Sure, but it’s an alternative way a large SaaS provider might attempt to defend whatever competitive advantage its code provides. I’m not saying it’s equivalent or even as good, just that a company with good data controls could probably grow large absent IP laws.
We’d probably also see rapid advances in homomorphic encryption to enable deployed software.
This seems like an odd comment. Yes there is law that protects trade secrets. But you still need to keep the secret a secret. If the secret gets out, it is no longer a trade secret.
The point is that it's difficult to become a big corporation without a monopoly, and it's difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Trade secrets--which have got nothing to do with with patents, copyrights, and trademarks and I should have just said has much--are another way to maintain a monopoly without government help, but trade secrets themselves are difficult to maintain if the secret gets out, and it almost always gets out.
Corporations get everyone to do things they don't have to against their own interests all the time.
All day every day every industry every level.
"How?" is infinite different ways not any particular one.
Usually it's down to something being 0.001% prettier or more convenient or even a totally fabricated impression that everyone else does it (which then becomes true but is only true after the idea was used).
They sucessfully harness the desire for conformity in some people and also the desire for non-conformity in other people, at the same time for the same products.
They completely effectively harness countless well studied aspects of human nature.
If you're like me, sitting here writing about how cynical and manipulative they all are, they have angles that work on that too.
Harnessing knowledge of human nature does not require government support. Governments don't create human nature.
They use the government where possible, but as just one of countless tools. They don't always get what they want from the governemnent, yet they still make money. As often as not, corporations end up making more money as a result of losing some fight with a government.
All they need to make money is activity. Any activity, even "the government just took away something we were using and dinged us for $200M" 6 months later they are worth twice what they were before, because that was big activity.
If the government takes away a toy they were making money from, they just figure out some other new toy, and in the end the shake-up and (forced) opportunity for change was worth more than what they were making from the status quo.
> Harnessing knowledge of human nature does not require government support
Yeah but fencing it off from others does require government support. If it's human nature to create, it's also human nature to copy. If you create some new worthwhile invention, I'll just copy your invention without even asking you, and without the government there's nothing you can do to stop me.
No, it does not. It's just one of countless levers.
There are countless things anyone can copy or do for free already right now, that countless people pay a company for, for no reason at all. No government enforcement of anything involved.
3% tax on every transaction in your entire life going to Visa by using a debit card instead of cash.
There are people (not huge corps in this case) selling CDRs of PDFs from archive.org on eBay. But more to the point, people buying them.
The completely intangible nothing that differentiates a Burberry bag from any other medium quality bag.
Now that last one almost sounds like the opposite point since the intangible nothing is exactly what the government is protecting there, but the government does not enforce that you need to pay Burberry to get a bag exactly like it in both quality and aesthetic, but people voluntarily do anyway.
>>> There are countless things anyone can copy or do for free already right now, that countless people pay a company for, for no reason at all.
>> Name one.
> 3% tax on every transaction in your entire life going to Visa by using a debit card instead of cash.
There's a reason for that: Visa and MasterCard have monopoly power obtained via anti-competitive practices which were enabled by contract law. Visa and MasterCard prohibited member banks from issuing their own cards. Discover and American Express among others sued Visa and MasterCard for this about 15 years ago.
> the government does not enforce that you need to pay Burberry to get a bag exactly like it in both quality and aesthetic
The government does enforce that. A potential Burberry competitor cannot sell a bag "exactly like" Burberry's because to do that it would have to have the Burberry logo, which is a trademark protected by federal law.
But all the government is enforcing or protecting is an identity, not a thing. Burberry convinces people to do something they don't have to do, EVEN to get a bag of the same style and quality.
What do the customers get? They get nothing more than the social status of other people seeing them have it. That value is something that doesn't exist except that Burberry created it out of thin air. The tools that Burberry uses to to produce those sales are not the government protection of the exclusive right to sell a bag of a certain style, it's the knowledge of human nature, in this case, status displays.
>What do the customers get? They get nothing more than the social status of other people seeing them have it. That value is something that doesn't exist except that Burberry created it out of thin air.
If those customers value that social status, how did you derive the authority to tell them they're wrong?
Of course, you don't have that authority. Nobody is in a position to tell other people what they should or shouldn't value. Some people value the exclusivity of fashionable brands, but that exclusivity cannot be maintained without government involvement. Without it, there's nothing to stop somebody besides Burberry from creating indistinguishable copies of Burberry bags, complete with the Burberry logo, at lower prices. If they're indistinguishable then who wouldn't buy them at the lower price? If they're indistinguishable, how would you even know it's a copy? If it's indistinguishable, is it EVEN a copy?
No. Monopoly control of something--a resource or in this case an idea--requires the power to enforce that monopoly. Typically, governments have that power and among the ways to exercise it is to grant and protect patent and copyright and trademark monopolies.
I never said monopoly control. The entire point was that enforced monopoly control is not required. That is thinking way too simplistic. Companies get people to pay for things that they don't have to _all the time_, by all kinds of different means. They only also use government granted monopoly because why not if it's available.
You didn't have to. When asked to name one example of corporations getting people to pay for things they don't have to, both of the examples you named were examples of a monopoly. Burberry, for instance, has a monopoly. Only Burberry can make bags with the iconic pattern and logo, and if you value the iconic pattern and logo for reasons you're not obliged to justify to anyone else, you DO have pay Burberry for the privilege. That's a monopoly, and it wouldn't exist if the government didn't maintain it.
we're clearly splitting microscopic hairs if you're going so far to call a logo a market to have "monopoly" over. Even if governments didn't exist, people find all kinds of ways to differentiate "value" from brands. The entire hobbyist collectors market works this way.
Governments just make it easier for people who can hire lawyers to assert this. Much easier to send out a C&D (which stops most infractions) than to generate some sort of "code of quality" or whatnot.
>we're clearly splitting microscopic hairs if you're going so far to call a logo a market to have "monopoly" over
Your claim that we're splitting hairs, microscopic or otherwise, is not strengthened by adding the word "clearly." If you don't like calling a trademarked logo a monopoly then I suggest you take it up with Wikipedia. Go ahead and edit at least these pages to correct their errors which tend to confuse trademarks with government-granted monopolies, something that is "clearly" a mistake according to you.
>Even if governments didn't exist, people find all kinds of ways to differentiate "value" from brands. The entire hobbyist collectors market works this way.
Works what way? I have no idea what you're talking about.
>Governments just make it easier for people who can hire lawyers to assert this
Without governments there wouldn't even be lawyers.
>Much easier to send out a C&D (which stops most infractions)
Who's going to listen to a "C&D" if the government is unwilling to enforce it?
Again, there would not be big corporations without patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of government-granted monopolies. If you think there somehow would be, I'd love to hear it.
"there would not be big corporations without patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of government-granted monopolies. If you think there somehow would be, I'd love to hear it."
You have just spent a day refusing to hear it.
It is patently ridiculous to think that money will fail to money just because of any single aspect of the environment.
