A human with a brain. What has the world come to? 😉 In his blog post “Capitalism“, US-Judge Richard Posner argues that “statistic indicates that capitalism is a necessary condition of economic success rather than a sufficient condition.” But sadly economists like Alan Greenspan have been fallen for the delusion that “capitalism was a self-regulating system; market failures were, with few exceptions, either self-correcting, or less harmful than regulation aimed at eliminating them.”
We all know where that lead to. Power needs to be controlled by an independent force. Capitalism doesn’t work without democracy and democracy, we all know only too well, works only with a balance of power.
I agree with him that the patent system is a good idea for pharmaceuticals (as I said before).
But software patents have become just a weapon. Posner says: “It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries.” And unlike in drugs, each piece of technology is protected by a long list of patents. The smart phone in your pocket is probably protected by thousands of them because each piece of it is “protected” by hundreds of individual patents.
Hopefully, more judges follow his lead and put an end to legal but unethical behavior.
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