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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

So, good engineers know what happens if you try to just take a complex system and change everything at once, instead of incrementally. Certainly government does (witness the number of "hey let's start from scratch and come up with a much better system" that are 10+ years overdue and many billions over budget). The RIAA/MPAA knows too (make small-medium sized changes using bills that push in the direction they want until it's death by 50 cuts).

Yet, I always see otherwise rational people wanting to just blow the patent system up. What makes you think this is a goal achievable in one step? Why isn't the EFF position a good starting point to get there eventually?

Just because the system sucks really badly doesn't mean you'll be able to change it in one fell swoop. Doing that with healthcare in the US took 20+ years, and we arguably did not end up with a better system, just a bunch of incremental improvements.

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Yep. I'm reminded of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which in 1993 was a GIANT step forward for gay rights (you should have seen the elation during the March on Washington). It worked so well, it moved the Overton window so far, that 19 years later it represented all the facets of the discriminatory policies it had once replaced.

We don't want a different system. We want no system at all. How's that so hard to grasp? Every single proposal to "fix" patents so far either involves fighting bureaucracy with even more bureaucracy (that's suuuure gonna work out) or are based on the naive assertion that a shorter evil is somehow a lesser evil.

People need to acknowledge already that the patent system is not just a little broken, it's fundamentally broken to its very core. You can band-aid it all you want, it won't fix the inherent problem, and that is and always was the paradoxical claim that slowing down progress will somehow lead to more progress, as well as the utterly illogical assertion that you can, in any way, own abstract concepts.

I completely agree with iwwr: don't be afraid to take the "radical" stance for the sake of a twisted form of political correctness. If something is bullshit, then say so, and demand it be stopped. Not weasel around trying to appease the people who profit from the status quo. Patents are bullshit - the only good patent is a nonexistent patent. Period. So demand that we get rid of this impediment to mankind.

I think you missed the real question, so let me rephrase.

It's not hard to grasp as an abstract concept, and in general it's a concept I mostly agree with. What i'm trying to grasp why you think this "blow up the world" will work as an effective strategy to get there, instead of "incrementally destroy the system".

You are trying to fight a political fight here, and "radical stances" rarely work well there. If you are going to "Demand we get rid of this impediment to mankind", expect to never get rid of it. Change doesn't happen by screaming about how bad things are, and taking radical stances, change happens by doing something about it, be it legislative lobbying or otherwise.

Actually, it's valuable to have both (the radical as an anchor, the moderate to define a path), as long as they don't spend so much time fighting each other that the real goal never occurs.

The more people take the "radical" stance, the less radical it becomes (relative to the status quo). That's my whole point. So stop bickering about how we'll never get anything done with demands for abolition - demand it be done, and tell others to do the same. It's that simple.

Not all of us think abolishing all software patents is the solution here. Don't think the entire industry agrees with you. Perhaps in the silicon-valley-startup-bubble, but that's about it.

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