Thursday, January 19, 2012

Intellectual Property, and more

I hope you have fun reading this unfocused post. Just promise me to stay civil in the comments.

(1)
There must be some incentive for the writer to write a book. This incentive should scale with the social value of the book. This value, right now, with the help of copyright laws, is determined via a market system and the incentive we use is money. And that's a great way to do it.

Now, this system, unfortunately, is not easy to extend to the internet. As a consequence we need to discuss how we do it. But in this discussion we need to remember what we actually want:
To give the author an incentive to write the book. No more. We don't want him to earn millions and thus gain the right to buy everything an average citizen creates in a lifetime with the writing of one single book; or even the performance of a single song. If the incentive is high enough for him to write the book, it is high enough.

(2)
Now, there are two competing pictures to this discussion: In the one picture the market, the government and the restrictions the government creates, should be used to create a world as fair and as prosperous as possible. In this picture the markets, free contracting, laws and regulations are just means to an end. We use (and sometimes create) markets where they are useful and regulate them as much as necessary (and no more!) so that they work well and are helpful in creating a world as fair and as prosperous as possible.

The competing picture is this: A world in which everybody is free to subscribe or not subscribe a contract. This contract is then enforced by the government. If this creates a measure of unfairness or non-prosperity we don't really care because everybody is free to not subscribe a contract and this 'inherent fairness' is something we value more than equal chances to live the american dream (which is a global dream).

The main difference between the pictures, in my opinion, is that supporters of the first ask "In what world would we like to live and how to create it in a smart way without unwanted side effects".
While supporters of the other pictures like the 'inherent fairness' of “free contracting” and if this leads to massive inequality or social unrest or people starving in the streets or a large amount of people who don't experience prosperity, then that's just the price society has to pay for the 'inherent fairness'.

(3)
The pictures are closely related to two other pictures: The one is often called progressive (“let's boldly try to make the world a better place”). The other picture is often called conservative (careful: change can have unwanted side effects!)

Both pictures are important:
One must not ignore side effects. Caution is necessary - especially too much government can be a problem as it always brings with it the danger of corruption - which makes a few people rich at the expense of the rest.
But at the same time one shouldn't be afraid of trying to change the world we live in to be more prosperous and more fair. And this requires us to say out loud in what world we would like to live and then use tools like a free market and free contracting and government regulation to help create this world.

We should be careful but not afraid.

31 comments:

  1. "In what world would we like to live and how to create it in a smart way without unwanted side effects"

    You will never find even 2 people (forget a group) whose pictures will match. That being said, do you think this is possible? Someone (more likely a minority group) will always suffer oppression by the majority. The only way to avoid this is to employ and maintain individual rights.

    The government will always have to be involved to an extent in order to enforce contracts. Otherwise, the people will just take it upon themselves, which would get messy :)

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  2. I think the whole premise is where you go wrong. You state that we need to give the writer an incentive for writing the book and no more.

    There are two big mistakes. First off the incentive usually isn't money for that first book. It's to get published. Does that then mean they should get nothing? Second and beyond books the incentive is to sell more than the first one and make a living off of it.

    The second big mistake is your "NO MORE" comment. Pure socialism is shown by the comment:
    "We don't want him to earn millions..."

    Maybe you don't want him to get millions but I don't begrudge him that opportunity. Who else do you limit? Who gets to set these limits? The elite?

    There are other issues like your definition of fair. You seem to define fair as an end result. Its only fair if everyone receives the same amount. Fair to many others is the OPPORTUNITY and not the guaranteed end result.

    Finally how about Progressive - the elite know whats best and you can never improve your status beyond a medium and you own nothing. The government owns everything including your right to live.

    Compared to Conservative - we believe that the indivudual knows how best to live their life and if they want to take a chance on a new idea and get rich so be it. You sink or swim. You make a living or go broke. The government needs to be limited in its power over the citizens. It needs to create equal opportunity but should not confiscate the fruits of one labors to be handled out at its discretion.

    Without massive reward people will take less risks. Its been proven all throughout history.

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  3. Sorry for the back to back comments but here is a something that I think anyone who wants to limit money needs to answer.

    We all know that there are millions that would love to play professional soccer (football in Europe). They would do it for $100k a year. Yet players get paid millions. Now they negotiate (contact) for that amount. They claim they wouldn't play for less, but we know that they would take a fraction and play then do something else.

    They get that amount because thousands are willing to see them do it and the team wants fans in the stand.

    Let me ask you if you would limit what they make. Why or why not? They started playing the sport long before they ever got a penny. They had no clue if they would be good or bad. So they still spent time in practice and getting better even when it meant no money.

    Not to mention that the towel boy is getting the same salary as the star player in your scenario.

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  4. @Degrin

    You will never find even 2 people (forget a group) whose pictures will match

    Sure, but that's why we have democracies and parliaments and representatives who make a compromise.

    ---
    The government will always have to be involved to an extent in order to enforce contracts. Otherwise, the people will just take it upon themselves, which would get messy :)

    I agree. In fact, I think gpvernment should be the only institution to enforce contracts.

    ---
    omeone (more likely a minority group) will always suffer oppression by the majority. The only way to avoid this is to employ and maintain individual rights.

    Usually (not alway) a minority exploits the majority. They are called interest groups. They make a deal with a politician to get a subsity on sugar and the majority doesn't care, because it's just 1 dollar a month or so, but for the minority it's millions.

    Other minorities are powerful families who run states, powerful religious groups, etc.

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  5. "and the incentive we use is money. And that's a great way to do it." - I strongly disagree! Social incentives work much better, and money are pretty poor proxy to social standing and "feeling needed".
    Money as sole incentive more or less works for factories, but they don't work as well for writers, scientists, programmers and other creative/intellectual professions. Using extrinsic rewards (money) for activity has rapid diminishing returns.

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  6. The second big mistake is your "NO MORE" comment. Pure socialism is shown by the comment:
    "We don't want him to earn millions..."


    No, that's not socialism. We should really do away with this word. It's only use is to create more heat in a discussion. But, see below...

    ---
    Let me ask you if you would limit what they make. Why or why not? They started playing the sport long before they ever got a penny. They had no clue if they would be good or bad. So they still spent time in practice and getting better even when it meant no money.

    Do I want every person to earn an equal amount of money? HELL NO! That would be insanely unfair! Where did you read this? Do you really think that I consider it fair if someone who doesn't add anything to society (no products, no services) receives as much from society as somebody who adds a lot? Of course not!

    When I say that I want a fair society I mean that somebody who works hard can demand more products and services in return than somebody who works not as hard. Maybe some 30x times as much.
    But not 300x, not 1000x, not 10000.

    When I say prosperity and fairness I mean that we need incentives, (for example money which is a useful incentive due to social prestige!) which lead to as many products and services as possible. And then we need to make sure that these products and services are fairly (not equally!) distributed.

    Right now most countries do this via a market system and I am a strong believer in this system! But we need to understand that

    1) markets don't appear naturally, they often need to be created by government (copyrights, CO2 certificates..)

    2) markets maximize production but are not inherently fair.

    Some months ago I invested most of my 'wealth' into the DAX. I sold with 12% return on investment. That was great. Now, if somebody who owns $200mio had invested some 50% of his wealth there, he had made $12mio - without actually working harder than I did. Is that fair? No. Does that mean that we should fix it? Only if we find a way with little unwanted side effects!

    Let me repeat:
    Only if we find a way with little unwanted side effects!

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  7. "When I say that I want a fair society I mean that somebody who works hard can demand more products and services in return than somebody who works not as hard. Maybe some 30x times as much.
    But not 300x, not 1000x, not 10000."


    The problem (or perhaps more accurately: the trap) with this line of thought is determining who gets to make this decision. Ultimately, this would become yet another layer of regulation, and even worse, a regulation of income by government fiat. If a FREE MARKET enables someone to make a fortune from a single book, album, or other manifestation of their effort, then SO BE IT. A FREE MARKET gives everyone EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, it doesn't provide EQUAL OUTCOME. And that is where the divide between modern capitalism (opportunity) and socialism (outcome) exists.

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  8. I disagree, Dancingblade.

    First, a free market doesn't give everyone equal opportunity. Poor kids are disadvantages to rich kids when it comes to the schools they can visit, the universities they can pay and certainly when it comes to doing this MBA. Government is required to create equal opportunities here because the free market (in combination with inheritance) doesn't do it.

    Second, I absolutely agree that we need to focus on creating equal opportunity and not equal outcome. I think it's pretty obvious that a world in which everybody earns the same amount of money is extremely unfair. I really don't understand why people talk about this as if it was even a remote possibility.

    Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, in my opinion the free market is not a god-given natural order. It's simply a tool. Somehow high and low incomes are distributed in a society. There is no reason to believe that the market is somehow better at this than the market plus some regulation. Now, the free market is an extremely powerful tool that we should use to create incentive to satisfy demand with supply. But it's just this: a tool. It's not a natural equilibrium or god-given or really, special. It is a tool we should use to produce as much as possible and distribute it as fairly as possible.

    And when I say distribute it as fairly as possible I am not talking about a government agency giving you money each week. I am talking about carefully regulating the market in a way that it retains its capability to give the correct incentives (to satisfy demand with supply) but is more fair. In other words, let's be careful but not afraid.

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  9. "I sold with 12% return on investment. That was great. Now, if somebody who owns $200mio had invested some 50% of his wealth there, he had made $12mio - without actually working harder than I did. Is that fair? No."

    But if that trade went bad he would have lost way more than you did. Is that fair? See he risked more so he made more.

    Now not knowing how much you made lets add a third person that invested 10% of what you did. that means you made 10 times what they did in profits. Should your profit therefore be limited because it was 10 times more than this person?

    The other big issue seems that since you do support different wages for different activities it seems only activities you deem as not important to be the issue. So that writer can't make millions but the athlete can. Remember that the writer gets nothing for a crappy book. They only make money if lots of people like the book and make the decision to buy it.

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  10. "They only make money if lots of people like the book and make the decision to buy it."
    If we go with copyright angle, similar system for athletes would be "70 year pension for every gold/silver/bronze medal obtained".

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  11. But if that trade went bad he would have lost way more than you did. Is that fair? See he risked more so he made more.

    Person A owns $500.000. He invests all of it. He looses it all.

    Person B owns $50.000.000. He invests $1.000.000. He looses the million.

    In my opinion person A lost more.

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  12. @Shalcker at least keep to paid sports and not Olympics where you don't get paid. You amke your money from advertising if you win that is.

    @Nils, person A also did better in that same regard. You can't use percentage when they lose and actual when they win. Person A would win or lose a higher percentage while Person B would win or lose a higher raw amount. Sorry but you can't pick the choice that only fits your argument.

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  13. That's actually a pretty good point. Thanks, Goodmongo. It seems to me that I have to think about this a bit ...

    ---
    Now not knowing how much you made lets add a third person that invested 10% of what you did. that means you made 10 times what they did in profits. Should your profit therefore be limited because it was 10 times more than this person?


    You jump to conclusions. First we have to determine whether the status quo is fair. Then we need to look at alternatives and think them through and then, far in the future we could very carefully try to actually change something.

    Right now we are discussing step one: Is the status quo fair?

    So to answer your question: Would I cap anything? No! We are still discussing whether it is fair, not what to do about it ...

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  14. @Nils: If you go with "good of society", person B has both higher (potential) society impact and lower personal risk using that 1M in any way, while person A has lower impact and higher personal risk.

    Maybe "fairness" is more about keeping personal risks tied to potential impact, as well as keeping both "lowest" and "highest" positions (both impact and risk) within reasonable range.

    Some people will hit "glass ceiling" that way, and some people will remain firmly at the bottom, but human mind doesn't work well with absolutes, and much better with comparisons for things "being fair".

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  15. Most people would agree that an individual should ideally earn income based on their impact on society. This would work if everyone started life at the same rung of the ladder. This is not true at all however. Person B is in an exponentially better position than person A who started at a lower rung.

    Most people make very little in expendable income that they can use to invest. As long as the guy who inherited millions of daddy's money isn't a total slacker/idiot then the hardworking guy that started lower has little chance at catching up. He needs to work exponentially harder to make similar gains not just nominally but in real terms too, because of his cost of living expenses.

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  16. I was gonna say, but Goodmongo pretty much summed it up.
    Nils, you speak ill of percentage systems, but then promote them. For being the mathematician you are(this isn't a jab), this perplexes me.

    Regarding setting limits on earning: that's greed. It's a two-way street. And greed is the grassroots to only 'unfair' and/or corrupt activities.

    Percentages are the *only* 'fair' method to any mathematical system. Brackets, sums and their ilk do not *scale*.

    Perhaps if society had a robustly evaluated 'minimum cost to actually live' (meaning: roof, physical security, food on the table 3x a day NOT house, nice neighborhood, eating out once a week), we could deem anything underneath said sum to be 'off limits'. But for everything else, the only way to properly allow incentives (work hard, get to play hard) as well as give equal opportunity (net amount returned in tax/tariff/etc less for those who make less) lies in systems that scale.

    And no, systems that scale exponentially with growth are not fair. You basically eliminate the incentive (work hardER, play hardER?). We know small businesses are the backbone to any healthy economy... a system that increases the burden of a company as it grows does not wish to grow... which means less opportunity for that company to give jobs out.

    And the best part of a linearly scaling percentage-based system? The giants can't find loopholes. Napoleonic code! (Hi GE!)

    I do not wish to get involved in the politics (ref: earlier posts), but wish to read your response to this angle, as uncovered first by Goodmongo. I'm an engineer by trade meaning I see only 'useful math' (=P) but to hear an explanation from a 'purebred' is always appreciated.

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  17. The history of IP law is a fascinating political history, a history of corporate political lobbying. Originally copyright was for 14 years. Enough to make money, enough to make a book worth writing and printing, not excessive.

    But ever since those early days the owners of the rights have pushed for longer terms and no one's really pushed back effectively. Because if Justin Bieber's recording company can lobby to increase their profits from his songs by 50% who else cares much? I certainly don't care enough that I would lobby and fight and take politicians out to dinner because in isolation it doesn't effect me.

    An interesting corollary is that copyright is one of the most widely broken laws. It's a law so counter-intuitive most people don't even think about breaking it.

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  18. I actually agree with Nils, although I believe we can augment the system already in place rather than mess with it too much.

    Just bring back the ~90% top tax rate. We already had it from 1950-1963, and by most accounts that was a huge growth period in the US. It was at least higher than 50% between 1932-1986. Today it is 35%, for no particular reason.

    The marginal utility of money ensures that those people earning billions today would still work just as hard for millions instead. So why are we giving them billions? Just because?

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  19. The position of "equal results" = socialism and "equal opportunities" = conservatism is a fallacy. In truth, no one I spoke regarding equal opportunities answered me on how can a system be said to provide such opportunities other than by checking similarity of results on a statistical level (that is, there are no equal results for the individual, but there are roughly equal results for any sufficient large grouping of individuals – there should be no inherent advantages or disadvantages on belonging to any sub-group). In truth, most people I see professing equal opportunities don’t seem to support any action that would lead the society to really provide it, and seem quite content with disparities of group outcome.

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  20. Stabs said: "Originally copyright was for 14 years."

    In 1978 it was changed to life + 70 years which is very common in almost all countries all over the world.

    So originally was way back in 1790 for the US, but you leave out that it can be renewed for an additional 14 years just by filling out a request. And the length has been extended many times since 1790.

    @IV two people go to the exact same school and have the exact same classes all their lives. One does well in life and the other doesn't. They had equal opportunity. You make the mistake of trying to bring in their personal lives into the equation. One might have had a drunken mother and the other not.

    We should not be forced to support equal outcomes unless we havee the capability to do something about that drunken mother.

    Or maybe one just had more brain cells. That's life and you deal with it.

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  21. IP laws get really flakey too.

    If I rerecord a song that has it's IP expired and change it in any way, I can copywright that particular version. Then if some guy who thinks the IP has expired on that artists work uses it I can nail him for using my protected work.

    Our IP laws, at least in the US, are totally out of wack. I think because no one except the artists and Corporations involved ever pay attention to laws being passed. Thus those that have an incentive to "lock out" competition are the ones making the rules.

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  22. to goodmongo's point, corporations don't die. So life + 70 years in the us is effectively forever if they copywright it. Not sure how that works if they buy the IP.

    One of the side effects of the holdover of british common law that views corporations as people.

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  23. @Sam the length of copyright protection differs for corporations. They are not persons under copyright laws.

    Basically the life + 70 applies to an author (real person). For things like movies (corporate owned) it is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation if created after 1978. And a flat 95 years for things created 1923-1977. There are no copyright laws for items created before 1923 in the US.

    Now a real person author can sell the rights to a corporation and that corporation then gets the life (of orginal author) + 70 years.

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  24. "Some months ago I invested most of my 'wealth' into the DAX. I sold with 12% return on investment. That was great. Now, if somebody who owns $200mio had invested some 50% of his wealth there, he had made $12mio - without actually working harder than I did. Is that fair? No. Does that mean that we should fix it? Only if we find a way with little unwanted side effects!"

    Why are you mixing income versus capital gain? You very well know that if the market went down 12% instead, the other person just lost way more than you. If you're going to question the positive outcome as being fair, it's only _fair_ to question the fairness in the other direction? Lets say we CAP anyone's gain at $100k for argument. Then a $100k/$200mil gain/loss ratio versus your $10k/$10 is hardly considered fair.

    Progressive tax rates are possibly the least offensive and societally fair (not individually fair) way to dampen down the disparity. Side-effects exist of course, as they always do when you go extreme.

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  25. "Progressive tax rates are possibly the least offensive and societally fair (not individually fair) way to dampen down the disparity. Side-effects exist of course, as they always do when you go extreme."

    I'd argue for the basis of this conversation that estate taxes would be even more effective, while being less offensive to the individual.

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  26. I can but marvel why you keep doing this to yourself, Nils. ;)

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  27. I like discussing, Syl. And I'm simply curious as to how smart people can think about the world we live in so very differently than I do. I want to understand them ;)

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  28. ...if all fails, there's still MC! ;)

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  29. Thanks for the invitation, Syl. I appreciate this. But, I think, I got a bit of an overdose a few months ago. Maybe later this year ;)

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  30. Goodmongo: I never said there wouldn't be differences in INDIVIDUAL outcomes, just that to prove equal opportunities, there should be no differences in GROUP average outcomes with randomized groups. That is the proof that there are equal opportunities, everything else is just wishful thinking (and I may add that the western societies have by this measure been trending AWAY from equal opportunities)..

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  31. @IV, you can't go by group outcomes. How can each member of the different groups be identical. Remember that the education equal opportunity is one portion of the equation. The other factors are outside influences that because of life are not fair.

    And we should not be forced to compensate for that unfairness unless we are given the power to change it. Every study ever done shows that kids from two parent households do better in school and in life. So if a society is going to be forced to compensate and make each one earn the same, we need the power to change that factor and force each kid to have two parents.

    You want equal outcomes but like most liberals don't want to face the real cause of why there isn't an equal outcome.

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