lot worse than choosing which people to not feed during a time of famine.
Obviously more people die from the famine, but at least that's due to a lack of resources and not a manufactured scarcity
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Stalin 1936 constitution. Holidays for "enemies of the people" were unpaid and in a quite cold climate of Siberia. They also cared about fitness of citizens by ensuring no one has too much of food. And if you didn't like it, you get a free ride in a black car to the place of final rest.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Holidays for "enemies of the people" were unpaid
Not true. The GULAG system, which is simply the prison system of the Soviet Union at the time, did pay inmates a wage while they worked there, this is common knowledge and you can check it up if you want to.
and in a quite cold climate of Siberia
Really? The Gulags were all in Siberia? How about you actually check what you're talking about instead of spreading misinformation? From the Gulag museum:
www.gulag.online/articles/mapa-taborovych-sprav-gulagu-a-pribehu-ze-stredni-evropy?locale=en
Wow, a ton of Gulags were actually to the west of the Urals, not in Siberia, who would have thought. If only this information was widely available and public...
They also cared about fitness of citizens by ensuring no one has too much of food
Huh? Life expectancy in the Soviet Union rose exponentially, it was below 30 years of age before the Russian Revolution and 60 by the time Stalin died. The diet of the Soviet citizen was by the 60s healthier than that of a US citizen. The CIA itself says this BTW, check out on google "CIA USSR nutrition", you'll find a 1983 document claiming, and I quote, "American and Soviet citizens eat about the same amount of rood each day but the Soviet diet may be more nutritious". Almost as if centering food production around the needs of the population instead of around the profit of food producers, gives a better result...
Just admit it: you don't have any fucking idea what you're talking about. You're repeating talking points you've heard on Reddit or TV without actually checking anything.
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This meme shows a complete misunderstanding of patent law. A patent is a social contract that allows for a limited amount of protection for an invention being copied (usually 20 years) in exchange for it becoming public domain after that. This enables people to make a living inventing things. Are games played with the system, sure, does it work perfectly- no, but it’s better than the alternatives. (Source, am inventor)
This comment shows a complete misunderstanding of patent practice. Patents exist not for inventors, but for companies. Destin, from Smarter Every Day, has a recent video trying to make a grill scrubber in which he talks with many people about how Amazon for example constantly avoids patent claims from small inventors.
Humanity progressed from hunter-gatherers to the industrial revolution without the need for a judge to determine whether I can arrange atoms in a given way or not without giving a canon to someone else who decided to arrange atoms like that before me.
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Let me get this straight. To you, a famine produced unintentionally through policy that spiked class war and originated primarily from rich farmers sabotaging the crops and livestock as a response to their lands being collectivized in the first successful collectivization of a country in the history of the Earth, is to you as morally depraved as the English colonists literally starving Irish to death because of colonial and racist beliefs?
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The Soviet Union didn't particularly treat homosexuals any worse than most countries at the time. Sure, it should have done better, but there are limitations to ideology when lessentially your entire ideological base members die in the struggle against the Nazis due to being the first to volunteer.
After the October Revolution of 1917, homosexuality was decriminalised in Soviet Russia with the repeal of the legal code of the Russian Empire, and this decriminalisation was confirmed with new criminal codes in 1922 and 1926. Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet government reversed course in the late 1920s and promoted harsher policy against LGBTQ rights. In 1933, homosexuality was recriminalised in the Soviet Union, and Article 121, which prohibited male homosexuality, was added to the Soviet penal code in the following year.
You don't get to blame this on the Nazis.
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Here we go again with the false claims of hunger directed particularly against Ukrainians.
The Bolsheviks gave Ukrainians for the first time in history borders of their own, representation of their own in politics and the right to study for free and in their own language. There are literal letters between Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin in which Rosa argues against Ukraine getting its own representation as a nationality, and Lenin argues in favour of it (which ultimately was done).
The president of the Soviet Union after Stalin was Ukrainian. There is no precedent, no continuation, and no following episode of hunger spiking particularly in Ukraine as it more-or-less did in the early 30s. And millions died outside Ukraine too during that hunger episode, primarily in southern Russia and Central Asia.
Trying to make the 30s famine about Ukrainians is a propaganda exercise first invented by the Nazis to draw Ukrainian sympathy during the Nazi invasion, and it's picking up strength again as it's used in Europe to stoke Russophobia and anti-communist sentiment.
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The whole IP debate is just pure nonsense. It still relies on the cartesian mind/body dichotomy and an idealism of some sort where "the ideas" exist in their own immaterial cognitive realm. And they think that I can steal these imaginary immaterial entities and they will be gone for good. Yeah...
But wait, I arranged atoms in this order before you did! Now you're not allowed to arrange atoms in this order unless you pay me!!
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The major premise of Capitalism is risk vs reward. We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk, and the people who do have the capital have enough to nullify any risk.
Tax the rich.
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I know enough
I assure you: you do not.
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Luckily, the Soviet union treated homosexuals to a similar standard. /s
wrote last edited by [email protected]Couldn't we just add equality for sexual orientation and gender expression to a new list of rights, along with the things already mentioned?
OP even said, "Today one could improve on it," implying that the referenced constitution isn't meant to be a comprehensive list for the modern day.
