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> But if it werent for Kearns, we probably wouldn't have intermittenent wipers nowadays.

Probably not the best example, because you could make a strong case that, with intermittent wipers being such a simple invention, probably someone else than Robert Kearns would have thought about it between 1969 and today.

It's a balance, of course... However, under today's excessive intellectual property laws, even assuming that Kearns could have successfully protected his idea (because it's not like IP usually favors the small players...), would society really have benefited by limiting the use of this idea (or having everyone pay royalties to Kearns)? Wouldn't plenty of other people, in particular motor companies, come up with the idea "for free" in the 20 years of a patent term anyway?

Also, relevant to the original discussion is the fact that the general lack of IP protection for ideas is an important component of free scientific discourse. So science is another situation where the lack of IP laws is arguably a good thing. In this light, when you ask:

> if companies could just steal ideas from other people instead of investing in R&D, why wouldn't they?

I ask in turn: given that countries can use the research produced by other countries instead of funding their own researchers, why do they do it today?

> probably someone else than Robert Kearns would have thought about it between 1969 and today.

Don't be so sure - delays existed for decades prior, and windshield wipers existed since horse&buggy days - yet nobody realized the importance of combining the two. There is a reason to the saying "everything is obvious in hindsight".

> probably someone else than Robert Kearns would have thought about it between 1969 and today.

Yeah, most great inventions would have been made within a year anyway. The truly great ones maybe in 5 years. That doesn't mean big rewards for the first inventor are wrong. The incentives from that is why so many push for these inventions.

The argument that if it wasn't for unions 100 years ago, we'd all still be working 14 hour days is based on a similar fallacy.

I don't understand what you mean with the union thing. The innovation that brought about better employer practices was employees discovering collective action, not employers discovering the benefits of being nice.

What brought on higher wages and other more employee friendly practices was economic growth. As it becomes more profitable to have employees, businesses have to pay more to get them. They pay in money but also in other benefits, like shorter working hours.

Now, if unions demand improvements during times of economic growth, and get them, they will of course claim they caused them.

You're probably not convinced, but that's enough for now :)

> It's easy to diregard IP when you don't own any, but if IP didn't exist the big, bad, evil corporations could steal ideas from people with no recourse.

In practice, they already can, because enforcement is ruinously expensive for individuals. The big, bad, evil corporations abuse IP to shut down individuals and smaller companies. Or just things they don't like competing with them. Witness Samsung and Apple.

> Sure, IP can be abused, but like the majority of laws, was created with good intentions.

A lot of things start with good intentions. However, we have to concern ourselves with results rather than intents.

I would argue that if his IP was protected he would sit on a temporary monpoly and only a handful of car manufacturers that directly license the wipers from him directly could build them. Instead every car manufacturer build them benefiting everyone.

Developing IP is expensive but protecting it is even more expensive. Imagine a company invents a cancer curing drug but it cost them 10 billion dollars in R&D. They get their patent but then their competitor spends another 10 billion dollars in R&D to make their own cancer cure that doesn't infringe the previous patent.

I think we should have a patent system where when a company creates a patent and it sets the price of the patent to the cost of the R&D (plus some profit) and all buyers will own the patent collectively. The cost is evenly divided across all buyers. Initially the first company that buys the patent pays 10 billion dollars covering the R&D costs. If a competitor buys the patent they will only have to pay 5 billion dollars which then are used to reimburse the first buyer so both only have to pay 5 billion dollars. The third pays 3.33 billion dollars which again are redistributed across the previous buyers. And so on.

But if it werent for Kearns, we probably wouldn't have intermittenent wipers nowadays

What would be your reason for believing this?

Especially since it had already been invented in the UK before Kearns started working on it.