this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Edit: Changed title to be more accurate.

Also here is the summary from Wikipedia on what Post-scarcity means:

Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.

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[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Patents and copyright are there to allow the inventor/creator an opportunity to monetize their invention.

Yes, and they're a dumb way of doing that because they are systems based on creating artificial scarcity where there is no actual need for it. The only need for creating scarcity is because capitalism requires things to be scarce for them to have value. Rather than looking at a system other than capitalism to reward creators, we spend billions of dollars and waste thousands of peoples lives dedicated to creating systems that enforce artificial scarcity.

[–] jimbolauski@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How do you reward inventors then?

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Create a system of attribution, where by new products and inventions acknowledge the work they're based on (and they acknowledge the work they're based on etc), and then have a system that takes total sales volumes etc and splits a portion of government money to all the inventors / creators based on how popular their product was. Fund it with a small increase on sales tax for all products, then there's no incentive to not provide attribution since it doesn't effect your take home pay regardless, and have a system for applying for attribution when you think it wasn't fairly given to you.

We spend billions and billions of dollars on our current patent system and the legion of lawyers required to maintain it, there's more than enough resources to build a system that's not based on scarcity.

[–] jimbolauski@lemm.ee -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You pretty much described the current patent system but instead of the market determining license fees some buerocrat does.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No I did not. In the current patent system, once a piece of knowledge is discovered, only a single person or entity is legally allowed to use it for 20 years.

In the system I described, anyone is allowed to use it, modify it, and improve on it, immediately. Discover something great that can improve lives? Great! You'll be rewarded for your efforts, but we're not going to wait for you and you alone to figure out how to setup a global manufacturing and distribution supply chain to get it to everyone, and we're not going to prevent anyone else from daring to improve upon it

[–] jimbolauski@lemm.ee -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In the current patent system the owner can choose to licenses their patent, they can choose how much licensing should cost and manufacturers can decide to pay it.

You're awfully light on the details of how an inventor is rewarded.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

In the current patent system the owner can choose to licenses their patent,

Yes, but they do not have to, because it is a system of scarcity. They get to choose whether or not it's scarce and exactly how scarce it is. In many cases companies buy patents just to sit on them and prevent anyone else from using them. In the system I'm describing, all ideas are available for everyone to use in any way they want.

It honestly feels like you're intentionally not understanding that distinction at this point.

You’re awfully light on the details of how an inventor is rewarded.

I've already explained it very clearly. You want more details on a specific aspect, go ahead and ask a specific question. You want a fully fleshed out system that covers every edge case? Then get politicians and lawyers to start actually designing the system, if we spent the billions and billions and billions of dollars that we have spent creating and enforcing our current system on creating and enforcing a new one, a lot of those details you're looking for would get filled in.

[–] jimbolauski@lemm.ee -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Inventors getting a percent of sales doesn't is a vague description.

How is the royalty rate determined?

How are cheap to manufacture/replicate inventions handled? With a low royalty rate the inventor may not recoup costs for a valuable patent.

How are products with multiple patents handled?

How are patent fees enforced?

Why would a company publish a patent in your system? They can be 1st to the market and be the only ones in the market until their competitors reverse engineer their patent.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

How is the royalty rate determined?

How was 20 years decided for patent lifetime? This is an implementation detail to be argued about to find a fair formula.

How are cheap to manufacture/replicate inventions handled? With a low royalty rate the inventor may not recoup costs for a valuable patent.

Again, this is a matter of determining a fair mathematical formula that rewards inventors appropriately depending on the amount of sales.

Also, for comparison how does our current patent system ensure that inventors recoup costs on valuable patents? How does our current patent system reward downstream inventions and ideas? You seem to have lofty goals for a new system that our current system doesn't address.

How are products with multiple patents handled?

Again, implementation detail, but if multiple ideas contribute to the same product then the inventors of both would get rewarded.

How are patent fees enforced?

What patent fees? We're talking about taxing products / services / corporate profits and then using that money to reward inventors.

Why would a company publish a patent in your system? They can be 1st to the market and be the only ones in the market until their competitors reverse engineer their patent.

Because 6 months later when it's reverse engineered any competitor will be able to recreate it. If your idea is so unique and complex that you don't think it can be reverse engineered then fine, keep it as a trade secret, that's already how our current system works.

[–] jimbolauski@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago

This is an implementation detail to be argued about to find a fair formula.

I thought your plan was simplifying things and getting lawyers out of it, guess not.

Again, this is a matter of determining a fair mathematical formula that rewards inventors appropriately depending on the amount of sales.

How is a fair mathematical formula determined?  Who decides what is appropiate?  Are sales the only metric for the formula?

Also, for comparison how does our current patent system ensure that inventors recoup costs on valuable patents?

The inventor licenses the patent for for an agreed upon value.  Value is determined by the market.

How does our current patent system reward downstream inventions and ideas?

See above.

You seem to have lofty goals for a new system that our current system doesn’t address.

How are those not addressed?

What patent fees? We’re talking about taxing products / services / corporate profits and then using that money to reward inventors.

Money that goes to patent holders is a patent fee no matter how the money is collected.  If a company uses a patented invention but doesn't list it how is that infringement enforced?  More lawyers and lawsuits?

Again, implementation detail, but if multiple ideas contribute to the same product then the inventors of both would get rewarded.

Details are the important part, how is the value of one patent determined over another, ie how do they split the revenue.

[–] shalva97@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

it's not just inventors, there are so many other people. Even if food is free who is going to keep or ship it to someone who needs it? and how do you reward them?

I feel like most of the comments here are written by people who have never worked full time job and don't know how hard it is. Most likely bunch of kids.

[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

This was reported for being hostile. Please keep your comments focused on the topic being discussed and do not attack the other people in the discussion.