ValyrianJedi t1_irfulbx wrote
I don't know about this one. The fact that knowledge can be owned in the form of IP, patents, trade secrets, etc is the only reason that a lot of progress that gets made in the first place. It's not like it was a century ago where major scientific breakthroughs can be made left and right in your garage. They require multimillion dollar labs and sometimes billions in resources, that frequently wouldn't exist if the results of the study couldn't be protected by IP laws.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irg0u49 wrote
The people that own those patents are rarely the people that created them. Science doesn't need them, they're just middlemen.
grandoz039 t1_irhz4oz wrote
That's not really a counter argument. If an inventor doesn't want to also be a business man selling, licensing, etc. their product, and they sell their patents to middlemen (who are responsible for the mentioned activities) for x% pay cut or front up payment instead of long term income, they still benefit from existence of patents. They wouldn't have anything to sell to the middlemen without it.
The part where patents are sold and change ownership after they're issued is irrelevant to the issue of inventors having ownership of their invention through patent.
Vast-Material4857 t1_iriqlcf wrote
We're talking about whether or not the only way innovation happens is through capitalism and markets. How can our IP system incentivize more innovation if the people who receive the largest incentivization aren't the ones actually doing the science? This relationship between capital and labor is fundamentally parasitic.
grandoz039 t1_irlvvec wrote
Either the inventors choose to sell a patent, in which case it's mutually beneficial relationship where inventor essentially pays (or rather gives up portion of their cut) to have someone else manage the business side of the things. That's clearly their choice, because they see it as better than keeping the patent. It's also completely reasonable, inventor's goal is to invent, which translates to creating a patent. When they sell their patent, they get paid for their job. What's not generally their job is to manage licensing, legal side of the things, business, marketing, etc., so it's understandable that's left to someone else, who obviously gets paid for that.
The other possibility is that the invention was made under a company and patent automatically belongs to them. Again, this is just the inventor doing the inventing and getting paid for it, while the company provides necessary resources, assumes both the risk and possible reward, in turn providing stable income to the inventor.
In either case, the existence of the patent is why the inventors get paid.
[deleted] t1_irmi99x wrote
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Vast-Material4857 t1_irmkz0l wrote
I understand how it works it doesn't change a fact that this is a fundamentally parasitic relationship. The people that are profiting the most aren't the ones actually doing the work, the science, in fact, their whole strategy is to extract more than what they put into science.
I could take your argument and pose the relationship between Lord and Serf to seem mutually beneficial, but it isn't, one is exploiting the other. The relationship between capital and labor is the same except we actually work more than serfs do. This is not the only way to do things. Public institutions exist and they've produced Nuclear Power, Computers, GPS, Radar, Lasers, Microwaves. Can you provide me with private sector equivalent?
Without them, we would have no public education and if you believe that competition breeds more innovation, it's seems like you would want the barrier for entry to getting an education to be as low and freely available as possible, right? The more people that have an education, the more people that can enter particular job market thus generating more competition. That's what you need for science-- scientists.
Investors are just the patron class of a long standing war against the lower classes that actually have to work for a living. That relationship has not changed and it has done more to oppress humanity than liberate us and the belief that we owe all innovation to them is indoctrination and borderline Stockholm's syndrome.
grandoz039 t1_irmm6j6 wrote
>The people that are profiting the most aren't the ones actually doing the work, the science, in fact, their whole strategy is to extract more than what they put into science.
That's just arguing about % of share, which is admittedly a real problem in capitalism in general, business/enterprise/etc fields are over compensated, but that doesn't change the fundamentals, that's just playing with division of % of compensation.
The difference between a serf and this is that this is voluntarily. Ofc everything to do with labor could be argued to be somewhere on the spectrum of soft and hard "coercion", but I think inventing is way on the soft side, moreso than even current average in general.
We do more work as serfs because we want to have and do have more. Even then, if you look at the numbers they gave, it's often very close, or sometimes even more than back then.
>This is not the only way to do things. Public institutions exist and they've produced Nuclear Power, Computers, GPS, Radar, Lasers, Microwaves. Can you provide me with private sector equivalent?
And that all happened while capitalism was a thing. No one says only private sector is allowed to invent. That's one thing capitalism has going for it, you're free to form co-op, you're free to work in public sector, etc., it's not overly restrictive on following other paradigms.
>Without them, we would have no public education and if you believe that competition breeds more innovation, it's seems like you would want the barrier for entry to getting an education to be as freely available as possible? That's what you need for science. Investors are just the patron class of a long standing war against the lower classes that actually have to work for a living. That relationship has not changed and it has done more to oppress humanity than liberate us.
>The belief that we owe all innovation to this system is indoctrination and borderline Stockholm's syndrome.
I didn't say we owe all of this to this system (private sector within capitalism), just that this system produces certain solid results and isn't stifling.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irmqg4b wrote
>That's just arguing about % of share, which is admittedly a real problem in capitalism in general, business/enterprise/etc fields are over compensated, but that doesn't change the fundamentals
The fundamentals that these people are parasites. All the labor they use to accumulate that wealth is delegated. It's not just about percentage, it's the literally 90% of the pie for none of the labor. That's absurd.
>The difference between a serf and this is that this is voluntarily.
That's not true. Coerced consent exists. We do not have an option to NOT participate in capitalism. And btw, the argument that you can just return to anarcho-primitivism instead is asinine.
>And that all happened while capitalism was a thing. No one says only private sector is allowed to invent
That's not the result of capitalism though. That's literal socialism.
>No one says only private sector is allowed to invent.
No. What was said was it's the only reason we've made most of our progress which is patently untrue. Go find /u/valyrianjedi's original comment.
>That's one thing capitalism has going for it, you're free to form co-op, you're free to work in public sector, etc., it's not overly restrictive on following other paradigms.
Have you ever played monopoly? Can you imagine starting the game of Monopoly halfway through? Does that game become more equitable as time passes?
>We do more work as serfs because we want to have and do have more.
No. We work more because things cost more. Obligation to pay and therefore labor has never stopped and has always been backed with the threat of violence. Buying property is buying the rights to a 1/3rd of a family/individual's income. There's a finite amount of land and with a growing population creates a landed elite.
> that this system produces certain solid results and isn't stifling.
Do you understand that capitalism isn't a static concept? It's something that's evolved and changed first through mercantilism and then industrialization and eventually globalization? It's still changing. We are in late stage capitalism and we are now dealing with the inevitability of inflation outpacing wages and concentrations of wealth never seen before in history. None of this is even mentioning what it's done to our planet in just the last few hundred years.
ValyrianJedi t1_irmtcb3 wrote
You're acting like labor is the only thing of value to a company or to the production of something. It isn't. If one buy spends $10 million on factory equipment then hires people to run it, then he has contributed just as much (if not significantly more) than the people working the machines...
And acting like we don't work more than serfs because we have more stuff is just silly. Money basically just allows you to take the product of work in one area and exchange it for the product of work in another area. Serfs had to have food and a shack with no power, water, etc. If that was all we had to pay for today it wouldn't take nearly as much work. If you're working and buying it with money instead of building and farming it yourself, you're basically having to do enough work to exchange with the builders and the farmers for the product of their work... Today you're having to do enough to exchange with the builders, and the farmers, and the power company, and the water company, and the people making your phones, and the people running the cell towers, and the people building cars, and on and on and on... More things consumed or used by definitely requires more work to create.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irn2yaq wrote
>You're acting like labor is the only thing of value to a company or to the production of something.
Precisely. There is dead labor which includes the machines and the factories and the roads, all products of active labor-- live labor. We mix both forms of labor when we produce. We don't need to be privately owned to be productive. If we cooperated it would be magnitudes cheaper.
>It isn't. If one buy spends $10 million on factory equipment then hires people to run it, then he has contributed just as much (if not significantly more) than the people working the machines
Contributing? In what way? The act of paying? That's trivial. Build a house.
>More things consumed or used by definitely requires more work to create.
Are we talking iphones? Having more technology should mean less labor and that according to Keynes.
And besides that the biggest issue is how we are leveraging people to trade hours of their lives and for less and less. Ignore money. Housing is the biggest most important metric for necessities which is burning a bigger hole in people's pockets than the new 80 different types of ketchup. Focus on the relationship between our labor and the way it's relatively valued against those main necessities to see is what's becoming diluted. That trend is not stopping, that's the issue. These are people's lives and we're taking more and more of it away from them for less and less. Food, housing, healthcare are all non-optional expenses and they're getting more and more expensive despite better technology.
And, again, as we established earlier, we've had greater contributions from publicly funded institutions, you can't really attribute every sparkly thing we have today to purely capitalism. We had to fight tooth and nail for s lot of this, even just banking insurance. There was a literal attempted coup against FDR called the business plot.
This system is run by mafiosos. It's horribly ineffecient at distributing resources, it concentrates so much wealth and it's literally posing an existential threat to us. There's no way to justify .001% of the population should have that much power. It's corrupting democracy, science, public health and what are we getting for it? Walmart? McDonalds? It's not science. It's not culture. What more do we have to sacrifice to the Moloch for it to be the 1960s again? 99%?
ValyrianJedi t1_irn4sfi wrote
What do you mean contribute in what way? They literally directly provide the money without which the company can't exist. Acting like capital isn't just as important as labor to a company is either painfully misinformed or just plain silly... And I don't thunk you need me to describe the things we have today that serfs didn't have. Keynesian economics saying that productivity increases with technology doesn't mean that it doesn't still require more labor to create more things...
The more you say the more it sounds like you don't really unset this topic as well as you seem to think you do, and that you're one of those people who thinks that watching some YouTube videos and reading a few articles makes you an economics expert.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irn78vz wrote
>What do you mean contribute in what way? They literally directly provide the money without which the company can't exist. Acting like capital isn't just as important as labor to a company is either painfully misinformed or just plain silly
A company to do what? Produce something? Do you need private ownership to do that? What are these owners exactly providing to everyone? Permission to work? Financial judgement? Do they not have fiduciaries to do that for them? If they have that, what is exactly is the labor of owning if the management of it can outsourced? Please, explain to me how that's worth 90% of the profit?
>Keynesian economics saying that productivity increases with technology doesn't mean that it doesn't still require more labor to create more things
Keynes literally said we would have a 15 hr work week.
>YouTube videos and reading a few articles makes you an economics expert.
What type of economics? We don't operate by one economic theory. All we can do is react and attempt to manage a system that crashes every 7-8 years.
Are you familiar with the philosophy of science? Economics claims to be a science correct so it should be within its purview. You should check out Thomas Kuhn so you could see how politically motivated even our hardest sciences could be. I'd also suggest a history of economics, Michael Hudson has written plenty on this.
Finally, do you not have any answers to my points about capitalism corrupting science, democracy, or public health? Do you believe it's responsible for global warming? Do you even believe in global warming?
ValyrianJedi t1_irn8z4k wrote
You have to just be being purposefully dense at this point. Or a troll. I refuse to believe that someone can make all of these comments that you're making while genuinely trying to argue in good faith... Think that's my cue to stop trying to have a conversation with you.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irnc7dg wrote
Again, i keep asking you questions but you just keep ignoring literally all of them. How exactly are the owners of capital providing 90% equity? Is it permission? Their special blessing? Is it the act of saying, "yes, i well spend my wealth here" that you believe is comparable to the act hard labor?
Secondly, even if you believe the owner's labor is just it's just the act of investing, don't they hire people for that too? So it isn't just that either. Its just the decision to invest at all and not even what to invest in and is that a really that much harder of a decision? Does that require so much brain power to the point it deserves 90% of the pie to you?
What is it? You keep evading this very basic question and ignoring everything and you want to accuse me of engaging in bad faith? What do they do? Even if you believe in "economics" why cant you tell me why Keynes was wrong about the efficiency of technology making it so we have to work less?
You have no answers to any of this. I already know. You're a victim of decades and decades of propaganda. All you can offer is the same talking points people were giving in the 70s except we have the conclusion of those policies already. It didn't work. Keynes was wrong and so was Reagan and so was Clinton.
ValyrianJedi t1_irndod0 wrote
And I have answered the question repeatedly. What they provide is money. If you don't see how that warrants equity then you don't understand what equity is... Labor has nothing to do with it. They aren't providing labor, they are providing capital. They have equity because they bought the equity...
What you are saying is equivalent to "why does the guy who paid to have a house built for his family have all the equity in the house? He didn't do any labor to build it. It should be the construction workers' house."
Vast-Material4857 t1_irnfq7s wrote
So it's just permission. That's it. That's what you believe is equal to ~90% of the work?
>don't understand what equity is... Labor has nothing to do with it.
Equity is value. Who has it? The value of an enterprise is it's productivity. How can you say labor has nothing to do with equity if they're the ones that are creating the productivity that makes it all valuable in the first place? Even the management is labor. That makes no sense.
>What you are saying is equivalent to "why does the guy who paid to have a house built for his family have all the equity in the house? He didn't do any labor to build it. It should be the construction workers' house."
No, it should belong to public which the construction workers would be part of. That's what it means to have public ownership. That's called socialism. It builds houses and creates science.
ValyrianJedi t1_irnglxz wrote
Jesus Christ... No. It isn't. I can't tell if you are being purposefully dense or are genuinely incapable of following, but it's pretty clear that you just plain aren't going to understand at this point, so this is where I stop responding.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irnhfwa wrote
What are you specifically contradicting? My use of the word equity? Me saying labor provides all the value? If it's that one, can you show me how it doesn't and what the owners do that that therefore deserves 90%? You keep ignoring that question.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irnhri2 wrote
Equity is the value you have of something, the share of it. Am I wrong on that? I don't think so.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irniexn wrote
Also, never got an answer as to why Keynes was wrong about that 15 hr work week. Seems like a glaring hole in your "just study economics" argument when you can't be bothered to even recognize the contradictions by those same economists.
A lot of unanswered questions.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irmro0c wrote
>That's one thing capitalism has going for it, you're free to form co-op, you're free to work in public sector, etc., it's not overly restrictive on following other paradigms.
How familiar are you with the history of unions in this country?
ValyrianJedi t1_irg2es8 wrote
They are usually the people funding something, which is definitely needed as well
VitriolicViolet t1_irgnzga wrote
oh you mean like how gov used to until the wealthy lobbied them out of it?
again, useless middle men. Actually no they are worse then useless as they hold research back massively by only funding grants that will generate a ROI.
commodification of science is slowing it massively while we waste billions making new iphones.
ValyrianJedi t1_irgtven wrote
That whole comment just screams that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about
bakerpartnersltd t1_irhlc3a wrote
And you sound hopelessly naive.
ValyrianJedi t1_iriip1v wrote
I'm definitely not naive on that topic
Vast-Material4857 t1_irgb5t2 wrote
Yeah, those are middlemen. Bureaucrats. They do not contribute to science.
Bensemus t1_irges1j wrote
Except the funding that makes it possible... Is this a challenging concept for you?
In the US the public is rarely in favour of spending tax dollars on science. People are constantly calling for NASA's budget to be reduced as they see no purpose in the science they do. Now try and replace all the private dollars with government ones and see how that's received.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irgijjf wrote
But it's not inherent to science. That's a clerical issue. You can conduct science publicly just as well as you can privately, nothing necessitates private organizations to being essential to creation of new science.
>In the US the public is rarely in favour of spending tax dollars on science.
Do you think we produce more science through private institutions than public ones?
VitriolicViolet t1_irgo8dc wrote
>You can conduct science publicly just as well as you can privately, nothing necessitates private organizations to being essential to creation of new science.
decades of brainwashing have convinced most people gov shouldnt run hospitals, prisons or schools ffs. these idiots think gov doing things is communism and automatically worse then private leechs doing the same thing +cost.
ValyrianJedi t1_irgiyo6 wrote
> They do not contribute to science.
They literally directly fund it
Vast-Material4857 t1_irgkc3f wrote
Would you call them scientists?
ValyrianJedi t1_irgtqxi wrote
Obviously not. You don't have to be a scientist to contribute to science though
Vast-Material4857 t1_irgywu6 wrote
Being a middleman is not a contribution, it's a hindrance.
ValyrianJedi t1_irh4wmm wrote
I don't think you understand what the word "middleman" means.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irh6x09 wrote
What's inbetween labor and consumers?
ValyrianJedi t1_irh7d20 wrote
Certainly not investors, who's contribution takes place before the scientists', and without which the scientists' contribution couldn't exist.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irh8kgh wrote
We have public institutions. Those exist.
Also, do you believe private institutions produce more science?
ValyrianJedi t1_irh90qn wrote
Yes. Unequivocally. The fact that you apparently don't means that you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about and there isn't any point even responding to you anymore.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irh9bhm wrote
Can you cite that for me?
ValyrianJedi t1_irhaowb wrote
It's not hard information to find. From a super cursory Google search pulling up the Funding of Science page on Wikipedia: "According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), more than 60% of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government."... The International Science Council says that "The private sector’s share of global science and innovation is growing, and is now estimated to represent approximately 70 per cent of global expenditure on science.". Source...
It's really not a disputable fact.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irhc8c9 wrote
Do you consider monster flavored ketchup science?
ValyrianJedi t1_irhces3 wrote
So you ask for sources, then throw out some juvenile nonsense when presented with them. Yeah, definitely done bothering with you.
Vast-Material4857 t1_irhd2ra wrote
That counts as R&D and for some reason that's weighed the same as a new vaccine. Do you not think that's little manipulative? What do you have against more nuance?
If you want s source, how about this one?
VitriolicViolet t1_irgo2s4 wrote
you mean gov does, these clowns pick up what we paid for then tweak and it pretend its their own 'innovation'.
nothing innovative about the millionth smartphone.
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