Was Germany’s 19th century industrial expansion due to an absence of copyright?
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In How Asia Works, a great book on industrial expansion in Asia, Studwell notes that when Taiwan was moderately prosperous and dominated by industry half of the workforce could not even read. What really benefited East-Asia was a grey-collar culture, a national, egalitarian educational system and corporatism rather than a white-collar, classist and academic culture more common in say, England.
This is something you also find in Germany. The education system was designed to be broad. Schools were universal and focused on practical knowledge, with few ivory towers. Knowledge was historically and is still spread around between institutes (Frauenhofer say), firms, and industry-friendly universities, dispersed and practical rather than concentrated, theoretic and elitist.
This Prussian style system which is really where most German institutions come from also was quite literally copied by a lot of now industrial powerhouses in Asia.
“Mandarin” also being the name of a particular type of orange (fruit) because of the Chinese connection. The Dutch word for the fruit being “sinaasappel” — Modification of earlier “Chinas-appel” (close enough to English to guess) — https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinaasappel
However, the Orange Order in Northern Ireland is named after the Dutch King William of Orange, whose title “Prince of Orange” derives from a principality in southern France — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange — but this in turn is probably etymologically derived from the Gaulish ar-aus(i)o- ('temple, cheek': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse) while the fruit and colour come from the Arabic nāranj (نارنج) which is probably close to the original name for the fruit in Asia.
To a degree, most modern programming languages do just that - inspire themselves in ye olde K&R C of the 1970s heavily, but dropping the parts that made the code unsafe or impractical.
I also note that in addition to the Fraunhofer institutes which as you rightly say have a applied f9cus there are also the Max Planck Institutes with a much more fundamental focus. In fact I would argue that research in Germany is much more fundamentals focused than in many other countries.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/247238/umfrag...
That said, they don't really relate to the topic of the article as they would not have had any influence on the German industrialisation, considering that they only exist since the 1960s.
In tertiary education there are multiple tracks you can choose the more academically focused universities, more industry focused universities of applied sciences and higher certificates in the profession you learned (my father for example got a master painter certification, which allowed him to train apprentices and taught him a lot of the skills to run his own business).
But what's more important the school system starts splitting people up into workers and academics as soon as they start their secondary education: - The kids that perform better in school go to the "Gymnasium" which leads them to get a high school degree (Abitur or Matura) which allows entry to universities focused on academics. - The kids that perform worse go to a junior high school and start an apprenticeship and go to vocational school after finishing junior high. The academically stronger kids also have the option to get a high school degree at vocational school that allows them to enter a university of applied science (Fachabitur or Berufsmaturität).
Of course there are ways to change between the two tracks but most people follow one of the given paths. And I'd say even the more "ivory-tower" universities at least in STEM are really industry focused with companies having a big presence on campuses.
Edit: not disagreeing that it's harsh, just wanted to clarify that point.
At least in Germany it depends on the state you are in. The teachers make their recommendation, not entirely based on your grades in school, but also based on your general approach to learning and understanding as they got to observe you for a few years. Depending on the German state, this recommendation is binding, but in some of the states the final decision is with your parents.
Or rather, academic test scores, which will be perfectly correlated with parents financial status, status and employment.
There's no doubt that a highly conscientious and thoughtful trades-person could raise children to compete with the bankers kids, but it's just so much harder.
So you end up with an institutionalized classism.
That said, the same thing ends up happening in the US/UK, probably by more systematic than institutionalized mechanism.
The dark truth is that in some ways if functions better, because broadly speaking highly conscientious parents raise highly conscientious kids, but it also makes things more stringent and unfair.
(Germany:) " Children from rural areas, pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds and boys in general have a significantly lower probability of being selected to the most academic school track even when their ability is similar to that of their urban and better socially placed counterparts." [1]
The other thing is that Anglo culture is just more open.
PISA testing shows that when accounting for economic factors, immigrants to US/UK/Can etc. perform just as well as local kids. (i.e. immigrants are poorer, but they do just as well as those with same economic background)
On the Continent, immigrants fare considerably poorer, especially in Germany and ironically the worst in Finland which otherwise has one of the top education systems in the world. [2] (See page 28)
A lot of this might be a function of language: English is something many migrants might already speak whereas German and Finnish are that much harder to pick up.
That said from the rest of the PISA paper it doesn't seem that Continental Schools stick out that much otherwise and Germany did successfully make some 'big reforms' in 2000 that seemed to move the needle overall, though this could also be a function of unification leap forward.
As far as copyright in 19th century - I wonder if the UK's lack of progress in publishing was also a function of super classiest social hierarchy where they didn't see a point in that much education for the plebes?
As for 'modern lessons' I think this analysis applies mostly to 'knowledge' more so than much else. I don't think progress is hampered because 'Thor' is copyright and by and large, information is mostly accessible. I think this analogue might apply to the current issue of copyright of Scientific papers, but not much else.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242221851_Inequalit...
[2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
I also provided you with scientific evidence that the 'scoring' German approach systematically underrepresented those otherwise equally capable, which is further evidence of that.
Finally, the fact that migrant children perform so much more poorly in Germany compared to US/UK, while indirect, does provide more evidence for the pile.
'Test Scores' are not 'the best thing' for poor kids by a mile - they are merely an 'outlet valve' for some special kids from special families.
I remember being at the home with a woman who married a Latino migrant in California. She was a cleaner. I asked the teenage children 'what university they were going to' and they balked, they literally had not given it a thought. In their 'family / lifestyle / education / community' - University was for 'rich people'. The daughter was helping out part time with the mom at the cleaning company, I'm pretty certain she will grow up to be a cleaner and that's that.
What's 'best' for kids are good schools, good teachers, good mentorship, quality peers, and some semblance stability at home i.e. parents with stable jobs, not in jail, not evicted or homeless, not caught up in the drug world. Only with those things do 'tests' start to have some kind of meaning.
That said, switching from one type to another during secondary education is far from impossible, but also not always easy and smooth - it depends a lot on the school you leave and the school you enter. On the other hand, it’s very easy to start an academic education when you have finished your vocational training. More than one third of college students don’t have the „Abitur“ (graduated from Gymnasium)
I does sound great I must say. I've also found those Gammas are quite happy people on average. Some people call them 'cogs' but those are haters and deltas.
The development in recent years has been that a larger part of the population is finishing their "Abitur", which is the high school diploma equivilant, allowing them to apply to universities.
Often they don't feel like universities are the right place for them though and they apply to apprenticeships, which makes it harder for people who ended school after tenth grade to get apprenticeships. At least in certain fields like lab assistents, IT workers and some others. In other fields such carpentry, plumbers, ... I don't think the Abitur impacts the application process much and can even be seen as a negative.
I have non-academic parents and the system sure as hell made me understand that very well at a young age. The folks with attorneys and doctors as parents had it way easier...
It took a lot of additional energy to be able to go to "Gymnasium" in Bavaria. In the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, were I was born, this was much easier though.
This is one of the very few aspects that socialist/Eastern Bloc countries actually did better than the capitalist Western ones. Working-class kids had a fairly equal opportunity at getting into the same schools as the rich kids.
In my experience academic competition is way less cutthroat than what I hear from the US, India, China etc.
- VMBO-praktijk (applied vocational education, 4 years)
- VMBO-theoretisch (theoretic vocational education, 4 years)
- HAVO (general high-school education, 5 years)
- VWO (university-prep high-school education, 6 years)
Also, the specialization doesn't happen until they're 14, and students are free to switch if they meet the grades. If they get sufficient marks across the board, they can "upgrade" to the next track, or if they'd have to repeat the current year they can sometimes choose to downgrade a track instead.
Finally, students can re-enroll in the higher track after graduation as well (starting from the penultimate year). It's not uncommon for someone to complete their VMBO-T track first, then re-enter the HAVO track and get a HAVO certification in six years instead of the nominal five (or complete the VWO track in 7 years that way). As said, not everyone learns at the same pace and I think this setup gives many students lost of opportunities for a good outcome.
Zoals Joris Luyendijk heel correct uitlegt gaat bijv. slimheid veel meer over de kwaliteit van het Nederlands wat om je heen wordt gepraat als kind, dan of je werkelijk intellectueel sterk bent: https://www.nporadio1.nl/nieuws/binnenland/f4dce416-6b35-49f... - @ minuut 08:43
Ook in de docuserie 'Klassen' laten de regisseurs zien hoe het onderwijsstelsel juist het klasseverschil in Nederland verergert: https://www.2doc.nl/documentaires/series/1doc/2020/klassen.h...
"In Nederland zijn we ervan overtuigd dat iedereen gelijk is in het onderwijs en dat je dus niet rijk hoeft te zijn om naar het vwo te gaan. Is dit wel zo? Deze vraag stellen regisseurs Sarah Sylbing en Ester Gould in de zevendelige docuserie 'Klassen'."
Het NLse systeem is misschien in sommige opzichten beter, maar het deelt niet de gelijke kansen uit waarvan de meeste mensen geloven dat ze het doet.
Today, almost everyone does Abitur and a Bachelor's degree... tbh you are regarded as pretty simple if you didnt finish at least a Bachelor and given our traditional dual system of diploma and trades it's really sad to observe this... We actually have a solid and proven system for people to learn the trades (Ausbildung) after secondary education. Master craftsmen like electricians have potential to earn WAY more than many of the snobby academics and will have insane job security. But "society" (read: industry) conditions people that a Bachelor is necessary. Got a Bachelor degree in whatever? Welcome to your new job as secretary, here is your €30k/year pre tax (with some plumber laughing in the background).
The meaning of the Bachelor degree has been watered down to nothing in the last 20 years. It sounds arrogant, but I really do know students in university who are incapable of composing a sensible German sentence that is logically conistent and grammatically correct. As if there was zero academic requirements to enter. Germany has a "numerus clausus" (required minimum grade)for many popular fields but Abitur grades are not comparable at all across federal states. 1.0 in Bavaria (actually hard) means something entirely different than in Hamburg (quite achievable) but students from both will be treated equal when chosen for university.
It's almost impossible to fail Abitur and the Bachelor's unless you make your own life unnecessarily hard or have some pretty bad luck in life. "Street smart" people will easily get a Bachelor degree because cheating is easy and expectations are minimal - unless you decide to do engineering at RWTH Aachen or TUM (which are amazing programs) in whcih case you'd actually be doing something mildly demanding.
When Germany switched from its diploma system to a more "internationally standardized" Bachelor/Master model it destroyed a successful model of education in an attempt to be more comparable on an international scale. Back in the day, people in the US or Asia wouldn't immediately know what degree "Dipl. Ing." corresponded to and how you'd translate that but I will defend my opinion to death that those degree programs were better at actually producing capable people.
Industry just wants to produce work drones and modern universities are their partners in crime. Actual academics start after the Bachelor when the simpletons and bored people have left.
People in the comments call this system harsh, but what they fail to understand is that is not that you get a lane with 10 and that's your lane for ever. In Switzerland you can not go to Gymnasium but if you feel like it after the normal Sek (Secondary School, that is 3 years rather then 6) you can still do a short Gymnasium and get the same degree, its just that you lose 1 year.
You can also do the 3 years in Secondary, then do the Apprenticeship, for example in my case 4 years of school and working in IT (in my case software development) and during that you can complete almost the same degree you get in gymnasium. That degree will allow you to get into 'technical university' and you earn a batchlor. You can also do this degree while working.
Or if you really want to go to a full university like ETH Zürich, you can do 1 extra year of school after.
So the different lanes have a lot of intersections and ways you can go from one to the other. If you are slow at developing you don't go to the gymnasium but you can earn that same degree later in multiple ways if you discover.
This doesn’t seem supported by any data I can find.
“In 2009/10 there were 3,094 gymnasia in Germany, with c. 2,475,000 students (about 28 percent of all precollegiate students during that period)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany)
A similar measure that’s a bit more comparable and easier to find data is rates of tertiary education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
If you look at the 4-year degree chart, Switzerland’s graduation rate is 49% while Germany’s is 28% for the year 2015. That would be unlikely if Germany’s per-capita attendance for Gymnasium was more than twice that of Switzerland’s.
Not sure where my number come from, honestly the last time I was interest in this was when I was in school.
The OECD, I don't know how it is calculated.
The rise of industrialization in the states was driven by an educated work force from England that was low on supplies and materials, so they immigrated to the USA which had an abundance of supplies and materials.
When the English workers that were educated in various industrialization techniques setup in the USA, Americans got apprenticeship jobs under the educated English workers and learned.
Your observation about England being white-collar, classist and academic culture may be true to a general extent, but they were the first industrialized nation and then spread that industrialization knowledge through firms, trade, and related institutions. England did not rely on a classist ivory tower culture to operate their industrial sector nor to spread that knowledge.
I can't agree more, as I saw what you say for a fact when working in Asia (mainly in Japan and to a lesser extent elsewhere—as I'd spent less time in those other areas). The work I was doing at the time meant that I mingled daily with ordinary workers and I could see firsthand the way the work culture worked.
I recall several instances that struck home to the extent that I've never forgotten them—and I've recounted them to others on many occasions since to illustrate this cultural difference, for they manifest in different (and very sensible) patterns of work (the approach to certain types of work are altogether different to those one typically sees in Western cultures). Once such instance involved a very well known Japanese car manufacturer (where for a time I found myself working in a Japanese car manufacturing plant along with the workers (it's too involved to explain how this came about, you'll just have to take my word that it's fact).
Needless to say, car manufacturing plants are complex beasts especially when they involve JIT (Just in Time), automated assembly, robots etc. as well as skilled manual labor—all simultaneously occurring together. Here, the instance that stands out is how the cleaner/floor-sweeper was employed. Unlike in the West where his job would have been clearly defined to only one type of task—here, that being to keep everything at floor level clean—his 'equivalent' position in Japan was in fact much more complex (also his work was much more varied and thus more interesting for him). Instead of just having to keep the floor clean he had full responsibility for everything that happened in his section of the factory from right at floor level to 30cm above it. This meant that his work and responsibilities involved the following:
(a) Keeping the floor clean and ensuring that things/miscellaneous objects were not left in the wrong place that would hinder production.
(b) He had full responsibility to ensure that any damage to the floor's work surface was fixed immediately/ASAP and that included ensuring any damage to the painted surface was immediately repainted.
(c) He was fully responsible to ensure that any damage to the robot tracks (copper strips embedded at the floor's surface that robots followed to move and deliver stuff) were fixed immediately (as the copper was exposed, the tracks could be easily damaged (an open-circuit could bring things to a halt, hence if damage occurred there then it was of considerable urgency to have them fixed). Moreover, any failure meant that the monkey was on his back to have things up and running ASAP—but what's truly significant was that he had full autonomy to act immediately without first having to seek approval from his supervisors—as he had both the authority and resources at his disposal to do so (if his supervisonrs hadn't already been made aware of the problem, which is most unlikely given the plant's excellent submarine-like Christmas tree fault system that alerts everyone across the plant, then they'd have been informed afterwards).
(d) He was responsible for ensuring that all ancillary plant and equipment between floor level and 30cm above it was working and fully maintained (that included facilities such as power outlets (which included both 110 and 220V outlets at every point), note: all power utility outlets were within this 30cm range. (Excluded from his responsibility was plant specifically related to the manufacturing process, industrial machines, presses etc. although he'd be part of the team involved in helping to fix them).
(e) He was responsible for ensuring any damage to the walls within this 30cm range was fixed (this also meant responsibly for keeping them clean and when necessary having them repainted.
Clearly, this worker had considerable responsibilities and that he'd been properly trained for the work, in fact he wasn't just a cleaner but rather a skilled worker who had to have at least trade-level skills in several trades and the guys who did this work took it very seriously indeed (they considered what they did to be absolutely essential to the production process).
I don't have time to discuss the production line fault system except to say that when a production fault occurred all workers responded in ways that would make a drill sergeant very happy (frankly, it was amazing to witness).
This and other instances were an eye-opener to me, the way things happened there I reckon just couldn't be implemented in the West, and similarly to you I'd put this down to both the egalitarian educational systems common throughout Asia as well as to workers having a different type of attitude to work—one that's instinctively much more collaborative (they've a very clear sense of the common goals).
______
BTW/Afterthought: I reckon you're right about Germany, it's always had a strong apprenticeship culture from ancient times and it's always paid attention to skill and craftsmanship and not just learning a trade for its own sake (that became evident to me years ago when I was working there). If any part of European cultural work practice can be reasonably equated to that existing in Asia then the German approach to training and apprenticeships has to be the closest (although I reckon it's still quite different to what's seen in Asia).
Longstanding journeyman exams, (Gesellenprüfung), and even the more modern duales Ausbildungssystem, vocational training system in Germany along with the traditional time traveling around between an apprentice's training and full-time employment to gain experience shows that traditional apprenticeship culture in Germany was not lost to the same extent as it seems to have been in Anglophone countries, Britain, US, etc.
What mainly seems to have happened in Anglophone countries was that a major shift in thinking (a cultural shift) occurred after WWI and we saw a diminution in the influence of traditional guilds/guild halls followed quickly by an abolition of the need for an apprentice to continue studying to become a master craftsman. Failure of a perceived need to continue the master craftsman tradition meant a concomitant loss of respect for that once-revered position, and so on.
Why this occurred almost immediately after WWI is hard to say except that I reckon it had much to do with the fact that there are more woodworkers buried in battlefields of Flanders than for any other profession (the next tally being other tradesmen). Thus, after the War the tradition died out for two reasons: (a) there were too few skilled artisans left to take up the guilds tradition as traditionally structured before the War, and (b) that in the wake of this huge loss of personnel from the workforce the way the trades operated was streamlined (and this also included the way apprentices were trained).
Why this 'withering' didn't happen in Germany to the same extent given that there are just about as many Germans buried in Flanders as those from other nations, Britain, France etc. is a moot point and it needs answering. The only things I can think of are that German cultural values were different and that they were in fact stronger (Germany didn't start to industrialize until much later than did Britain—industrialization wasn't fully underway in Germany until Bismarck), and perhaps this delay contributed to the fact that values hadn't had time to weaken to the extent that they did in Britain and elsewhere. Moreover, it's likely that intrinsic German values also played a strong role, that being that ingrained cultural practices were harder to shift than elsewhere.
If anyone has thoughts or a better/more accurate answer then I'd be glad to hear it.
The more time passes, the more advantages accrue to open source software. It has been a true privilege to watch as the concept went from lunatic rantings to such an obvious pillar of the software industry that people in a workplace have to justify and argue for why they can't just run postgres on linux.
We've seen it a few times now - if a society wants to actually make progress they loosen IP restrictions. Fast progress happens when people are free to make good decisions.
For an advanced country that actually has to create new things, the cost:benefits shifts in favour of more IP then the earlier stage. It's still possible to have too much restriction though, I think the copyright duration is ridiculous for example.
Loosening IP restrictions would have first-order benefits to a lot of people who could now do things with existing IP that were previously impossible.
The downsides would be delayed and second-order: a significant portion of people, who currently invest in developing IP with the expectation of "owning" the resulting product, would reduce their level of investment. Why invest in R&D if you can just wait for someone else to find a successful idea and then copy them?
Why spend a billion dollars testing a drug if its market price is immediately dropped to generic level by cheap manufacturers? The only option left is secrecy, which is worse for society than patents.
Furthermore the arguments used for it, can also be used in regards to any investment with high costs and ease of replicability. Even something as simple as a rice farm would be able to justify a monopoly over selling rice in a region in that manner, after all, it's a lot cheaper to simply import it from elsewhere once the market demand for it has been established by the farm.
I'm saying, for some investors (I did say a significant portion, perhaps the quantity can't be verified), IP ownership is a factor in their decision making. Are you saying it doesn't for anyone? It's a different thing to argue that the "aggregate" level of investment across the whole economy would be unchanged. That's a different issue, and anyway the nature of any investment would be affected by changes in the law.
On the second point yes, the argument can be extended to absurdity but the scope of the patent system is a judgement made by legislators, which should (absent corruption) be based on a judgement of its relative benefits/disbenefits.
[0] Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
If the UK had not strangled that sector of their economy the Germans would have never gotten the industrial know how to make a thousand tons of chlorine a month in 1915.
This is a myth; a very destructive myth.
To quote professor Mazzucato:
”According to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the dynamic entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if all this was wrong? What if, from Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has been the boldest and most valuable risk-taker of all?
[Mazzucato] comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—from IT, biotech, nanotech to today’s emerging green tech — Professor Mazzucato shows that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri.
Mazzucato also controversially argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. In doing so, it sometimes wins and sometimes fails. Yet by not admitting the State’s role in such active risk taking, and pretending that the state only cheers on the side-lines while the private sector roars, we have ended up creating an ‘innovation system’ whereby the public sector socializes risks, while rewards are privatized.” [1]
Also, what is your definition for 'advanced country’? Are you talking about global north countries like the US, UK etc.?
What you likely see as making up an 'advanced country’ I see as global north imperialist institutions designed for gatekeeping and withholding important knowledge; and denying all of the working class access to our inheritance - a process that Ha-Joon Chang calls 'kicking away the ladder' [2].
> It's still possible to have too much restriction though, I think the copyright duration is ridiculous for example.
If you're only critiquing copyright - and not patents, trade secrets and others - what do you personally see as the redeemable parts of those other forms of IP (and the systems used to enforce them)?
We're in an age where instantaneous digital planetary replication and transmission technologies could give birth to an enormous collaborative web of cooperation, at an incredible near-zero marginal cost; which would enable the working class to get on the same page globally (and stay there) in order to further develop technologies in a beautiful mutually-beneficial dance (described more by people like Steele [3], as well as many socialist/marxist researchers [4]).
Why is it, according to you, beneficial to continue to have the private-property enforcing capitalist state hand out monopolies to profit-seeking entities/capitalist firms, which gives them 'ownership' over decontextualized/siloed scientific knowledge and technology and allows them to prosecute other humans for using this (or ‘their’) commoditized knowledge? In the end all knowledge is derivable and re-derivable, which is why many discoveries in the past were made in tandem in different (unconnected) places around the world [5]. Many forget this.
Scientific discoveries are essentially 'built into' the universe, and I believe they emerge at the right time for us to tackle the biggest challenges of our times (now climate change + 6th mass extinction event). Back on topic: does this mean those who make new discoveries are lone geniuses? No, not even close; they build on the things left by behind by those who came before. Yet unfortunately the capitalist lone genius myth is the predominant (and harmful) story of our time. [6]
What bottlenecks do you see for an emergent open, universally accessible, scientific commons-centered world? A world that doesn't allow the commodification and monopolization of our shared inheritance?
I think humanity has been waiting for patterns to emerge that allow for radically participative, distributed and open collective sense-making systems. I believe that the organizational patterns that help to remedy the current collective challenges have finally started to emerge in the form of http://valueflo.ws and holochain. I'm talking about intricate distributed systems that do a much better job of meeting the high level of variety in our world, and which allow us to govern our global commons without compromising on individual agency, as today’s systems do.
Our world today is divided in two: the working class and the propertied class. The propertied class unfairly dominate by 1.) having created knowledge hierarchies by setting up harmful artificial-scarcity -enabling systems of law - in effect weaponing knowledge, as well as 2.) having created undemocratic and private systems and symbols for measuring and communicating/expressing wealth, in the form of a.) siloed capitalist resource measuring systems (through capitalist Enterprise Resource Planning software that obscures economic human relations), and b.) centrally controlled and centrally issued currencies instead of mutual credit systems and protocols that allow mutual issuance and evolution (hence why I linked to Valueflo.ws, since it uses the Resources-Events-Agents ontology).
In other words: so far, today's systems are violent capital-enabling straightjackets because we have not been able to “encode as much variety as exists in the system it wants to control” (the system I’m referring to here being our global interconnected civilization) [7]. The cybernetic concept described above is called Ashby’s ‘law of requisite variety’ which I first learned about through Eric Harris-Braun, one of the people who stumbled on this novel pattern for fully distributed protocols now known as holochain, which “combines ideas from BitTorrent and Git, along with cryptographic signatures, peer validation, and gossip.“.
[1] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
[2] https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/j...
[4] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
[6] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-end...
> you haven't addressed the issue of IP protections value or not directly.
What value do you believe they offer? And for who?
If there are reasons to do so, they should be very strong and well proven, and be applied with utmost caution.
Today, it seems rather that IP law is blindly extended and strengthened besed upon fake arguments. The real argument is just protecting vested interests and locking out competition and innovation.
This excludes trademark law, which is not really IP but more to protect buyers against fakes and inferior copies. Therefore that can be necessary and useful, if not pushed too far.
Minimizing the friction for reuse is a central theme of the D programming language - we use the Boost license:
https://www.boost.org/users/license.html
In particular, it does not require attribution in the generated binaries, nor does it require any patent licensing, nor does it prevent any use for profit, nor come with any agenda whatsoever.
I would have simply made it Public Domain, but PD is not recognized in some countries. So Boost is the next best thing.
It's not only 19th Century Germany that's demonstrated that ready access to information by many is one of the best ways to develop a country but it's been paralleled by China who has only paid lip service to copyright for decades. That's been demonstrated over and over in recent years.
I'd go as far as to say that if the US doesn't seriously reform copyright and patent law it'll not only fall behind China but will fall so far behind that in decades to come it'll become just an also-ran.
Look at it this way, when quality textbooks can cost anything upwards of $200 - $300 due to controlled monopolistic markets then many are deprived of access to the information they contain. I'd even put myself in that class, I can't afford books at that price and I know many others can't either.
I'm not against reasonable copyright and patent law but what we have now is not reasonable by a long shot. As I see it, these laws are only benefiting a few and they're having a disproportionate negative effect on the economics and wellbeing of the country.
Incidentally, one of the worst aspects of these laws is how easily they allow opportunistic people/organizations to lockup information that was once in the public domain by artifice and subterfuge.
I once ran into a person that said no one should be able to educate themselves/be educated for free.
Guy was American. One of the weirdest things I've heard my entire life. Imagine having people with similar mindset running the show
Wouldn't higher edu degree becoming "common" invalidate it?
> it was a way to stand out and it no longer is
Education is only good if you stand out? What a discussion.
In the honors classes, the students were there because they wanted to learn, and the profs were there because they wanted to teach.
He tried both, and discovered that while he had to work a lot harder in the honors class, it was a lot more fun being in that environment.
There's always going to be people who complain about it, yeah. A small minority, though.
There's no reason why someone can't be both. Universities weren't originally designed to be job centers, that's what vocational education was for. This is also one of the problems that I see with the current system is that universities are just seen as a way to get a job rather than to be educated. The issue of people feeling shit about wasting their time or whatever also stems from this issue - they came to university to get an easy job afterwards, not to learn, and this belief is misleading.
Society needs both but I'm in full agreement that in recent decades that the trades, woodworking, etc. have been terribly denigrated and they need to be restituted to their former position in society. Even with modern equipment that's taken much of the menial work away we still need people with the skills to use those machines properly.
Also, we need creative people who are best skilled with working with their hands. We cannot lose sight of the fact that many are most suited working this way and to force them into doing a desk job is both unfair on them and on society generally. By saying this I'm not implying that they're any less intelligent - in fact I know some very smart and intelligent trades people who I'd trust with almost any work with training.
I say this as person who has been a professional/desk worker for most of my working life but also as one who also had the privilege to be trained in metalwork and woodwork and for a time working in those trades. I understand that mentality, and there's absolutely nothing wrong or demeaning about it.
It looks terrible now.
Evidently, there is something to craftsmanship :-)
Inspiration 10%, practice 90%. You're just a bit rusty - out of practice. ;-)
Like the Mikado, maybe we need a little list of society offenders who've perverted the language with stolen nouns. As the Mikado would claim, to not only steal nouns for illicit purposes but to then morph them into proper nouns is the most heinous of crimes - a crime that could only be committed by those with absolutely no imagination. As wasted space, they are deserving nothing less than the axe!
;-)
One of the advantages of oxalic acid is that it's a sufficiently strong acid but still mild in comparison to many others, notably the common inorganic ones. I've not thought much about alternatives as its cheapness, easy availability and its suitable chemistry makes it a suitable choice (someone else's already done the hard thinking ;-)). Being a dicarboxylic acid—here the simplest, just two carboxyl groups bolted together—it's reasonably strong, stronger than say acetic acid but mild enough that it doesn't suffer the drawbacks of the easily-available inorganic acids. For instance, if you forget and leave the work in solution too long then not much damage is done. For instance, compare it with phosphoric acid that one often finds in vehicle rust-removal kits. I once left a large collection of rusty twist drills in a phosphoric acid solution and although it removed (converted) the rust admirably, it actually changed the crystalline structure of the HS steel in the drills to such an extent that they became brittle and broke easily (that's sort of obvious, had I bothered to think about it I wouldn't have done it). So one leaves the phosphoric for heavy-duty rust removal like when you can't tell any difference between the metal and the rust in the floor of your car (and besides technically it's more a converter than a remover).
Being comparatively mild, oxalic is also reasonably kind to other organic materials such as wood and you won't get the 'charring' damage of say sulfuric acid (no self-respecting woodworker would be without some oxalic in the workshop). For instance, the ugly bluish-black stains wood gets from being near iron, nails etc. can often be completely removed with oxalic acid. It's often combined with chlorine bleach/Na hypochlorite when there are stains from multiple sources, mold for instance (Cl works better here).
You're right about oxalic acid being toxic but one would have to be damn stupid and careless to get an LD50 dose of it, which if I recall, that figure is in excess of ingesting somewhat more than 10g. That would be rather difficult unless one did it intentionally. It's important to realize that we have a tolerance to small quantities of oxalic acid as it occurs naturally in most of our vegetables, spinach and rhubarb for instance (that's why one's told not to eat rhubarb's leaves as the acid's concentration there is much higher than in its stems, also those prone to kidney stones are told not to eat foods high in oxalic acid due to the formation of solid oxalates).
I've been using oxalic acid for years without any trouble and don't take anything other than sensible precautions when using it. In fact, I have a 500ml bottle of saturated solution (at room temp.) with a trigger pump on it that I squirt onto rusty things as well as wood stains. I'm just careful to ensure that I wash everything afterwards. Incidentally, if you're preparing an oxalic bath (say several liters of warm water with oxalic in it to remove rust off an object), then unless you do it outdoors you'll likely notice a tiny amount of bitterness in your mouth and your teeth may feel like when you bite into a lemon from the slight 'volatility' of the solution (you've probably notice the same effect when working in the lab with sulfuric and hydrochloric acids). At most, you are unlikely to be getting more than a milligram at most (which is about the amount of oxalic acid in a reasonable helping of spinach and it's not likely to be harmful unless it's a regular occurrence/part of your job etc.). If this is a worry for you or you dislike that acidic taste then wear a chemical-removing mask (the charcoal type should suit).
(BTW, it's important to note that ethylene glycol (antifreeze) is very toxic because it's both sweet and it's metabolized by the body first to glycolic acid finally to oxalic acid. I've used this oxalic acid example (along with the ethanol/methanol one) to explain to people why one shouldn't make simple assumptions about the toxicity of a chemical based on a closely related one. Here for example, its close relative propylene glycol is essentially harmless; it even has a food E number. If one came at it from only knowledge of propylene glycol and made similar assumptions about its simpler ethylene cousin then one could get into very serious trouble (unfortunately, it's happened more than once.)
only in the US.
I really don’t see any reasonable scenario where this could be true.
> main thing is people wasting their time + becoming upset and angry at the society, perceiving themselves as the 'intellectual elite' that isn't getting 'valued' enough
If one believes that having a degree (which is 30% of the population) makes them part of the elite (which is 1% of the population), they should have spent more time in high school studying statistics. People with a degree don’t see themselves as “the elite”.
You can study history and become a bricklayer.
What is definitely wrong and abhorrent is the expectation that:
1) one is worthy of a so called “white collar” job
2) that a college degree requires full-time study and a campus.
May I also note that there are such a thing as higher trades—for example, engineering, architecture, medicine and law.
You are not studying some abstract concept when you study the above 4. You are preparing yourself to take an exam and be qualified to practice a trade.
The rest of the degrees? Open them up. Wish all of us would study minimum history and had awareness of different structures of government. To me, its so sad that Americans can’t place the specialness of their country in context and protect that which makes it unique in this world—jury duty. A plumber, a bricklayer and a cook need to know that as well as everyone else.
USA: If you’re rich and not particularly interested in the topics, you to to college to meet people.
Some Euro: I’ve met many a person who continues to “study” to keep the numerous benefits.
Many people just don’t care. That dosen’t stop me from saying my idealistic, and unlikely idea after a word like “should”.
For young people with no real financial obligations that's somewhat easy to accomplish.
For people in the midst of their lifes, working a regular job, taking care of a family, it can be very difficult to juggle all these obligations at once.
Because even when university is "free" it still requires you to invest time.
That's ever so true. I've been to university over several periods earlier in my life. The first time there were fees but they were manageable by most students (as the Government provided reasonably heavy subsidiaries). By the next time the government had changed and a more enlightened one came in and made all fees (except student union fees) free.
This was great for a time until work commitments forced me to stop before I'd finished. Then a little later another government reversed it all and it even went much further - the new fee structure went from free to like $50,000 or even double that for some degrees. Thus, my lack of time caught me out big-time.
That said, had I had the slightest notion what was going to happen then I'd definitely have managed to find the time. That's for certain! (I'd not learned the old addage don't put off until tomorrow what one can do today.)
There is when you're not the one paying for it.
A university or college degree for topics such as literature, history, gender studies, etc should not be available to you until you have done been certified in a trade (be that bricklaying, medicine, law or engineering)
This is why I highlighted that these sorts of degrees don't need to be done on a campus, full-time unless you're willing to pay for that or have been deemed worthy of a scholarship AFTER having completed a vocation.
I do think it would be quite awesome to have these available for free again after having achieved skills that are very valuable in the workplace. Kind of like going to a museum or the way Jews can go on a birthright trip.
Education is to build the person. It is to build a society of more refined members, which means, to reduce the collective damages that come from ignorance. It is both personal elevation and social duty.
The cancer of ignorance is fought also so that people are able to do their own job, the cognitive structure of which does not just stand up on its own isolated supports. Only hours ago I had to find myself in front of somebody who could not do his job owing to underdevelopment.
This is how Soviet Union ended. "Workers and peasants" were 100% OK with Communism. It's the educated masses who were too educated and did jobs that did not justify their qualification, and lived in deep poverty, ended it.
Enough culture to recognise a demagogue when they see one? Enough basic scientific knowledge to avoid falling into wellness scams and understand how climate change works? In a democracy, a well-educated people is absolutely required. You don’t need to apply all of your knowledge in your daily work; it does not mean acquiring it was a waste of time.
> This is how Soviet Union ended. "Workers and peasants" were 100% OK with Communism. It's the educated masses who were too educated and did jobs that did not justify their qualification, and lived in deep poverty, ended it.
The problem with the Soviet Union was not too much education. It is also a strange example to pick when arguing about democracies.
And Soviet Union is a good example because a democracy would fare worse in same conditions. Soviets could apply unlimited violence to keep people in check, democratic government can't do that.
I am not quite sure how rewriting history somehow validates your argument. The USSR was in a very specific situation and you'll never know how a democracy would have fared. In all likelihood, a democracy would not have ended up in that specific situation anyway.
To enable democracy, which depends on a population endowed with well developed judgement to work properly.
And to enable society, which depends on counting a large amount of members the individual will trust, professionally and personally, to be hold as a value triggering synergy.
So, to enable widespread civilization, which is required to achieve the basicmost goal of a liveable environment.
Cultivation is one of the tentative ways to increase civilization. Education shapes the person; the impacts from the environment may be random in gain or loss, while education comes out of a positively progressive effort. It shapes your neighbours and the professionals you rely on.
as it should, we humans arent here to do menial task but to solve problems both personal and societal and MAYBE we should give more value to people as factor of production?
In my view the world you (want to) live in looks bleak and sad.
You don't even a vocational degree to do those either.
You start working be it a union, or non-union, and take a test later on if you want a license. (In California)
Well, I'd certainly not let anyone with no schooling work on my home, especially so if they cannot read or write.
How the hell would they read instructions or building regulations?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic , then?
Which enables aimlessly 'toying' around with (already existing) things,
discovering new (sometimes unforeseen) applications.
In opposotion to [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
where everything has to be 'goal oriented' from the start, guided by expected
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment and
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_market
While I (sometimes) can see the value of 2, 3 and 4 a world without 1 is very boring and drab.
In the USA, free can be used to mean free to the consumer, but paid by someone else.
The US has uncontrolled education costs, a surplus of irrelevant college degrees, and many object to taxes to pay for others.
For example, If someone can't afford to buy a house and support a family, in part due to taxes, they understandably wouldn't want to pay more taxes to so that someone else can enjoy some fanciful degree.
There is an abundance of very good low cost colleges, but many advocate that elite colleges with marble walls that cost 1-200k+ should be payed for with public funds
That's very true, and it's only in recent decades that the US has been a signatory to the Berne Convention, however that's not true for patents. In the late 1800s New Britain, Connecticut was known as the Patent Capital of the world because so many patents were issued to those in the vicinity.
BTW, you're right about other countries ignoring copyright but I only mentioned China because of its huge impact, essentially it's the quintessential example.
Which probably had more to do with the US officially endorsing patent theft and even paying out premiums to people who brought them stolen technology/knowledge.
Not because the US was so respecting of other countries patents, quite the opposite was actually the case [0].
[0] https://apnews.com/article/north-america-us-news-ap-top-news...
could you give examples, I'd love to read more about that
https://www.bestlawyers.com/article/can-i-sing-happy-birthda...
- Treaties between nations that either extended copyright law or force the nation with the most liberal copyright laws into doing a back flip over copyright liberalization.
- Changing copyright law as in the US where stuff in the public domain went back into copyright (complicated, read Wiki, etc.) This was the result of corporate lobbying.
- The recent scouring of stuff that was effectively in the public domain and clearly reclassifing it into a copyrighted domain. For example manufacturer service manuals that were once made readily available were withdrawn, or restricted to authoritized service personnel only, or were reissued after being heavily redacted. This is part of the Right to Repair argument in that an unstated right to repair had always been in existence but when manufacturers withdrew once freely available information about products we now have to fight for a new right that not long ago no one would ever have thought as a right.
- Copyright owners lobbying government to tighten/change the law on ophan works - those ones where there's no known copyright owner so they would have less competition. If I recall about 70% of all works fall into this category. BTW, there's a lot more to this than I'm mentioning here.
- Iteas and stuff that's been common practice and thus not documented gatherered up and put into the private (now-copyrighted) domain by unscrupulous carpetbaggers.
- Programmers using public domain information, modifying it in trivial ways then claiming copyright over it. Obfuscation through copmliation makes it difficult to unravel these tricks.
There's much more, here's a link I've just found that adds a few more: https://blog.kitware.com/stealing-from-the-public-domain/
In Germany, as a general rule, you didn't need to buy any textbooks. The professor would lecture, the exercises were handed out printed and were fully self-contained (not "Exercise 12.3 on page 114"), and there were any number of relevant books available in the library. If the professor sold his own book, people in class would get a "Hörerschein" and get it at a further discount from the already low price (say $20 instead of $30). Student clubs would sell "scripts" containing the lecture material, summaries, and formulae.
A 2006 article [1] suggests US students need to spend around $1000 per annum for text books. (The article compares the text book market to the prescription drug market.) In Germany, $1000 covers tuition including the "Semesterticket" (pass for the entire public transit system, state wide), and probably all the books you need.
I mean, if even The Economist complains about textbook prices [2], then you know there's a problem.
[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED497025.pdf
[2] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/08/16/why-textb...
The most objectionable and outrageous trick major publishers do is to regularly bring out new editions wherein they deliberately change the the chapter and exercise numbers, this then almost renders older editions useless for any student who has one cannot easily follow what's going on. When the teacher says go to exercise number '123' and their book says '89' an inordinate amount of time is wasted chasing up fellow students with newer books to help identity it.
This not only seriously disadvantages poorer less well off students but also it's wasteful on resources as older books are just dumped as the consequence and become landfill.
In my opinion, publishers who are caught doing this ought to be blackballed by universities, educational institutions, etc. in that they not recommend those textbooks for their courses.
On topic, I can believe that lax IP laws were a factor in the rise of Germany as an industrial powerhouse. And I'm far from convinced that America's strict laws benefit more than a very few.
My German is good enough to understand 'schwartzfahren' but I'm not sure of the significance. Presumably, you had gotten yours for free. Right?
It was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure the semester-ticket was free with matriculation.
The best thing a 'catch up' economy can do is copy other, better companies from abroad.
But once you have to 'lead' in a sector, it's a lot harder if you can't recoup your investments.
China is leading in 5G and 6G patents for this reason.
Not only that but there would be incentive for every printer to print everything they could get their hands on, in quantities enough to saturate the markets, with the quickest to act at scale gaining the market share advantage.
Knowing people, this could give an exponentially unfair disadvantage to cultures which restricted this type of activity beyond a certain extent.
>The prospect of a wide readership motivated scientists in particular to publish the results of their research. In Höffner's analysis, "a completely new form of imparting knowledge established itself. Essentially the only method for disseminating new knowledge that people of that period had known was verbal instruction from a master or scholar at a university. Now, suddenly, a multitude of high-level treatises circulated throughout the country.
It was like they got the "information superhighway" of the horse-and-buggy era exclusively without parallel, and new scientific data (always controversial in some way) was heavily involved consuming significant bandwidth, plus an ever-increasing multitude of users rapidly consuming information & new sources arising (so things could go viral) like never before. Maybe even allowing for some deeper kind of echo chamber to have more widespread resoundment.
It would also seem like any division between the well-informed and the badly-misinformed could be magnified.
What could go wrong?
Then when copyrights did become established, the flow of new scientific information was badly choked so people just had to make do with the old stuff. Still that might be a more informed (or misinformed as the case may be) position than others who had never had any period of information freedom at all.
1) I should control all the software that runs on computers I own
2) Access to information is always preferable in all situations
This article really jogged me on the second one. The caveat is that there wasn't much beyond correlation proving it. But regardless, I think it's a really cool example of why access to information is so important.
What's tougher is drawing the line to connect access to information and direct benefit to the person giving up copyright. Presumably, most of Germany benefited from industrialization?
It's like treating steel - much harder than you'd think and yes, there are principles.
Some knowledge could be quite esoteric, and whilst books would help, experience, exposure, and mentoring onemight might expect to be more important.
Also I would have thought one would have to have a lot of experience to discern what is right, wrong, or not relevant, more of an issue if you have a huge amount of information available.
Perhaps the key thing would be works like the academic review papers that survery an area of knowledge and look to integrate it together.
Agreed, have you heard of a new open acces project by the scientist Alex Freeman, called Octopus? I'm super excited about it:
"The overall idea behind the new platform, which I called Octopus, is to break the standard unit of publication up into eight smaller stages or pieces. These include formulated scientific problems, hypotheses, methods and protocols, data, analysis, interpretation, and real-world applications. The eighth piece is reviews where people share their comments about the other stages, but it's also treated as a publication itself because it is a constructive piece of collaboration. Researchers will be able to revisit their publications to acknowledge others' comments or suggestions and even include some of the useful reviewers as authors, with the old version remaining available so that readers can track the evolution of ideas.
The formulated scientific problem automatically becomes the beginning of a chain, and all the other pieces are vertically linked upward. If you have a great hypothesis, you can publish that and link it straight up to the problem that it is trying to address. And if you've collected some small amount of data, you can publish that, linking it directly up to the protocol that you followed. It will also be possible to create horizontal links between publications; maybe somebody has come up with an amazing algorithm whilst studying starling flocking behavior and somebody else working on oil pipelines has decided to use it.
Octopus will thus allow researchers to publish in much smaller author groups, and that can make the system much more accountable and meritocratic. If, say, you're an applied statistician, at the moment you're very rarely a first author on anything. But with Octopus, statisticians can do analyses of anybody else's data and get credit for it as the author of that publication. Octopus will also be made language-agnostic through automatic translation to lower language barriers and broaden access."
https://www.science.org/careers/2018/11/meet-octopus-new-vis...
This reminds me very much of our modern paywalls. It’s such a shame that people like Alexandra Elbakyan have to risk so much in order to even the playing field just slightly.
Right, paywalls to knowledge are a disaster for any country that's trying to maintain an educated society/workforce and one of the great outcomes of what Elbakyan has done is to alert the world to the problem. We owe her a great gratitude.
As I mentioned in my post the situation with with the price of books isn't that much different now to what it was in the UK in the 19th C. except that in rich countries a person can buy about two specialist textbooks for a week's salary. Of course that doesn't apply to those in less well developed countries, if anything at $300 per book they're worse off in this modern world than English citizens were back in the 19th C.
One has to remember that salary != disposable income. Perhaps especially in developed countries, most people spend more than 3/4th of their monthly salary on necessities such as food, rent, clothing, maintenance and healthcare. "A week's salary" is a couple months of saving up money, and buying a textbook for it means deferring other purchases like new (used) car, or vacation, or home appliance, etc.
Incidentally, the $300 I used may even be conservative, recently I was pricing specialist textbooks and one was over $500. If I'd bought the three books that I wanted it would have come to just under $1200. Instead, I managed to borrow one from a colleague and I'm trying to get the others on interlibrary loan but that's not yet been possible.
I think https://archive.org/details/102026Band2 is the relevant book.
For how copyright restricts learning in other parts of the world now, I like https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol92/iss1/7...
The weak copyright protections especially in contrast to GB, where there were strict and centralized rules in early modern Europe is a first indicator, this only intensified in the later centuries leading to piracy making information affordable - thus preparing a whole population for industrial production...
The industry in Germany has strong protestant and prussian roots. Families with a protestant background got wealthier earlier when more land and resources were up for grabs, kinda like digital entrepreneurs in the 90s or early 2000s.
I think it's quite comparable to computers, Silicon Valley and the internet these days, and why it's dominated by US companies.
Now we have international trade agreements enforcing IP in most places. Could this effect partially explain China's rise in tech? They ignored IP for ages.
I mean it's certainly easier to innovate when you're not looking over your shoulder or stopping to ask IP lawyers if they think you've breached anything in trivial parts of your tech.
Compared to:
"First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the US Constitution in 1790"
Copyright abolished by 2070?
In that sense Germans didn't have to bow down to existing intellectual property owners.
See [©] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany#History
:-)
First time I here that phrase! A testament to the rise of China? The proper term is continental Europe.
Digging a bit further, Wikipedia's[0] article is titled "Continental Europe", but says "mainland" is also used.
Time to speculate: for the British speaking English, the "main" land are the British Isles, so they prefer the term "continental".
Their problem is that "made in China" has a negative connotation and they produce a lot of cheap stuff, which inevitably breaks or doesn't work properly so people just go "damn Chinese shit".
It seems they're getting to the point where the cheapest stuff is made in other countries.
Have to wonder what happens when the world runs out of cheaper countries to outsource to.
Also, the increased assertiveness also led to military agression (2 world wars). China seems to be copying that too, alas.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technischer_%C3%9Cberwachungsv...
Reading the article, the TÜV as institution was also a copy of something which already existed in Great Britain!
Circles withing circles :-)