..... the dawn of the McNothing is gonna have to wait !!

Also, putin, I actually haven't said I do believe Lockheed. In fact, I questioned them in the OP. Just because I have my skepticism, though, doesn't mean I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of every bad argument against them, either.

"Even for a communist, that's a remarkably economically illiterate thing to say." is the model of rationality? I didn't realize the rational way to approach an argument was to fling baseless ad hominems instead of, you know, approaching the argument.

I found this statement rather revealing.

""One of the reasons we are becoming more vocal with our project is that we are building up our team as we start to tackle the other big problems. We need help and we want other people involved. It's a global enterprise, and we are happy to be leaders in it," he said.

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-lockheed-martin-pursues-compact-fusion.html#jCp"

"Just because I have my skepticism, though, doesn't mean I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of every bad argument against them, either."

You're claiming Lockheed has disclosed their work when Skunk Works is a big secret. Sorry but I'm skeptical of your supposed 'skepticism'. Counting an an announcement of a "patent application" (can anyone find this supposed application, or are we take Lockheed's press releases at their word) as public disclosure is nonsense.

It's not baseless. Putin33 is a communist. It's not as if he hides it.

And there's no point engaging him further on this issue. He's simply assuming that Lockheed Martin is lying because CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL, MAAAAAAN. He's just a kook. No need to waste further time.

And if I were to say, "Yeah, and you're a dirty conservative fuckwad. It's not like you hide it."?

See, there's a difference between acknowledging someone's beliefs and attacking them for those beliefs. You were clearly doing the latter. You don't have to do it in as many words because your view is so warped as to see "communist" as an insult, but that doesn't make the intent any different.

I think communists are wrong on economic matters, so wrong as to be economically illiterate. Putin33 basically said that we should not let inventors make money off their inventions. I think that's a quite silly thing to believe, even for someone who already believes silly and wrong things.

An insult? Only if disagreement is an insult.

No I didn't say that. You're really big on literacy but you can't read.

I took issue with your claim that there are no motives for inventing other than money.

"And there's no point engaging him further on this issue."

You never engage with anybody on any issue. Your viewpoint is warmed over Fox News talking points coupled with a barrage of calling people insane for disagreeing with you. And it's not just me, it's absolutely everybody who dares disagree with your "opinions".

"He's simply assuming that Lockheed Martin is lying because CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL, MAAAAAAN. He's just a kook. No need to waste further time."

Your only argument is that it must be true because Lockheed Martin said so. And lord knows a fucking defense contractor is so morally pure that they would never say something purely for attention, even though they even admitted that that's what this is about.

Quick I'll save Invictus the trouble of a reply.

Insert ad hominem; recite opinion read today on the Telegraph, insist that everybody agrees with you, make bold prediction with no evidence that won't come true. insert another ad hominem attack.

Repeat this formula and you too, can "engage with issues" like Invictus.

ghug,

OK, sure, he put some rhetorical spin in there. But the point is, it *was* a pretty economically illiterate thing to say. That seems undeniable, and thus pretty rational.

I didn't say what he claimed I said.

You two competing for the title of biggest brick wall on webdiplomacy?

Putin,

You implied that, even if a for-profit company was the first to discover fusion, we should consider it just as likely to have happened (presumably on a similar time-frame, or within 17 years of one -- the length of a patent) based on other motivations.

Maybe Invictus said in some other post that you said something other than that. If so, I'm sorry for endorsing him. The post in question merely called what you had just said an economically silly thing to say. It was.

"Right, because people don't have a motivation for doing anything except if they get to monopolize profits. Like, why would anybody want to create a revolutionary breakthrough in energy?

People have been doing research on fusion a lot longer than Lockheed Martin has, and unlike the latter, have actually released public details of their experiments."

It's not like we had a working patent system when we invented fire, the wheel, geometric architecture and stuff. We totally had to have the inventor having massive personal profit to invent those things, by preventing anyone else from doing them for 20 years. Patents are a monopolistic affair and I want to have none of it. They didn't serve much of a purpose when introduced, but with the current state of R&D, they are harmful.

Particularly since this patent would belong Lockheed Martin as opposed to the inventor. Which means the inventor is motivated by almost no money, since R&D people get a trifling sum compared to the value of the patent they create when they succeed. If an inventor is motivated by almost no money, you can bet companies would be willing to spend that on R&D anyway, since there is still value in a publicly released invention.

Patents are state-guaranteed monopolies. In this situation, Lockheed Martin could charge whatever they wanted for the Fusion reactor for 20 years, despite almost certainly having invented almost none of it themselves.

Invictus, what years of training in economics have you had?

and semck too, i suppose

ghug (via Putin quote),

Yes they have. And it's possible they'll achieve it first. But we're positing a situation where a for-profit company reaches the goal line first.

Yes, technology advances sometimes without profit motive. But it advances much faster with it. Some of the innovations of the past century have been from academic researchers. An overwhelming number have been from private corporations. It is extremely unjustifiable to merely assert that those would have happened anyway. It is highly unlikely that that many engineers would choose to simply donate their time to research if they were not being paid to do it, and that is to say nothing of the resources provided them by corporations.

Phil, you have a very naive view of modern invention. Something like fusion is rarely achieved by "an inventor" sitting around with a pad and paper in his garage. It takes a very large number of people working over a period of years. Now if you want to try to crowdsource this and create a wiki and beat the corporate giants to it, knock yourself out. Maybe you will. Linux is better than Windows for most applications.

A patent creates only a temporary monopoly, in exchange for permanent gain of information.

As to what putin said that was economically illiterate: whatever degree of motivation there would be to invent things without profit (and it's true there would be some), there is going to be much more with profit, and more people will work on it harder, especially if the profits are large and people can organize themselves into groups (e.g. corporations) to pursue them. This is trivially elementary economics.

@SD, I do not have a degree in economics. I took quite a few courses in law school where the economic analysis of behavior played a substantial role, some of which were focused entirely on such questions. Since I was taking other courses as well, it would be hard to break it down into years for you. In any event, the question is irrelevant. What's relevant is what I know about economics, and whether I'm right or wrong.

I was just curious as to what makes you guys so "economically literate". Especially when I disagree with you, and am economically literate

Word.

Incidentally, @ghug, perhaps you (and perhaps putin) read Invictus to be saying *nobody* would *ever* invent things without patents; which of course *would* be false. I didn't read him that way. If you did, maybe this is all a misunderstanding.

@semck83

It is the fact that I don't have an "inventor" based view of science that leads me to reject patents. "inventors" have never existed, and never will. Instead we have two forces for development. The profit based one, the commercial one, is directed by companies, and if you add patents, results in 20 year monopolies. That is not funny to me. The academic one is based on prestige, and patents are meaningless to it.

Patents do nothing other than obstruct the free market, and thus damage consumers. As a consumer, I would prefer if patents didn't exist. Not having patents would not stifle creativity or invention. Again, R&D departments wouldn't stop existing. Even without the promise of a monopoly, research at a commercial level is valuable.

Something like fusion won't be developed in a garage, it'll be developed through decades, probably centuries of gradual efficiency improvements. Why should one company with a patent control it?

I lol'd at Semck calling Phil 'naive', what with his still not having produced a single document with Lockheed's supposed "patent applications" and yet believing they submitted them and that they constitute "public disclosure".

And yeah somebody should wake up Tesla from the dead and ask him how he came up with all those inventions since he didn't get the patents for any of them and died broke. Somebody should ask the Cubans how they developed the lung cancer vaccine too. Oh and all those Soviet space and military inventions.

"As to what putin said that was economically illiterate: whatever degree of motivation there would be to invent things without profit (and it's true there would be some), "

This is all I suggested. So rather than me being illiterate, it's plain that you don't bother to read what is actually said.

"there is going to be much more with profit, and more people will work on it harder, especially if the profits are large and people can organize themselves into groups (e.g. corporations) to pursue them. "

Funny for all their record profits none of these wonderful corporations bothered to do anything about ebola research, nor have they or will they produce a working model of green energy, nor have they produced efficient cars without government prodding.

The invisible hand involves a lot of hoping and wishing that corps will conduct research in areas of actual human need.

"I was just curious as to what makes you guys so "economically literate". Especially when I disagree with you, and am economically literate"

Semck read a couple books in the 'secondary literature' and a few wikipedia articles so he must be an expert and know better than people with actual economics degrees.

Oh no even better, he took a rat choice theory course at the law school! No wonder he's such a keen observer of economic 'literacy'.

I guess Wired magazine is "economically illiterate" too.

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/patent-law-broken-abused-to-stifle-innovation/

What you mean patents create unending lawsuits rather than direct money to research & development?

Wow I am so surprised. I didn't expect patents to be used as a way to stifle competitors in your field. I didn't expect unending lawsuits to result from restricting access to ideas to everyone. Did you know you can patent "business practices"?

Semck, Invictus did at least implicitly say that profit was the only motivation for research by calling the statement that there are other motivators "economically illiterate."

OK, so I agree that on that reading, Invictus was wrong, so as I said, one of us was misreading Invictus, and I was misreading putin. Of course, on this reading, putin's point doesn't really weaken Invictus's that patents are necessary, but I'll grant that putin's point also wasn't illiterate.

I presumed (I don't know whether correctly) that Invictus, like me, was interpreting Putin's comments in the context of the conversation, to be implying that patents don't actually create additional motivation, but in any event, I can see that was a misreading of putin.

"http://www.wired.com/2013/07/patent-law-broken-abused-to-stifle-innovation/"

There's nothing illiterate in complaining about patent trolls. The system has problems and should be fixed. THat doesn't mean genuine inventors shouldn't be granted patents, which was the claim under discussion.

"Oh no even better, he took a rat choice theory course at the law school!"

Oh, no, the courses weren't about the economics of legal practice, specifically.