You can't just look at the costs to an action, you also have to look at the benefits.
Of course I agree I'm going to stop marginal investments from occurring into research into patent-able technologies by reducing the expect profit. But I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much. Meanwhile I'm going to greatly increase the investment into the existing technology we already have, and allow many more people to try to improve upon it, and I'm going to argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.
Whether I'm right or wrong about the net benefit, the basic economics here is that there are both costs and benefits to my proposed action.
And yes I'm going to marginally reduce future investments because the same might happen in the future and that reduces expected value. In fact if I was in charge the same would happen in the future. And the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit of the same actually happening in the future and us not being hamstrung by unbreachable monopolies.
> But I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much
I think you're shifting it by a lot. If the government can post-hoc decide to invalidate patents because the holder is getting too successful, you are introducing a substantial impact on expectations and uncertainty. Your action is not taken in a vacuum.
> Meanwhile I'm going to greatly increase the investment into the existing technology we already have, and allow many more people to try to improve upon it, and I'm going to argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.
I think this is a much more speculative impact. Why will people even fund the improvements if the government might just decide they've gotten too large a slice of the pie later on down the road?
> the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit of the same actually happening in the future and us not being hamstrung by unbreachable monopolies.
No the trade-off is that materially less is produced. These incentive effects are not small. Take for instance, drug price controls - a similar post-facto taking because we feel that the profits from R&D are too high. Introducing proposed price controls leads to hundreds of fewer drugs over the next decade [0] - and likely millions of premature deaths downstream of these incentive effects. And that's with a policy with a clear path towards short-term upside (cheaper drug prices). Discounted GPUs by invalidating nvidia's patents has a much more tenuous upside and clear downside.
You have proposed state ownership of all successful IP. That is a massive change and yet you have demonstrated zero understanding of the possible costs.
Your claim that removing a profit motivation will increase investment is flat out wrong. Everything else crumbles from there.
No, I've proposed removing or reducing IP protections, not transferring them to the state. Allowing competitors to enter the market will obviously increase investment in competitors...
This is already happening - its called China.
There's a reason they don't innovate in anything, and they are always playing catch-up, except in the art of copying (stealing) from others.
I do think there are some serious IP issues, as IP rules can be hijacked in the US, but that means you fix those problems, not blow up IP that was rightfully earned
Of course I agree I'm going to stop marginal investments from occurring into research into patent-able technologies by reducing the expect profit. But I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much. Meanwhile I'm going to greatly increase the investment into the existing technology we already have, and allow many more people to try to improve upon it, and I'm going to argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.
Whether I'm right or wrong about the net benefit, the basic economics here is that there are both costs and benefits to my proposed action.
And yes I'm going to marginally reduce future investments because the same might happen in the future and that reduces expected value. In fact if I was in charge the same would happen in the future. And the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit of the same actually happening in the future and us not being hamstrung by unbreachable monopolies.