Quote from: Bismarck Revivalist on February 14, 2014, 03:23:06 AM
Quick question: is any state where regulations are enforced by the threat of violence socialist?

Read Locke Second treatise of government to understand what you are failing to comprehend.

Not sure I agree with OP on patents, though I'm wholly opposed to licenses or other artificial restrictions on supply. Pantents safeguarded innovations throughout the British Empire and gave the British incentive to invent because they would profit from it. I.e the Wright brothers were adamant on getting patents on their invention, would they have lived in poverty knowing that if they actually succeeded they would still be living in poverty if there were no patent laws?

Licences on the other hand are used by unions and government to restrict supply in order to drive up cost to the consumer, this is wholly socialist.

As for the application of capital, if it is determined and regulated by the government then it is socialism even if it is privately owned. Take China "market economy" the ownership is privately owned by inner communist party members and the application is centrally controlled, I would call it socialism as opposed to a free market where individuals determine the best use of their capital based on whatever goals they want to achieve.

QuoteWhat is lost cannot be known for we cannot know what someone might have created given the freedom to do so. Nor can we know how these creations could lead to subsequent innovations on the part of others, or what the pattern of production/consumption that would have occurred might look like.

That is a very good point, and Milton Friedman pointed it out with the FDA bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are individuals, and as individuals they make decision based on personal risk, a bureaucrat that never approves any new drugs runs a lower risk of having blowback than a bureaucrat that approves said drug, so the incentives of a bureaucracy is antithetitical to innovation and improvement. Only expanding budgets, maximizing employees and clients while at the same time making the system hard for clients to finish applications/producedures and cutting spending by cutting services instead of reducing number of workers. I.e look at Disney when it was run as a visionary company under Walt Disney and how it is run now under a corporate bureaucracy.

The thing about patents is they have gotten unbelievably out of hand.  Patent trolls are running wild and it's killing innovation.  They are suing for the most ridiculous things and contribute nothing. 

Quote from: taxed on February 16, 2014, 07:55:56 PM
The thing about patents is they have gotten unbelievably out of hand.  Patent trolls are running wild and it's killing innovation.  They are suing for the most ridiculous things and contribute nothing.

I patented that post! Ima gonna sue you...

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2014, 07:58:22 PM
I patented that post! Ima gonna sue you...

Let's just settle.  $250mm OK?

Quote from: taxed on February 16, 2014, 07:59:23 PM
Let's just settle.  $250mm OK?

In nickles...

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2014, 08:00:56 PM
In nickles...

Wait... I patented nickles... I also patented money requests in nickles!

Quote from: taxed on February 16, 2014, 08:12:42 PM
Wait... I patented nickles... I also patented money requests in nickles!

Damn! Slim Jims. I want payment is Slim Jims..

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2014, 08:14:44 PM
Damn! Slim Jims. I want payment is Slim Jims..

Trademark infringement!!! I'm suing!

Quote from: Solar on February 16, 2014, 08:19:00 PM
Trademark infringement!!! I'm suing!

You can't. I patented the word "suing"

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2014, 08:27:11 PM
You can't. I patented the word "suing"

OK, but I own litigious, and I'm litigating you ass for one meeelion dollers....

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2014, 08:00:56 PM
In nickles...

Make that Indian head nickel with no date. 

Quote from: walkstall on February 16, 2014, 08:37:17 PM
Make that Indian head nickel with no date.

SHABOOM

The problem with patents, from a private property- rule of law perspective, is that they are limits on what other people can do with their OWN property.

I don't care how inventive you are, you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property, providing I am peaceful, without infringing on my natural liberty in an aggressive and violent fashion.

Quote from: TowardLiberty on February 17, 2014, 07:10:51 AM
The problem with patents, from a private property- rule of law perspective, is that they are limits on what other people can do with their OWN property.

I don't care how inventive you are, you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property, providing I am peaceful, without infringing on my natural liberty in an aggressive and violent fashion.

Yes government's regulations on patents is killing innovation in our country.  We found out through our own personal experience.  My husband had built and designed a new machine for planting and harvesting of grape vines.  It worked remarkably better than anything his company was using.  So this multi-million $ company backed up his invention, hired lawyers and paid all expenses.  So many years later, they were still fighting beueracracy and massive regulations.  The company could see this would never get patented and so informed my husband.   Some grape farmers saw his new invention and he went ahead and made more.   This was about 10 years ago and I am sure with Obozo, it is probably impossible now to ever get anything through. 

Your Government at work for you.       

Mountain Shield makes some good points with respect to wealth and its regulation.
Adam Smith makes regular references to Royal Commissions and what amounts to
the set of rules regulating of commerce (the name of that category of regulations
escapes me at the moment.) In his inimitable way, Smith caresses the issues in such a
way as to provide us a perspective that both allows for the existence of regulation while
at the same time keeps us in control of it, as opposed to the reverse.
Monopoly laws, anti-trust, and so forth. Some in the Tea Party go off the deep end and
want to do away with all regulation.  This makes us look a little uninformed.

But it is the issue of Chinese ownership Mountain Shield touches on that I think deserves
a look. How many of us see Asian trade as funneling the proceeds of our entire economy
into the accounts of a handful of communist leaders?  We hear things like, "The Chinese
are buying our debt," without really thinking about what we are hearing.