Lawyers Create Scarcity
Almost all scarcity is either artificial or limited to a time or location. Let me make it clear that there are some valid uses for solutions in law. When law is used in the wrong situation it will always create scarcity. Monday I ran into a perfect example of how lawyers create artificial scarcity.
Sunday I got a flat tire. My tires were old and worn so it was time to replace them. Fortunately I had a complete set of tires in my garage. My friend had taken a car to the scrap yard but saved the nearly new tires. The tires were a different size from what his new car used so he didn’t have a use for the tires. It was junk to him but useful for me. I put them in my garage to safely save them for when I replaced the tires on my car.
Monday I loaded the tires into my car and went to Sam’s Club to have my used tires mounted. Sam’s Club offered this service free to members. I was so happy with this service that I frequently recommended membership just because of this service. To my surprise they don’t provide that service any more. Was it because of cost cutting? No. Lawyers stopped the service because of fear of liability.
Abundance Based Intellectual Property System
The intended purpose of intellectual property laws is to promote discovery and encourage sharing of ideas. A system that rewards great discoveries and also makes the realization of the ideas available to as many people as cheaply as possible is the ideal system. Using the concepts of Abundance that system can be achieved.
The patent and copyright system creates artificial scarcity. Its stated goal is to promote the sharing of ideas but it does not work. Its not just broken, it was wrong from the start. It assumes that good ideas are scarce and the only way to get people to share their ideas is to give them a monopoly, creating a temporary scarcity.
It’s absurd to claim information as property. If someone said they owned the number 3 and no one can use it without their permission, they would be laughed at or even locked up for being insane. The patent and copyright system grants ownership to information. That contradicts the goal of promoting discovery and sharing.
What is Abundance? It starts with information.
Originally a blog post 2007 Jan 22
Since publication of “Free” and Zeitgeist Addendum a lot of people are finally talking about abundance and how it turns economics on its head. So I thought I would update my original post with a video.
Few people understand how to create abundance so I will be spending more time explaining it with blog posts and videos.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com