Comment by anonymous5133 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymous5133 | Hacker News Reader

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Exactly. None need look further than the story of american superconductor. American superconductor made wind turbine control systems. They partnered with a Chinese company called sinovel who made the turbines. Eventually some Chinese engineer stole the company's software and gave it to the company. The Chinese company canceled the contract with american superconductor and then used the stolen IP to continue business as usual. American superconductor was nearly bankrupted in the process.

Free trade only works if you have fair trade, otherwise it is every man for themselves. Trump knows that trade with China is rigged so there is no point in having free trade with them. Most people who complain about Trump playing hardball with China are very uninformed about the reality of the situation. China is getting ready to gut the US economy from the inside out. China will make sure it never has a trade deficit with the USA. They will buy some of our stuff but only if they have a trade surplus.

Isn't this what the WTO is for?

It’s extremely unfortunate that we’re having to take the painful tariff route, and while Trump is not stately in his handling of the situation, it’ll be a valuable lesson to China if the US can push their overleverged economy into recession with escalating tariffs (as it’s clear they’ll continue their advancement through the theft of Western technology).

Yesterday China fell back to having the #3 largest stock exchange. With US success other countries might start piling on soon, hopefully China will take action before that happens though, it could get really ugly really quick for them

I think you'd be waiting a long time, and it won't be ugly just for them.

You're highly misinformed. Trump never cared about the IP angle, only deficits. The IP angle came out of a report that was long in the works. Furthermore it doesn't make sense to talk about bilateral trade figures. China has basically balanced trade with the world because it sources inputs from abroad. That's also without talking about the services trade of which China buys a great deal from us.

Knowledge wants to be free. Adam Smith considered IP laws to be an unnecessary evil. The Chinese are just being good capitalists. American Superconductor nearly went bankrupt because they couldn't compete on a level playing field.

https://youtu.be/axXTMUmTOyE

Do you believe that, without IP law, we'd still have companies invest the amounts they do into creating new technology (particularly in high R&D areas like pharma)?

Pfffff, just not pharma. A lion share of genuine new pharmaceutical research is done by underpaid undergrad mules in sweatshops called "captive R&D centres" in places like China and India, that the reality.

Isn't most research done in government labs or universities?

Innovation is great but it's mostly a buzzword to describe the aformentioned research in commercial areas

No. The US Government is 18%-20% of all R&D spending in the US. A lot of that is in the military budget of course.

Which makes perfect sense when you consider the size of the private economy versus the share of government spending that could reasonably go to R&D (versus entitlements, military, infrastructure, etc).

Private corporations are around ~$400 billion of the ~$550 billion per year spent in the US on R&D.

The government R&D figure as a share is higher in the EU than in the US, but not dramatically so. The private sector is simply too large by comparison and can focus its resources more narrowly on things like R&D than what a government could be expected to.

Not only does private industry spend more on R&D, but I'd personally argue that their $400 billion is required to be more effective at a per-dollar level, given the inherent competitiveness and need to create something profitable.

Knowledge wants to be free

The speech you are quoting also contains “information wants to be expensive” remember. It’s worth digging out the full text and reading it.

hah, I'm all for piracy, but only for personal use - if someone steals ("copies") from me and then makes a profit, I want (and deserve) a (large) chunk of that profit.

Research isn't going to pay for itself just magically.

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