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Comment by astazangasta | Hacker News Reader

This is why the main research building at UCSF is allegedly called Genentech Hall - a bunch of researchers ran off with IP generated at UCSF to start Genentech, and the university sued successfully and used the money to build that building.

Of course if I had my druthers none of this would be property, either the university's or the student's or the professor's. The idea of someone owning an idea is bonkers, especially when the ideas they claim to own are built on stuff you were just taught. You gilded the tip of a long chain of human creation you were lucky enough to be handed, now the world fucking owes you? It's absurdly arrogant.

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You gilded the tip of [i.e., added a valuable new link to] a long chain [of valuable independent links each created by some individual or small group of individuals] of human creation that the world was lucky enough to be handed, and now the world thinks you fucking owed it that? That's absurdly arrogant.

If you create a thing in the world that did not exist before, and other people find it valuable, why should you not be able to reap some of that value? Why is the world more entitled to the thing you made, the insight you had, and the work you put in, than you are?

Because what you are trading on is 99.9% your position of privilege and 0.1% your work. I've had plenty of insights and spent my life around the smartest person in the world for decades. None of us are so great. We are handed most of what we make and turn a few bolts.

If somebody pours the foundation, somebody else frames the walls, a bunch of other people hang the drywall and run the wires and hook up the plumbing, and then I come along and lay the carpet, I'm obviously an idiot if I try to take credit for the entire house. But I certainly deserve to be paid for laying the carpet. How much work was done on the house before I got there has nothing to do with whether or not I, in my turn, spent my time and knowledge and effort to make something that was valuable too.

Incidentally, did you really mean to say that you spent your life around the smartest person in the world? If so, well, I'm skeptical but also curious who you think the smartest person in the world is.

No, I meant people. I believe people deserve to be paid because we all want to eat, live, etc., and right now this means a wage. I don't believe people deserve a patent monopoly.

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