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The Rent Hypothesis

esoltas.blogspot.com

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Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#121

Post by PepeGomez »

spinlock wrote: post #60
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 philosophy behind patents is that they encourage the sharing of research so that the total cost of rnd to society is minimized. Whithout ip protection, firms would rely on trade secrets. They would still charge more for their products but a competitor would have to spend the money on research to compete. I don't know if you would still call the premium they could charge rent or if you would amortize rnd over the…

That can't possibly work though. Patents only give an incentive to patent things that can be expected to be independently discovered or reverse engineered sooner than the patent expires. There is no reason to patent things that could be kept as trade secrets for longer.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#122

Post by collyw »

moron4hire wrote: post #40
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…

I don't think violent revolt is quite necessary. We certainly seem to be seeing a non-violent revolt happening in the entertainment industry. People, unhappy with the way the music and movie industry have been trying to leverage their monopolistic power over certain franchises, have turned to non-violently pirating media, to the point that, for a lot of people, and many properties, the easiest mode of obtaining them…

That's because it is easy to pirate music.

There are plenty of people who are unhappy with the way that banks have and continue to behave. It is however a bit more difficult to help yourself to some of the money in the banks even if you feel justified to.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#123

Post by collyw »

bcg1 wrote: post #56
logicallee wrote: post #54

Look at all the rent Apple is seeking on the new 12 inch Macbook, for example. In 2015 the world supply of 12 inch Macbooks increased suddenly and unexpectedly. Nobody saw it coming. The world simply has a great new product in it starting in 2015 that it didn't have in 2014 or 2013. On HN there were 1269 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9172373 One thousand, two hundred, sixty-nine! The current front-pa…

What you're describing is just smart business. Producing a desirable product that people choose to buy is not rent-seeking, it is the free market fulfilling a need/want at price people are willing to pay. An example of rent-seeking however would be if Apple set up deals with schools and colleges to roll the cost of devices into their tuition, which is really mostly malinvestment paid with student loan debt. If the am…

Their app store could easily be viewed as rent seeking.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#124

Post by dalke »

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.

I can't tell, but it seems that you agree with me?

That is, as given, the quote gives a sketch of cultural development which almost unconnected to archeology and history.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#125

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

You're going way off on a tangent from the article. Some people innovate because it's their desire, that's irrelevant to the economic argument that patents encourage research departments.

That the current implementation of patents is highly flawed doesn't affect that basic fact.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#126

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

Food and houses are things that would exist without the monopolist, so the argument doesn't apply. Therefore you haven't showed an error in the logic.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#127

Post by Dylan16807 »

PepeGomez wrote: post #119
SilasX wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Did you read the second line of the comment?

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#128

Post by PepeGomez »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #127
PepeGomez wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Did you read the second line of the comment?

Yes, I did? You didn't give any examples, except that salt isn't such a thing.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#129

Post by Houshalter »

bandrami wrote: post #117
Houshalter wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because they weren't willing to use the amount of oppression and violence necessary to subject the population to their control. That's a good thing but it makes an occupation much more expensive.

But imagine what would happen if they did any of the things I said like mass surveillance. The US is certainly moving in that direction, but imagine when there are microphones and cameras everywhere, always recording. With AI good enough to automatically figure out who you are and what you are doing. When every face and license plate is recognized, and drones above track where every single person and vehicle moves.

Re: The Rent Hypothesis

#130

Post by JoeAltmaier »

sgift wrote: post #112
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but the job-offerer is not in the driver's seat- you are. That's the point.
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