Europeans and Japanese are marvelous in improving the production process and reverse-engineer the existing process. But what about the ideas themselves, the new products? Why is it that they invariably come from the States?
This is because private ownership stimulates innovation. Undertaking a new enterprise is risky, and the only compensation for an increased risk is higher reward. Remove that possibility --- and there is no reason to take risk; no reason to develope new products. Socialists invariably miss that point, not surprisingly: socialistm is about equitable redistribution of existing wealth. Iht has failed everywhere, in all forms, to create new wealth --- even when it was protected by the military migh of the U.S. and hardly spent on defense.
This has nothing to do with the features of Linux or Microsoft's policies. The issue is at the heart of our world outlook.
With all due respect, the history of technology does not quite agree with your implication. The airplane, the automobile, electronics were all originally invented in the US. If US companies lost domestic or world share for these products it was, nearly always, the result of the companies that produced the product allowing the quality to deteriorate. When management becomes lazy or arrogant, quality suffers.
You're confused. It sounds like you've bought the weird MS propaganda that Open Source is some kind of Communist thing.
Linux is software, written by people who want to write it. Pay attention to that. They choose to make something, usually because they want to use the finished product, but lack the skill, the time or the money to do it all themselves.
That constitutes pursuing their own self-interest, which happens to dovetail with other peoples' self-interest. Cooperation is not inherently Communistic when put that way, is it?
It seems to work. At least, the Linux machine I am typing this message from has never let me down.
But it's okay if you think it's not "new" or "innovative" enough or if you just plain want nothing to do with it. That's freedom, too.
This is because private ownership stimulates innovation.
It's not clear what you are trying to say here. You start with a false premise, the old canard about the Japanese not being able to invent anything (the second-largest holder of U.S. patents is a Japanese company, Canon).
From there you proceed to tell us that the advantage we have over these other guys is the idea of private property. What on Earth makes you believe that the concept of private property is unique to the U.S.? The Japanese had a whole generation of entrepreneurs (Honda, Matsuda at Mazda, Akio Morita at Sony, etc.) who followed trajectories very similar to those of Henry Ford or David Sarnoff. All built very large private corporations and became fabulously wealthy men, just as any successful entrepreneur here would.
There's nothing wrong with a little rah-rah, but lying to ourselves about our competitors having weaknesses that they don't have is the first step toward getting complacent and losing to them. The compact disk was invented by Sony and Philips; the DVD by a British company. We certainly have our share of ideas, but let's not kid ourselves: ideas can happen anywhere.
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I agree with you in some ways, disagree in others, and would like to head in a different direction to explain why.
You're absolutely right. The idea is the problem. Not a specific idea. The entire nature of ideas.
Through patents and copyrights, our current economic model assigns ownership to ideas. In effect, it treats ideas like physical property - a "fixed pie" view of idea holding. The problem with this is that it's a fiction. Ideas don't work that way.
In defense of those who developed the law as such, they weren't idiots. They didn't misunderstand the nature of ideas. They were trying to come up with a practical compromise - a system by which defense of intellectual "property" could produce some of the same benefits as defense of physical property. It is also important to note that, whatever the problems or abuses, this has been a largely successful effort.
The important point here is that it was a matter of practicality and societal benefit that crafted this sort of law. There is no grand philisophical ground to stand upon in claiming ownership over an idea. On its face, it's an absurdity. In order to be useful, ideas need to get out. When they get out, with or without the intent of those they get out to, other people now share them.
Further complicating this is the notion that more than one person may arrive at the same idea independently. This is handled somewhat strangely in the copyright and patent world (e.g. the use of clean rooms and "virgins" in software and hardware development, or the inability to copyright a book title, etc.).
Why has this all become such a crisis at the beginning point of the 21st century? Not because ideas have changed. Not even really that laws have changed. The problem is that technology allowing the sharing of even extremely complicated ideas is becoming universal. In digital format, I can send anything from the detailed blueprints of a brand new microprocessor, to the new fall fashion lineup from the GAP to almost anyone in the world. I don't even have to be sneaky or malicious in intent. The technology was designed to make that sort of idea sharing ubiquitous. Tracking this back to its roots - from the printed word, to the printing press, to the telegraph, telephone, and internet, one can see that, far from stifling idea generation and growth, new ideas are exploding as quickly as the capacity for transmitting them allows. Idea creation follows the technical capacity for sharing ideas far more closely than the laws crafted to claim ownership over them.
Does this mean we should abolish copyrights and patents? Not at all. It means we need to examine the practicality of such laws in light of the technical realities of today.
Some of those now defending our current laws in defiance of the technical reality are openly suggesting that we cripple our technology to limit its capacity to share intellectual property (e.g. Orrin Hatch). Others suggest we pack the courts with even minor cases of intellectual property piracy (e.g. the RIAA). I would say these paths are far more likely to harm growth and innovation than the alternative. A better path would be to find new compromises between the reality of ideas, and the benefits of property protection. Protect intellectual property where it is practical and promotes social good. But don't pretend intellectual property can be treated exactly like physical property all the time.