I believe money is only a tool. Those who seek to increase their financial wealth gain nothing of value. Since money is only a man made concept. We could use shiny pebbles instead. In time your possessions will be outdate, your art collections fallen into utter obscurity, and your memory forgotten once your patent has died out. Information should be open.
I firmly believe that information should be open. Although everyone is entitled to their secret, and I like my privacy, as should you. But why should the latest scientific discoveries only be available to those with millions of dollars to spend, when it can help so many.
I pose the question what if information was like open-source software? In a world where people band together communally and work to bring about an advancement of humanity. Perhaps this is just my inner Marxist speaking again. But money and material objects are not all there is. What remains once we are dead is our legacy. Perhaps only in some obscure manner but most people find inspiration in such manner. Find me a mathematician who does not know the names Euler, Gauss, Descartes. Or a game designer who doesn’t know about McGonigal, Carmack , Shigeru, Roper, or Newell. They are all nieces, but then so do we all exist in such.
We are a macrocosm of microcosms. All of which link in various ways to form new microcosm which are part of greater macrocosms, and all of them add up to the megacosm which is humanity. For instance, Indie Game Designer -> Game Designer -> IT People -> People. Or within your community that you live you find people that fall into varying professions, and lives. Now you have a microcosm that is your community, but the members of the community each belong to another microcosm.
Ok now what is the point of my boiling into social structures. Simple. People have hobbies things they really like doing. Take for instance someone who likes gardening. What if instead of a boring secretary job they planted crops to feed their community. Now someone comes up with a great idea of how to increase productivity amongst these people, shares the information and everyone benefits.
Thus by an advance of a microcosm of gardeners have helped various microcosm communities. Now this eventually spreads. And your children learn of the Kempner farming method of increased productivity. But if Kempner patented the farming method, and only he got rich off it what happened to him in the end?
As much as we value money it is essentially worthless due to it constantly changing. What was a dollar 10 years ago are now 20. Imagine Hitler had conquered the planet. And it had been fixed since then that a loaf of bread was one frank. That means you could perfectly plan for retirement and made sure you had enough money.
I’m not saying let’s all go commi - and also not saying go Hitler, - but let’s start being less douche about how we live. Draw inspiration from your fellow man, and say “How can I make it better, and how can I make it better for everyone”
Oh and one more thing against patents. “The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed a patent on it is horrifying” –John Carmack.
And just for fun, if Einstein patented E=MC^2 we might not have nuclear reactors. Or if Newton patented his 3 laws of physics, we might have . . . well anything we have today. Just think about the number of scientific equations that if were allowed to be patented would have caused many of the things we love not to exist. Now think of what patents are currently denying existence.
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