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Comment by Red_Leaves_Flyy | Hacker News Reader

Weren’t the seatbelt and insulin famously given away? The people who own Sawstop IP are greedy people who have the blood, lost appendages, and deaths of a nearly countless number of people on their greedy shoulders. Absolutely shameless behavior.

I won’t sit here and say I have the solution; but this status quo is undeniably bad. Unchecked capitalism like this makes want me to vomit. Think of how many people would be living a better life if every table saw had this technology mandated by law for the past decade. Really think about it.

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This is a bizarre take because if not for SawStop, many, many more people would have lost blood, appendages, and lives to conventional table saws. In fact, SawStop the company only exists because 20 years ago every table saw manufacturer refused to license the technology from the inventor. None of them wanted it at any price because it would increase the cost of their saws and reduce their profits.

SS was not the only company to come up with blade sensing technology...

> None of them wanted it at any price

Do we actually know this? Or could the license terms have just been too high?

The analysis I read listed various reasons why existing manufacturers wouldn’t adopt the technology (sorry, I can’t find the link). Increased cost per saw was one, but adopting the technology would also create two product lines: “safe” saws and “unsafe” saws. So any manufacturer who adopted the tech partially would have to argue that half of their product lines were unsafe. Even if the license costs were zero, these problems would exist.

So it’s better that all products are unsafe lol. I get it from a liability pov but sucks for customers

Many more people _who have the money to invest in a premium saw_ have saved their appendages. People who can’t afford the saw have continued to lose them. That’s part of the issue here.

It's certainly an interesting problem to examine... my understanding was always that patents were designed to foster innovation by giving an inventor a way to make money on their IP so long as they gave the idea to the world. Somewhere along the way that got weaponized. So is the solution that we need to reform patents, or do we need some other way to both allow innovators to make money but in a way that doesn't exploit other parties trying to expand the footprint of a good idea? It's complicated.

Many who argue for unchecked market systems also dispute the validity of IP, because it is viewed as a destructive intervention from the state rather than a market system.

https://www.stephankinsella.com/own-ideas/

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