Will "Intellectual Property" Hurt or Help "Green" Technology?

Does patent law, trade marks, trade secrets, and such hinder technical innovation? More particularly, will "Intellectual Property" hurt or help "Green" technology?

The provocative article below was published by the Independent Institute. When I saw it posted on Dick and Sharon's LA Progressive web site, I remembered the interest of Wes, Cameron, and some of my other "Silicon Valley" Green Party friends in these questions. I am not familiar with the Independent Institute, but the arguments sound "libertarian." I would suggest that Greens throw away the naive libertarian's faith in the capitalist marketplace and keep what information and insight is useful.

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Posted on LA Progressive, Tuesday, May 26, 2009.
Intellectual Monopoly is an Unnecessary Evil
by Art Carden

In a rush to stimulate the economy, the Obama administration is touting various “visionary” plans to make the American economy more progressive, more innovative, and more forward-looking by subsidizing politically-motivated projects like “green” technology. These hands-on policies will be ineffective. Recent research suggests that a much more effective way to accomplish the same goals would be to eliminate intellectual monopoly and to reduce the regulatory burdens on innovators.

According to conventional wisdom in economics, temporary monopoly rights—patents—are necessary to give people incentives to come up with newer, better ideas. After all, if people who came up with new ideas could see those new ideas copied without cost by competitors, why bother spending the time and energy? Hence, we have patents.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong. In their 2008 book Against Intellectual Monopoly, economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine dropped a bombshell that will, I hope, overturn the consensus about rights to ideas. Using carefully developed theory and a host of real-world examples, they show how patents actually reduce, rather than encourage, innovation. Innovators like steam engine pioneer James Watt, devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to defending monopoly rights rather than to creating new value. Innovation and growth proceeded apace once the patents expired. In Boldrin and Levine’s opinion, this delayed the onset of modern economic growth.

As these authors argue, intellectual monopoly is an unnecessary evil. Further, it is a relic of medieval and early-modern mercantilist regulations whereby kings and nobles granted efficiency-reducing monopoly privileges to favored constituents. Eliminating intellectual monopoly would reduce the incomes of the intellectual monopolists, but it would unleash new creative energies throughout the economy.

In his recent book The Gridlock Economy, legal scholar Michael Heller argued that intellectual monopoly reduces the pace of innovation. He notes that innovative rap music, like Public Enemy’s initial work, was an early casualty of intellectual monopoly. Demands that artists pay royalties for borrowed music sharply restricted rap musicians’ ability to innovate.

While some people might not care about innovative rap music, many care about access to life-saving new medical technologies. Heller explains how this industry is particularly susceptible to the “tragedy of the anti-commons” created by intellectual monopoly. If an invention requires multiple patented innovations to be implemented, then every individual holder of one of the necessary patents can block further innovation. This slows the pace of economic progress.

Consider another example. Would Britney Spears’s artistic output fall if her intellectual monopoly rights were rescinded? I doubt it. Ms. Spears is much wealthier than she would be in the absence of intellectual monopoly, but her wealth is largely what economists refer to as economic rent: income in excess of her opportunity cost. Eliminating her intellectual monopoly very likely would not cause her to choose another occupation, but it would lead to an increase in net creative output.

Progress is also slowed by the regulation of food and drugs, which requires years of extensive and expensive testing before a drug can be approved for sale. This means that some lives are saved because people are restricted to hyper-safe drugs, but the lives saved come at the cost of lives that are lost because the appearance of these drugs on the market is delayed. Further, other drugs that would be useful but might carry greater risks never make it to the market to begin with.

White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel suggested that the Administration should not waste the opportunities presented by the present economic and political crisis. Right now, the administration has the opportunity to make a bold move that will stimulate the economy for generations to come. By eliminating intellectual monopoly and by liberalizing markets, we can encourage further innovation and greater prosperity.

Lessons of Feb. 5

I come away from the Green Party Presidential Primary with a whole list of lessons to be learned and hopefully there are some readers who will think a bit, and then act.

To begin with, the turnout for the Green Party, as a percentage of registered Green in California, dropped from 2004. That fact, by itself, would be worrisome. Given the fact that the Democratic primaries and caucuses across the entire country, have been pulling in record numbers of participants, our lack of excitement and growth demonstrates the need for change within the Green Party, but not necessarily the change that some are demanding.

Already, I have read posts from Green Advocates who continue to raise the issue of our apportionment formula being unfair. Well, they are all unfair. Is it fair that the Democratic Party allocates a block of Super Delegates and then gives a substantial number of those to the AFL-CIO? Is it fair that Democratic Party insiders have so much power as to be able to control the outcome of a close contest?

The category includes Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore, retired congressional leaders such as Dick Gephardt, and all Democratic National Committee members, some of whom are appointed by party chairman Howard Dean.

The only truly fair method would be to conduct a national primary and that, with its demand for high level financing through television / radio commercials is a guarantee that you get only the rich as candidates. It is time to stop whining like Mitt Romney. It is costing him votes and it is winning our whiners no new friends.

The second lesson that I take away is that we do not yet have any candidate who has a message that is capable of inspiring this country at this point in time. We do have candidates who will be able to pull in small segments of those who acknowledge the fact that they have been disenfranchised by the duopoly, but none will capture the imagination of a wider electorate with the messages they have used to date.

If Ralph Nader (who captured most of the California Delegates) ends up winning the nomination, I can only hope that he does not repeat his campaigns of 2000 / 2004 because that is not what the majority of American want to hear. It's tone was too angry, too negative and particularly in a year when even the Clinton's are having to bite their normally divisive tongues, it will win few new friends.

If Cynthia McKinney (who out polled Nader stand-in Howie Hawkins in Illinois) puts together enough states without primaries to win, she will also alienate many if her message stays negative. I watched one time Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta on KSBW-Salinas last night. He underscored that Hillary Clinton wins (vs Obama) when she talks about what she will do and loses when she only repeats the experience vs. non-experience (of Obama) mantra.

Greens need to talk about what we will do, not what we won't do.

At this time, in this election, especially with the enthusiasm that Obama generates we have to be talking about making positive change and the creation of a better world. Americans are basically optimistic people. Until we have a candidate that can articulate what it means to be Green in a positive manner, who shows us a vision of tomorrow, we will remain merely footnotes to an otherwise exciting election.

The third lesson I see here is that this party professes to believe in grassroots democracy and yet seems to fail, time and again, at grassroots organizing. That must change. If we were doing what we need to be doing, we would see new groups forming and new faces of activism at the county level. Instead, we see the same faces, hear the same voices repeating the same things that we saw, heard in 2006, in 2004...

There are centers around this country where people are doing things the right way, where the party is growing and coming ever closer to electoral success in partisan races. Illinois is one state where the gubernatorial candidate polled over 10%. What are they doing right that we are not doing? It may pay to figure it out. From what I observe, they don't spend a lot of time fighting internal battles that originated years ago and which still fester.

Green Aesthetics

Two serendipitous events caused me to ask the question of whether their could be such a thing as a Green Aesthetic, or a Green Art. First, my wife and I visited the San Jose Museum of Art yesterday to view two small exhibits. One was a collection of lithograph's by the Spanish artist Joan Miró and selected works by Richard Diebenkorn, created in New Mexico between 1950-1952.

The second event was the fact that I spent more time looking at the Green Change web site. Actually I was prodded into doing this by Sanda Everette who thought I had missed putting a link into the right side menu here. (I had, but consciously... it is there now.)

The words that I am reacting to come on the "About us" page.

Green Change is a community of people with Green values: Justice, democracy, sustainability and non-violence. We work together to share Green art, politics and culture.

What would be the characteristics of a Green Art? I think foremost that is is not defined solely by the politics of it's content, though content is always a concern. There is a lot of so called art that people make that would never be called "green". In fact, most of it does not cross the threshold from being only propaganda to being art.

Art has the power to move us by its unique combination of aesthetics and concepts. Take away either one and it loses power. Take away all of the aesthetic communication involved and I no longer call it art, only propaganda.

I am not going to try to take readers from Aristotle through Kant to Clement Greenberg. Rather, I would like to suggest that the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi embodies the characteristic of a Green Aesthetics. I referenced the wikipedia article on wabi-sabi because it probably is better than more "arty" books at communicating the sense of wabi-sabi.

I recently picked up a book on wabi-sabi in Kinokunya book store. They made it all sound so easy with quick quotes from the likes of John Coltrane. "You can play a shoestring if you are sincere." While sincere expression is a part of wabi-sabi, they left unstated that Coltrane was a tireless worker at what he did.

I've been reading a Jerry Coker book on how to practice jazz and in it he describes that someone (Dave Baker?) observed John Coltrane practice during one of his 11 hour practice sessions and remarked that Trane, who by this time was already a colossal player, intensely practiced in C major the whole time.

Sincerity by itself is not enough. There is much art that is sincerely bad.

In a similar fashion, may American text emphasize the idea of being unfinished and imperfect and use that as an excuse for a total lack of craft. In terms of the pottery that was so highly valued by the tea masters of Japan, the imperfections resulting from the the firing, the accidental but aesthetically correct markings of that process were highly valued.

"It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect." (Richard R. Powell, Wabi-Sabi Simple

Still missing from the wikipedia article is the sense that there was a value in being old, of having survived, of carrying a patina of regular use. It is not a degrading of art by use but rather an elevation of the useful to the status of "art". Maybe this is the one concept that seems the most foreign to Western artists and the reasons why so many are so wide of the mark when they try so hard to follow this aesthetic.

The O'Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Vally, CA has an annual show entitled Wabi-Sabi. From what I have seen, it rarely achieves its goal.

Why I think this is a Green Aesthetic

The emotional base of wabi-sabi comes from our relationship to nature.
Wabi-sabi values that which has a history of being useful.
Objects which are described as wabi-sabi are generally subdued rather than loud, simple if form rather than ornate.
Wabi-sabi recognizes the process of creation and the interconnectedness of

One of my vivid memories from five years of living in Japan was the experience of spending a dreary Autumn afternoon in the Nezu Art Museum which had a show of 16th / 17th Century ceramics. I don't remember any specifics. I only remember leaving the Nezu and walking through their garden. One shaft of sun broke the clouds, striking a small maple tree. One red leaf dropped, coming to rest on viewing bench in the garden. Simple, quiet, unforgettable.