/liberty/ - Liberty

>>80468

Forgot sauce

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-27/visualizing-50-most-important-life-saving-breakthroughs-history

I dont have the energy to go through your list but Ill say bifocal glasses, swimming fins, and lightning rods were all invented by Benjamin Franklin who was /liberty/ as fuck.

>Just how many were formulated by the State?

Most of them, honestly.

The belligerent delusion that things are not fucked up, regardless of facts, is the most heinous danger plaguing the vulgar lolbertarian, and frankly, there is generally neither non-state research nor non-state commerce in places like the US.

>>80473

By "State," I mean nationalized industries. Unless the State had complete control in directing the outcome of the research, can we say that the State was responsible for the innovation.

>Green revolution

>Higher education

I'm not going to go through the full list but these were in the first 5 I've seen and it's already full of bullshit. "Innovations" my ass.

>>80474

If people can say that Musk is building rockets when it is his employees that actually do the work then yes, we can say that the state was responsible when researchers employed by state institutions innovate.

>>80477

>Green revolution

Is responsible for the 1 billion pajeet explosion, they imported some selectively bred hardy crops.

>>80474

>Unless the State had complete control in directing the outcome of the research

I'm more than happy to tell you that "pot causes brain damage 'cause we didn't give the monkeys any oxygen" came from SOMEWHERE, and it wasn't exactly science.

>>80468

>pasteurization

>not the top

shig

I think this is a great thread to use to talk about patents

What you think of em? Specially software patents.

I'm big on open source shit, but it's hard to be against patenting all together. Let's say I create a new shit that's going to change the world, but I can't invest millions into it so Microsoft copy and paste it and start distributing it to the masses

I would be screwed. How would you avoid this?

>>80615

What is that image you posted supposed to probe?

>>80613

>but it's hard to be against patenting all together

Sure you can, because they're a detriment to the market.

Patents are a detriment to innovation because they incentivize producers to rest on the laurels of their natural monopoly for 20 years instead of innovating further to keep up with the competition. This both ensures that the firm which holds the patent doesn't lapse in quality (being the only producer of the device) as they have to maintain at least parity with their competitors, while simultaneously incentivizing firms to constantly research and develop new things instead of only doing so 20 years at a time, because they can't rely on the old inventions to earn them more than a brief windfall profit upon adoption, plus the prestige of being "the original." Because those benefits are only enough for them to tread water at best, they keep innovating. In your specific example, there are several things that could benefit you. First, if your firm has intimate knowledge of the software that Microsoft doesn't, you could guarantee a level of tech support and customer service that they simply cannot because they don't understand what you made, they just copied it. Second, you could make cold calls to clients directly, offering them access to your software before you go public, in exchange for signing a discretion contract and promising to buy exclusively from you for x amount of time. Finally, if you're that convinced that Microsoft will market, distribute, and support this software so much better than you that you could never hope to compete, why not just join them? Show them the software and what it could do, make a pitch, give them the opportunity to be the owners and first producers of this software, in exchange for a percentage of the profits, or annual royalties, or whatever deal you work out with them.

>>80616

It's supposed to show LOL SEE AYNCRAPS ARE FASCIST NAZIS 11!!!1!. Half-step above the LOL SEE AYNCRAPS ARE FEUDALISTS!11!!

>>80618

To add to this a good example of patents stymying the market is the AR-15. Colt held the patent and didn't do shit with it besides selling to the government for pork barrel gibs and selling overpriced semiauto versions to the civilian market. When the patent ran out and competitors started to make rifles innovation exploded; we got free-floated rails, piston kits, midlength gas systems, multiple calibers, nitride treatment for barrels/BCGs, m-lok and similar attachment systems, you name it. Colt didn't bother with this and followed their old strategy of selling the same old shit and upcharging it because LOL stupid civvies. And as a result of that, most knowledgeable people don't bother with Colt's offerings on the civilian market because it's marked-up trash. The only ones who do buy from them are ignorant fudds who still think the Colt rollmark on the rifle is a badge of quality, basically the firearm equivalent of the tards who pay several hundred dollars for a pair of Air Jordans.

>>80613

>Specially software patents.

Of all the kinds of patents, software patents have to be the most absurd. It's not even trying to bar people from arranging matter in a particular way at that point, just information. It's literally "This idea is my idea and only I am allowed to think it. If you think my idea, even by accident, you owe me money".

>I would be screwed. How would you avoid this?

You can:

>keep it a secret until you can do it yourself (i.e. never)

>sell your idea outright

>find investors

>accept that you're just not in any position to profit from your idea and very conspicuously dedicate your game-changer to the public domain, then leverage the temporary acclaim that gained you in order to get a high-paying job at one of the companies that would have stolen your idea anyway

>same as above, but use the buzz you generated to lure in some venture capitalists to fund your start-up

List arranged in approximate order of how likely it is that you get screwed over and end up with nothing. Notice how your options without patents are pretty much identical to how things are with patents. Having some world-changing new thing is a very powerful negotiating tool, but if you're bad at business, you're bad at business, no matter how good your idea is. The Steve Wozniak types have always needed to team up with the Steve Jobs types if they actually want to get the ball rolling.

The problems with lists like this is that classifying/quantifying subjects like "inventions" in a scientific manner turns out to be an extremely difficult problem. Sure, it is easy to do it intuitively (in fact, so easy that people do it subconsciouslly all day). However, how do you even start placing a number on how "innovative" something is? It's at this point most people making such claims fall back on some sort of calculated index with arbitrary rules, or public surverys. However, an index can not escape being arbitrary (demonstrated by the fact that slight changes to any set of calculation rules generates a new index), and a survey can not escape being a sampling of subjective thoughts. It's made worse by the fact that each innovation is tightly interconnected to other innovations, and we are only viewing one possibility of their ordering in the real world.

Essentially, you have the same problems with measuring innovation as you do with getting a software program to read a book.

>>80516

The only thing I can think of that might negate Musk's achievements a bit is that he did get subsidized by the federal government. Granted what he did was impressive but still he begged the feds for some extra money and they gave it to him.

>>80679

The laws refer to the abstract content, not to each possible representation.

.