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The Rent Hypothesis

esoltas.blogspot.com

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Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#111

Post by tolmasky »

SilasX wrote: post #99
tolmasky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly on life-saving medicine created by a scientist? Sold at prices out of reach for most people?

Still better than their non-existence.

False dichotomy. You said "Monopolies are okay when the the good in question only exists because of the monopolist."

I was asking if, given their existence, it would really be "OK" to have one person control it. You came back with suggesting its better than them not existing, which is fine, but is only relevant to this discussion if you can prove that it wouldn't have existed without the monopoly. I am doubtful of this.

Its easy to see the error in this logic since it basically applies to all things: a monopoly on food production is better than food not existing. A monopoly on housing is better than no houses, etc etc.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#112

Post by sgift »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110
crdoconnor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A voluntary agreement No job contract is truly voluntary in the absence of a guaranteed livable income. Period . Take the implicit threat of poverty out of the salary/job negotiation process (e.g. with a basic income) and then we can talk about "voluntary" contracts. >Can you clarify what you mean? If Pfizer conducts the research then they collect the rent. Legal entities do not conduct research, people do. Legal en…

Exaggeration? Small jobs are everywhere (washing dishes, hauling, yard work) that put off starvation. That means you can take a (little) while to decide on a job, and reject jobs that don't appeal. Its not "take the 1st job you find or die".

So, to not take a job I don't want I have to take another (small) job. Sounds pretty much like "you either have some job or you die" to me. And not exactly voluntary.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#113

Post by sgift »

Terr_ wrote: post #102
dalke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Graeber has made me not trust any allusions to archeological events which aren't based in archeological understanding. We have had bureaucracies since at least the Sumerians, and its growth has not been monotonic across the last 5,000+ years, which the paragraph you quoted implies. Presumably many people died or were injured, and property and landscape burned down during the development of fire as a commodity i…

> We have had bureaucracies since at least the Sumerians, and its growth has not been monotonic People gain experience as they age, but that doesn't mean people are wiser today than 1000 years ago... because they're different people . Similarly, bureaucracies and societies also "die" and dissolve.

That's the reason there are books, so you can profit from the experience of those that are dead now.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#114

Post by jlebar »

crdoconnor wrote: post #104
esoltas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soltas (the author) here. What I meant by "rents are not always bad" is that "rent" is a positive (i.e., value-free) concept, not a normative (moral) one. "Rent" in economics merely implies that the profits are in excess of a competitive-equilibrium outcome/allocation. In this case, the competitive outcome is perverse -- nobody innovates because, without IP, you pay for the cost of R&D but "copycats" can steal the id…

>nobody innovates because, without IP, you pay for the cost of R&D but "copycats" can steal the idea without paying. This just isn't true. It's human nature to innovate, just as it is human nature to sing, play music and dance. There are many times when the IP system is not only absent, but actively working against the creator, yet it doesn't stop the process of innovation. It just slows it down. The government also…

>> nobody innovates because, without IP, you pay for the cost of R&D but "copycats" can steal the idea without paying. > > This just isn't true. It's human nature to innovate, just as it is human nature to sing, play music and dance.

Straw man fallacy.

The OP wasn't suggesting that literally nobody would innovate, just that innovation, particularly innovation paid for by private parties of the sort of thing which is expensive and easily copied, would significantly decline.

If you have ever paid to see someone sing, play music, or dance, you have participated in an activity which likely would not have occurred without there being a monetary incentive for that person to partake of the activity you paid to enjoy.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#115

Post by bzbarsky »

crdoconnor wrote: post #105
SilasX wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than their non-existence.

The scientist (or team) in question who creates the drug is almost never the one collecting the rents. A researcher working for Pfizer is essentially getting the same deal as a researcher working for the government or a publicly funded university. The main difference is that the government and publicly funded universities do not have a marketing line item on their budget that is ~120% of their R&D budget.

Citation please on the 120% number? The only times I've seen anything close to that it turned out that was the overall SG&A number as described in " rel="nofollow">http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/20/but_dont_dru.... But if you have a reliable source for this number, I would be very curious to see it.

If you _are_ talking about SG&A, then I assure you that the government and publicly funded universities have SG&A numbers absolutely dwarfing their R&D spend.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#116

Post by bandrami »

Wait. Historically, the purpose behind patents was to spur _the theft of other states' property_, not "innovation". The King would grant a patent to whatever foreign engineer was willing to immigrate with a particular invention or industrial technique that another state was keeping secret (printing presses and coal refining both crossed the English Channel that way). The same language of "patent" was used for early colonial charters, too, because it was the same process: somebody willing to take something from somebody else is granted (some) legal protection by the state that benefits from that taking.

Patents were developed as a way to aid piracy, not a way to prevent it.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#117

Post by bandrami »

Houshalter wrote: post #35
jerf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Will the majority of humanity be enslaved to rent-seekers who own patents on a robot hinge?" Actually, that's easy: No. Humanity will not be enslaved to a small number of capital owners. But the reason isn't necessarily a happy one, which is that humanity will revolt and start destroying and probably kill lots of people and even potentially kill the goose laying the golden egg by destroying the robotic infrastructur…

Technology is making war increasingly unfair. If you look in the past, a decent percentage of wars were won even one one side had massively less resources. Not the majority, but still like 30% IIRC. With mass surveillance you can detect and stomp out rebellions long before they amount to anything. With automation you barely even need the support of your own troops. With modern technology you can keep most of the popu…

That's why the world's greatest superpower in history had such an easy time successfully invading and occupying two of the poorest countries on Earth over the past decade and a half?

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#118

Post by SilasX »

tolmasky wrote: post #111
SilasX wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than their non-existence.

False dichotomy. You said "Monopolies are okay when the the good in question only exists because of the monopolist." I was asking if, given their existence, it would really be "OK" to have one person control it. You came back with suggesting its better than them not existing, which is fine, but is only relevant to this discussion if you can prove that it wouldn't have existed without the monopoly. I am doubtful of th…

>I was asking if, given their existence, it would really be "OK" to have one person control it. You came back with suggesting its better than them not existing, which is fine, but is only relevant to this discussion if you can prove that it wouldn't have existed without the monopoly. I am doubtful of this.

That's what my rule was assuming. I'm not claiming that it's true of any particular drug, only that if it is, then the monopoly is okay.

>Its easy to see the error in this logic since it basically applies to all things: a monopoly on food production is better than food not existing. A monopoly on housing is better than no houses, etc etc.

I wasn't saying the monopoly is optimal, just "okay", as in "not bad for the reasons we traditionally think of monopolies as being bad". It's why a monopoly on salt is intuitively stupider my monopoly on my labor.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#119

Post by PepeGomez »

SilasX wrote: post #73
baddox wrote: post #31

> Rents are not always bad. Protections for intellectual property make sense not in spite of the rents they generate, but rather because of them. A patent, after all, is a temporary monopoly. These monopoly rents give incentives for innovation and allow innovators to cover the costs of research and development. This is a weird way to talk about IP and rent. Is profit from IP necessarily rent? The problem is that "ren…

The way I reconcile it is usually, "Monopolies are okay when the the good in question only exists because of the monopolist." My monopoly on SilasX's labor? No problem. Creator's monopoly on patterns that only exist because that creator found them? Reasonable. Monopoly on all trade in salt? No, just no. (It gets trickier for physical property because of what counts as creating, but you get the point.)

>The way I reconcile it is usually, "Monopolies are okay when the the good in question only exists because of the monopolist."

Can you give an example of such a thing?

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#120

Post by scotty79 »

nwah1 wrote: post #44

See also: The Law of Rent Land, and natural opportunities in general, are the original and most fundamental source of rent. Even the electromagnetic spectrum is monopolized. And although the holders of these exclusive rights do pay the FCC, they pay very little compared to the actual value. Likewise, people pay very little in taxes compared to the true value of their land. Imagine if instead of having to pay income t…

My gripes with land tax and property tax is that they are linear.

They should be highly progressive. It should be so high that it would be more economical for you, if you own 10 apartments to sell one or few than to pay tax on all 10.

To avoid loopholes ... if you own entity that owns some land or property, you need to pay the tax as if that property was your own (minus the tax already paid by this entity).

Also arable land should have slower progression to not discourage efficient farming.

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