Ron Paul's "Free market" Hypocrisy

vanilla said:
Things will be produced obviously but the rate at which new drugs & thinngs would be limited due to the lack of incentive to spend money
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The greatest motivator for scientists is science, not money. Did Einstein come up with his theories of relativity to get rich? There is also money in the treatment of illness, but not in the cure.

It seems that most of the money these days is spent actually getting new treatments passed the regulators, and this seems to be a corrupt and broken process. So sure, maybe we do need to allow companies to get guaranteed revenue in order to pay for their costs, but since a lot of the cost is government, we are asking for more government to deal with the problems created by government.

Drugs are certainly one discussion, but if you want to see insanity in IP, take a look at software patients.
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The scientist can be the most motivated person on the planet, but if he doesn't have funding to conduct his research he will be quickly up shit creek. It is big pharma that is willing to fund such scientists so that they may turn a profit. The profit motive gets shit done...period.

Imagine a scenario where a regular bloke comes up with a game changing idea, spends thousands of hours thinking,writing,developing a crude prototype etc etc etc, only to have it all ripped away from him the first time he starts to go looking for capital to put it into production, because the people with the capital he pitched it to stole his idea. This would be the norm without I.P./copyright/patent law.

This is a part i seriously disagree with the Libertarian's who spout off about, I.P. and copyright being rubbish.
 
The profit motive gets shit done...period.
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And the patient system also stops people from even being able to work on a product because there might be some overlap. Even some cancer cells have been patented, meaning if you research on them, you can be fined/jailed/whatever. What about the corruption the regulations also bring in? What about evergreening? What about the fact that there is already not much profit in curing something, but there is plenty of profit in treating it?

All you really supplied was an anecdote, that without money things won't get done. To some extent that is true, but somehow everyone is so selfish that all of the researchers suddenly can find no money? If you take a look at the US, health care sucks up a whopping 16% of GDP. Think about how much spare capital/money there would be if drugs weren't so expensive. Look how much money breast cancer, prostate cancer, and many other illnesses fund. Suddenly all of the private non-profits, universities, and charities just stop? What about all of the researchers that work regular jobs and self-fund their research? (I know several)

Look at computers/software, is it really patents that are driving innovation? Or do they harm it? Does technology continuously get better because of a government order?

Let's take a look at the profit motive: If a scientist comes up with a cure for say aids, herpes, or something else: In a voluntary and charitable society (even in this one), would that person ever need to work again? Would people fund their projects on kickstarter/etc should they wish to work on something else?

What is the cost to buy linux which powers a large share of the worlds servers? How did these things get done?

What about the diseases that have been cured where the scientist refused to patient their invention?

It's untrue to say that profit disappears without IP. You also can't dismiss the consequences of government intervention in the markets and what that entails when you enforce IP. It's corruption that is still keeping old disney stuff copyrighted.

I am no expert, but there have been a lot of intelligent people that have written on the subject, and if you are interested, you should take a bit more of a dive into it.
 
fishball said:
Your fanboy tears, they are tasty.
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All the rest, blah blah blah, yep Ron does believe in courts, he believes they should enforce contract law. He dont have a contract here though.

but this from fishball is hilarious..:D
 
Against Intellectual Property
Stephan Kinsella

http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

All I can say is thank god IP wasn't around when the wheel was invented, or we'd all still be living in the stone age. IP hampers innovation. It is basically a way for holders of patents to derive unfair profits from them. It's another method used by the government to drive up prices beyond the market value.
 
Willow said:
fishball said:
Your fanboy tears, they are tasty.
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All the rest, blah blah blah, yep Ron does believe in courts, he believes they should enforce contract law. He dont have a contract here though.

but this from fishball is hilarious..:D
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fishball sounds like a childish wannabe pseudo intellectual who needs to dry up - including behind his ears
 
hawkeye said:
Against Intellectual Property
Stephan Kinsella

http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

All I can say is thank god IP wasn't around when the wheel was invented, or we'd all still be living in the stone age. IP hampers innovation. It is basically a way for holders of patents to derive unfair profits from them. It's another method used by the government to drive up prices beyond the market value.
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There isn't necessarily anything wrong with the concept of intellectual property - publishing details of a clever invention in exchange for a limited monopoly on monetising it can be a pretty fair deal for both the inventors and the public.

The problem at the moment is that intellectual property law has been bastardised to such an extent that it's not about spreading wealth and knowledge any more. It's now a tool for rent seekers to slowly bleed the public and lock our history away in corporate vaults and punish anyone who tries to tell new stories and enrich our culture.
 
capt.sparrow said:
Lovey80 said:
This is a part i seriously disagree with the Libertarian's who spout off about, I.P. and copyright being rubbish.
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that's simply because you haven't given it enough thought.
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I have given it quite a lot of thought actually. I fully conceded the argument that I.P./C.R/TM stifles further innovation from an original idea. But the argument that it is always so and how far it is detrimental is IMO very well overstated. If someone wants to use another persns patent or I.P. they can simply reward the inventor with some of the royalty. Only when the inventor asks too much for the rights to use that property does the innovation get stifled.

Vanilla said:
It's untrue to say that profit disappears without IP. You also can't dismiss the consequences of government intervention in the markets and what that entails when you enforce IP. It's corruption that is still keeping old disney stuff copyrighted.
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You are correct profit certainly doesn't disappear without I.P., but the argument is much stronger that I.P. disappears without profit.

Sure there is corruption, sure government intervention in markets is always a negative. But to say that government enforced patents and I.P. etc "distorts" markets is the same as saying government enforced contract law also "distorts" markets.


Give me a clear one sentence or paragraph reason that patents shouldn't be protected from being copied or stolen?
 
Lovey80 said:
capt.sparrow said:
Lovey80 said:
This is a part i seriously disagree with the Libertarian's who spout off about, I.P. and copyright being rubbish.
Click to expand...

that's simply because you haven't given it enough thought.
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I have given it quite a lot of thought actually. I fully conceded the argument that I.P./C.R/TM stifles further innovation from an original idea. But the argument that it is always so and how far it is detrimental is IMO very well overstated. If someone wants to use another persns patent or I.P. they can simply reward the inventor with some of the royalty. Only when the inventor asks too much for the rights to use that property does the innovation get stifled.

Vanilla said:
It's untrue to say that profit disappears without IP. You also can't dismiss the consequences of government intervention in the markets and what that entails when you enforce IP. It's corruption that is still keeping old disney stuff copyrighted.
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You are correct profit certainly doesn't disappear without I.P., but the argument is much stronger that I.P. disappears without profit.

Sure there is corruption, sure government intervention in markets is always a negative. But to say that government enforced patents and I.P. etc "distorts" markets is the same as saying government enforced contract law also "distorts" markets.


Give me a clear one sentence or paragraph reason that patents shouldn't be protected from being copied or stolen?
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Good point.
 
Lovey80 said:
Sure there is corruption, sure government intervention in markets is always a negative. But to say that government enforced patents and I.P. etc "distorts" markets is the same as saying government enforced contract law also "distorts" markets.


Give me a clear one sentence or paragraph reason that patents shouldn't be protected from being copied or stolen?
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To prevent software corporations patenting trivial or commonly used technology in order to gain financial or competitive advantage.

The problem is, most of the awarded software patents are trivial. For example, Amazon somehow managed to snatch a patent for online shopping checkout, that practically every online store in the world is in breach of. A small company owns a patent for creating a single file from multiple source files both WinZIP and WinRAR actively breach this one. There is even a patent for automatic e-mail answers, its holder sued AOL, Amazon and Yahoo and many others.
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Contracts are clearly much different to IP issues. With contracts both parties usually have voluntary entered into an agreement. With patents, especially software, you could unknowingly infringe on someone else's patent without even being aware.
 
Lest we forget the absolute amoral travesty of "Larrikin" Music suing Men at Work for copyright infringement 20 years after the song was written, even when the actual author of the song they supposedly stole said 'I can't hear it'.

Oh of course the original author of 'Kookaburra' had willed her song to the Girl Guides who had sold it to Larrikin, who then, several degrees removed from the actual song, pursued the courts for a settlement for 'copyright infringement'. The original author, her estate and the Girl Guides get nothing. Larrikin Publishing get all the money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Under_(song)#Copyright_lawsuit

Since the verdict, Colin Hay has continued to insist that any plagiarism was wholly unintentional. He says that when the song was originally written in 1978, it did not have the musical passage in question, and that it was not until two years later, during a jam rehearsal session, that flautist Greg Ham improvised the riff, perhaps subconsciously recalling "Kookaburra". Hay has also added that Ham and the other members of the band were under the influence of marijuana during that particular rehearsal. Greg Ham was found dead in Melbourne on 19 April 2012. In the months before his death, Ham had been despondent over the verdict, and convinced that "the only thing people will remember me for" would be the plagiarism conviction.
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I've been involved with live theatre for a while. Copyright laws have squelched artistic freedom in so many ways. Unless you have the money to fight the likes of Sony Music you cannot reference popular culture in satire and parody unless you pay them immense sums of money. . Something that cabaret and other forms of fringe theatre cannot afford. Hence the slow death of artistic endeavour. Who can be bothered when you can lose your house to faceless lawyers operating for giant corporations who purchase dead artists work and claim ownership forever. Look how 'sampling' lawsuits almost killed hip hop music and try to imagine what the Rolling Stones or the Beatles would have sounded like if copyright law had operated from 1900 and the relatives of those old bluesmen could sue over the riffs they invented.

Let's not even go near Microsoft's attempt to copyright the world 'Bookshelf' or the cute little drawing made by a designer one afternoon as an example of simple linework that an 'enterprising' person copyrighted years later and who harvests a few dollars off every instance of its use. Nothing more than a leech on artistic creation.

P.S.
oops I stand corrected with regards USA. Both attempts to copyright the smiley face failed. The leeches elsewhere, remain.

Ball never applied for a trademark or copyright of the smiley and earned just $45 for his work (US $315 in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars). State Mutual, similarly, did not make any money from the design. Ball's son, Charles Ball is reported to have said his father never regretted not registering the copyright. Telegram & Gazette reported Charles Ball as saying "he was not a money-driven guy, he used to say, 'Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time'".
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(Walmart) they lost that case in March 2008, when the judge declared that the smiley face is not a "distinctive" mark, and therefore cannot be trademarked by anyoneand thus, Wal-Mart has no claim to it.

The Loufrani vs. Wal-Mart case was finally closed in March 2009, when the judge dismissed Loufrani's claims to any rights on either the generic smiley face symbol or the word "smiley," noting that both had become "ubiquitous" in American culture long before Loufrani's initial trademark application.

These two court decisions effectively ruled the smiley face (as well as the words "smiley face") to be in the public domain, at least within the jurisdiction of the United States. U.S. court decisions have no effect in other countries though, and Loufrani's SmileyWorld continues to claim (and enforce) trademark rights in much of the rest of the world.
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It is hypocritical for Ron Paul to do this. In my opinion though it doesn't take away from his awesome political steadfastness of many years.
 
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