dwandy's Journal: Physical vs. Intellectual

The reason that physical property laws are important is because they provide an incentive for the owner to improve said property. Assured that the investments made won't be stolen or appropriated without compensation, the owner of property invests time and money into upgrading the value of the property, and thereby increases overall economic value to society.
Without these protections it's 'might-makes-right', and those with the biggest guns control the property. We can see in general terms by examples throughout the world and history that private capital tends to make the greatest economic gains for the society.
Furthermore, we can see that if property is left undefended by law then the physical confrontation to take the property would likely damage the property. This means that it will take time to rightful owner time and resources to rebuild, and this is not economic growth.
It stands to reason then that for physical property the maximum economic growth is attained with strong protection laws.

So the reasoning goes that Intellectual Monopoly (which the apologists call Intellectual Property) would be the same. Left undefended by law, IM wouldn't be upgraded by private capital. And this is used as defence for patent and copyright law.
This is where the analogy falls apart. The problem with this is that while undefended property will likely be stolen or damaged, you can't actually 'steal' or 'damage' an idea. While a single plot of land can be owned by only one at a time, an idea can be shared with everyone, and no one is deprived of the idea.
In fact, mankind progresses by sharing ideas. Ideas build on those that came before. We could not build the automobile until the wheel was invented. We could not build the automobile until the blacksmith learned their trade. We could not build the automobile until we harnessed the energy in oil. In short: there were thousands of incremental steps over many generations before the automobile was made. Without all the ideas and inventions that came before, there would be no automobile today.

Patents are a monopoly. A monopoly means that you have no competition. In most places in the world, patents are good for about 20yrs at this point. That means that for 20yrs no one else except you can make use of your idea.

Not only can no one produce your idea, no one can improve on it. This means that for the duration of the patent the public must rely on one entity to improve on this idea. This has the net effect of artificially slowing the rate of innovation. This means that ideas are most valuable when they can be freely shared and expanded on by others.

So we have a situation where protecting physical property increases it's value while creating intellectual monopolies decreases their value.