Kapitalism
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I feel like so many people don't understand the purpose of IP law.
So someone arranges some atoms for the first time, let's say they make a vaccine. Now the creator of that vaccine might be financially motivated to sell it for profit. If no IP law existed then the only way to ensure that they'd be able to profit from their arrangement of atoms is by keeping the way they managed to create it a secret. IP law is a social contract that says "hey, if you share this massively beneficial idea with the rest of society we'll make sure that you can make a profit off of it." In this way IP law incentivises creators to share their creations with society in a way that everyone benefits from.
The problem is with public institutions being eroded away by corporate interests not with the concept of IP law.
Also for anyone coming out with the "creators aren't profit motivated" bs. Yes they absolutely are. No it is not because of greed. Material success for people who have made contributions is the most valuable encouragement.
If you can only understand monetary motivation that's your fault. Most people who spend 10 years in med school + residency don't do it because of monetary incentives, they do it because of social and personal incentives.
Most research actually comes from the public sector (universities, research institutes...), where people work not because they hope to get rich one day through patenting something, but because they get paid to do research. 99 scientists in the public sector will do 99% of the work towards a technology, then a private company will take the final 1% of progress, patent it, and prevent everyone else from accessing the mostly publicly-funded development. For fuck's sake, we saw this literally 5 years ago with the development of the COVID vaccines, it was predominantly based on university and institutional research that hadn't been commercialized, and then some companies took all this research for free, got a ton of public grants on the side, and then made the vaccines at an absurd profit. For a counter-example to that, tell me, if the profit motive from private companies is what drives research fastest, why was Cuba the first country to vaccinate all of its population from COVID using state-funded research and production?
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My former boss was in a gulag for most of his teens. He was not paid and to this day he has no idea what crime he was convicted of. He just knows he served time and was targeted by guards because he was Jewish and the Soviets were very bigoted.
Maybe take a second to ask yourself what your real life experience is with the USSR.
Surely people going to jail for the wrong reason is something exclusive to the Soviet Union and not to all countries with a legal system? Like, damn, I feel sorry for your boss, but in dire circumstances such as those of the late 30s / early 40s in the USSR, excesses and abuses were sadly made because of the overwhelming conditions.
Your boss may have spent his teens in a gulag, but the fact that he lived to tell you that is because the Soviets managed to miraculously defeat the Nazis and prevent them from genociding the Slavic peoples they categorised as "Untermenschen" according to the infamous "Generalplan Ost", which implied genocide of almost all people between Germany and the Urals. If it wasn't for the Soviets, your former boss would have been murdered in a concentration camp by the nazis.
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I am aware that there are people like that that exists and that its quite a big number of people
But I will never understand how people like that exist. And to be very controversially honest I don’t trust the sincerity and thus ideas of people that think like this. Though i still respect such people like anyone else all the same.
Granted i am a certified autist but personal gain has almost no value to me, to the point that being paid actually demotivates me because:
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I believe i deserve to have a good quality life regardless of economic value and know that statistically humanity has enough resources/food to guarantee such for everyone. It being conditional makes me feel exploited.
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I always want to be the best possible version of myself and accomplish whatever i, with my human limitations, am able to, which has the most general positive effect on the total universe. Regardless of anything. I consider it personality offensive others assume i would want anything else.
I feel devaluated because society appears convinced that i would not do work if they were not threatening my survival, and because corporate hierarchy is what it is i actually have to underachieve all the time because fighting to make actual improvements would quickly threaten the control of higher ups and thus become a risk for my own means of survival.
Sure, if i could solve climate change and no one would even thank me for it leaving starving poor then i would be very sad. But self worth and identity would be Intact because i would be doing what i know is right.
While changing that in favour of stock trading maybe my life standards would be better but with the lack of any real value and living of a system designed around exploitation of existing value will make me feel worse to the point i may actually end up an existential crisis and kill myself.
To die sooner for the right reasons is a better life than to survive longer for the wrong reasons.
While i know my stance is rare i know there are plenty of people who think exactly like i do about this.
Anyway i also got a bit side tracked because this wasn't about ip laws anymore, but my belief remains that if people can work on what they want without it affecting their personal access to luxury then there is no reason why they would not work on things that benefit all of society and thus themselves.
You don't understand why people deserve the fruits of their labour? What are you on about bruh we're talking about the patent office. People need to be incentivised to work because all of the work needed to create the society of excess you so want to enjoy isn't all of the work people would do if left to their own devices.
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The problem is with corporations pushing up against weak public institutions and finding no resistance not those public institutions dummy.
Without corporations there isn't a need for intellectual property. Public research, i.e. most research, is conducted without intellectual property, and most scientists dedicate their live to science not because they think they can get rich by selling one product, but because they get a decent wage and position for doing so, intellectual stimulus, and social recognition. Research and invention don't necessitate intellectual property, only private companies do.
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Sometimes I get mad about how we in practice have basic income for the rich. If you have a few million dollars, you can park it in zero or low risk investments (eg: high yield savings, bonds) and get free money. Then you can just fuck off and pursue your dreams. No risk. Lots of reward.
But if you're poor? Well you better take any job for any salary or you're just a parasite blah blah blah. All pain, some risk, little reward.
Rich people also get handed so many free things.
Put over $100,000 in the bank and they will throw free accounts, low interest credit cards, rewards, free safety deposit boxes, personal concierge services. And that’s just the start.
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Surely people going to jail for the wrong reason is something exclusive to the Soviet Union and not to all countries with a legal system? Like, damn, I feel sorry for your boss, but in dire circumstances such as those of the late 30s / early 40s in the USSR, excesses and abuses were sadly made because of the overwhelming conditions.
Your boss may have spent his teens in a gulag, but the fact that he lived to tell you that is because the Soviets managed to miraculously defeat the Nazis and prevent them from genociding the Slavic peoples they categorised as "Untermenschen" according to the infamous "Generalplan Ost", which implied genocide of almost all people between Germany and the Urals. If it wasn't for the Soviets, your former boss would have been murdered in a concentration camp by the nazis.
Surely people going to jail for the wrong reason is something exclusive to the Soviet Union and not to all countries with a legal system?
It isn't common for people to be sent to slave camps as a punishment for years without knowing why they were charged. That’sthe kind of evil unique to totalitarian shitholes like the USSR.
Your boss may have spent his teens in a gulag, but the fact that he lived to tell you that is because the Soviets managed to miraculously defeat the Nazis and prevent them from genociding the Slavic peoples they categorised as “Untermenschen” according to the infamous “Generalplan Ost”, which implied genocide of almost all people between Germany and the Urals. If it wasn’t for the Soviets, your former boss would have been murdered in a concentration camp by the nazis.
The same nation you are praising put him IN a concentration camp for no fucking reason other than potentially because of his race.
Like, damn, I feel sorry for your boss, but in dire circumstances such as those of the late 30s / early 40s in the USSR, excesses and abuses were sadly made because of the overwhelming conditions.
No, you don’t. You wouldn’t be supporting their evil actions in this case if you had any empathy.
You are making a lot of apologies for overt racism, why are you doing this and why do you think the USSR’s racism should be praised?
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Rich people also get handed so many free things.
Put over $100,000 in the bank and they will throw free accounts, low interest credit cards, rewards, free safety deposit boxes, personal concierge services. And that’s just the start.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. One of the banks here refunds ATM fees if you have a minimum balance of $2500 (and waives the monthly fee if you have $25,000). Like, my guys, the people who don't have money need that fee waived a lot more. But the bank just wants to make money and that means appealing to rich people.
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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.
We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk
When do you think this tipping point was? Because as far as I can tell this was around the French revolution.
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You don't understand why people deserve the fruits of their labour? What are you on about bruh we're talking about the patent office. People need to be incentivised to work because all of the work needed to create the society of excess you so want to enjoy isn't all of the work people would do if left to their own devices.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The fruit of our labor should be a better world for everyone and future generations.
The belief that people won’t work without external pressure is contradicted by human history, cooperative work and mutual aid have existed for millennia before formal economies developed.
Its known that when people’s basic needs are met, the desire to create and contribute is a natural human drive.
Also as a bit of a sidenote to avoid confusion, i believe all people deserve and could be given more comfort and luxury then their labor currently grants them. So its not correct that i would not want people to have those things, just that it should be non conditional.
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We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk
When do you think this tipping point was? Because as far as I can tell this was around the French revolution.
Hmmm. Good question. I'm not an economist, but I'd say it was around the time Reganomics got started, maybe a little bit beforehand, since I think Reganomics was probably a consequence of the powerful having enough money to out-fund the general populace.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
They also created the famine by decentralizing agriculture and planning, but at least that sort of people learned their lesson from it and didn't repeat the exact same blunder in China years later, right?
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Patents are available to all. It protects the individual as well as the corporation.
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We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk
When do you think this tipping point was? Because as far as I can tell this was around the French revolution.
In modern economics, a massive change came about in the early 1970s. Productivity and profits decoupled from employee wages, and continued to rise while wages stayed flat. Fast forward 50 years, account for inflation and shifts in technology, and it's easy to see that employee wages HAVEN'T RISEN in meaningful amounts for 50 years. Meanwhile, companies are making more money than ever.
So, I'd say it was in the 70's.
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Without corporations there isn't a need for intellectual property. Public research, i.e. most research, is conducted without intellectual property, and most scientists dedicate their live to science not because they think they can get rich by selling one product, but because they get a decent wage and position for doing so, intellectual stimulus, and social recognition. Research and invention don't necessitate intellectual property, only private companies do.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Oh boy here we go. What is a corporation? What does it mean for corporations to not exist? How exactly does that even work in practice?
Yes creative scientist invent things spontaneously without expectation of reward. But no scientist will contribute as much as a well funded and motivated team with a clear goal. And I'm sure all the scientists love it when you tell them they won't be credited for their work and literally anyone will be able to take their idea and do whatever they want with it, that'll do so much to help foster humanity's innate desire to learn and be creative.
And it's about coercing people who won't act in good faith with the system into doing so. Most people would keep a secret to make money especially if their livelihood depended on it. Why force creatives to choose between sharing their works and profiting from them?
Private companies don't need intellectual property. A corporation will steal your creation and outcompete you in profiting from it if given the opportunity. Intellectual property laws are what stop them from doing so. Again, the system has been eroded and misused by companies but at its core it protects workers and their labour.
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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.
Capitalism, since its inception, has been 99% of people having no capital.
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Sometimes I get mad about how we in practice have basic income for the rich. If you have a few million dollars, you can park it in zero or low risk investments (eg: high yield savings, bonds) and get free money. Then you can just fuck off and pursue your dreams. No risk. Lots of reward.
But if you're poor? Well you better take any job for any salary or you're just a parasite blah blah blah. All pain, some risk, little reward.
My ex gets an allowance from his grandparents every week. They also bought him a house.
He’d get a job for a couple years, fuck around and get fired. Only got through college because I did his homework.
He has a house, he has a fridge full of food, he can go to restaurants and order out and take weeks off for vacation.
I worked full time through college, often three jobs. I still have massive student loans. I work two part time jobs, because the career field I went into is collapsing, and I’m not welcome as a trans person anyway.
I have always worked; he has not. I sleep on a rug and stack of pillows; he can pick out whatever luxury furniture he wants.
Work is entirely disconnected from reward.
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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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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.
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The fruit of our labor should be a better world for everyone and future generations.
The belief that people won’t work without external pressure is contradicted by human history, cooperative work and mutual aid have existed for millennia before formal economies developed.
Its known that when people’s basic needs are met, the desire to create and contribute is a natural human drive.
Also as a bit of a sidenote to avoid confusion, i believe all people deserve and could be given more comfort and luxury then their labor currently grants them. So its not correct that i would not want people to have those things, just that it should be non conditional.
It's not exclusive. You can meet everyones needs and then say, "hey if you make some cool fucking shit we'll give you a little extra." Why insist on people doing good solely because they feel like it. Why not push people to be better.
We know what people do when their needs are met, they're called retirees. They don't provide a net gain of almost anything btw. Yes people will pick up rubbish off a beach out of the goodness of their hearts. But the amount of litter collected from philanthropy is not greater than the amount made. And it's a rounding error when compared to the amount of rubbish managed by garbage collectors.
IP laws are good precisely because they encourage people to create and discover even if all their needs are met. They compliment the selfless and persuade the selfish.
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I'm down. I think every year, we ought to take the richest person in the country and redistribute 50% of their assets.
