> > > However, we /can/ learn to behave differently and slowly, I
> think we
> > > are. But you can't claim it's natural to share - it isn't outside
> > > your family unit.
> >
> > IMHO sharing food has nothing to do with sharing knowledge.
>
> They are closer than you think.
>
?
> > Only one person can eat one thing, but you don't lose knowledge by
> > sharing it. This does not mean you want you necessarily want to
> share> all the knowledge you have, but any comparison with material
> goods is
> > misleading.
>
> You don't lose the knowledge itself, but you /do/ lose the
> advantage
> gained by you knowing it and no one else. That's what patents in
> general are about, company secrets, government intelligence
> services
> and indeed all schools in the western educational paradigm (see
> "Deschooling society" by Ivan Illich).
>
For patents to be worth anything, the knowledge they disclose
should not be deductible (is that English?) from available knowledge.
That means they should disclose new empirical knowledge, or
in other words, new teachings on controllable uses of forces of nature.
Otherwise, the incentive to disclose something you know and
nobody else knows is fake, for everybody else can deduce it when
needed.
> If you look at the first actions the British empire took after
> conquering India, they destroyed the schools, factories and
> anything
> which could compete with English industry. In two generations,
> India
> had been set back at least a hundred years. This kept them under
> the
> imperial yoke until the British sent a really stupid governor over
> there and prevented the India tea company from doing what it did,
> and
> it was only this idiocy that caused the rise of nationalism.
>
> If you take this still further, there is an alarming tendency in
> British and American companies to try and prevent their employees
> learning new tricks in case they might up and leave for a better
> job.
> I have seen it so many times it hurts, because really they are
> damaging the common pool of national employees. Then they have the
> gall to complain about skills shortages and want to import third
> world labour who can't complain, switch job or do anything but work
> for peanuts for fear of losing their work visa. This of course
> means
> all the locals become unemployed and suck the country dry by being
> unproductive!
>
> Welcome to the modern working world!
>
I get quite lost in this, but I don't think I'm interested.