On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 1:35 PM, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 2 Sep 2016 10:05:38 -0700
Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:

> I think patents may have made more sense when it was much harder for
> individuals and small groups to get funding to develop an idea, and
> the only people with the resources to develop them were the guilds and
> state-sponsored corporations like the East India Company.

        I think you need to re-think that. The guilds and especialy the
        east india company are poster chilren for mercantilism, the very
        system that libertarians wanted to abolish.

        The east india company was the same kind of entity that
        military contractors 'rebuilding' countries destroyed by the
        anglo-americans are. And it was even worse than a purely
        'commercial' gang that monopolized trade - the east india
        company was nothing but the imperial british army invading
        india and other countries of asia.

I agree with everything you say here.
 

> Patents
> were a way to protect the "little guy."


        I don't think so.

I think you're reading this in a different way than I intended it. What I meant was this is why patents got support and why they may have made things incrementally better, not that there wasn't a better solution possible. Getting rid of the guilds and government-sponsored corporations for example.
 
> Now it's much easier to get
> your hands on funding than it was then, whether it's a small business
> loan, SBIR, venture or angel capital, or crowdfunding.

        And that's probably not true either. Well obviously the
        telecom side of things is better today than it was in 1700, but
        the finance side of thing not necessarily so.

I think I'd need to read examples of small businesses getting financed in 1700. Knowing a number of people who have started small businesses now, it seems obvious to me that the situation for financing is better now than it was then. Which is not to say it doesn't still need a lot of improvement before it's "good" in any absolute sense.
 
> It makes the
> "first mover advantage" much more significant when you can move as
> fast or even faster than a large company that has the same idea, and
> those larger organizations tend to be risk-averse anyway.
>
> It's quite possible I'm biased from working in Silicon Valley, where
> most patents get applied for not for protection from having your idea
> "stolen," but for protection from other patentholders. Or because
> they're seen as valuable by potential investors/buyers, but that
> mostly matters before you have a customer base and infrastructure.