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Comment by yahootube | Hacker News Reader

This is because of expiring patents which create an artificial inflation of businesses' durable market value for the incumbent allowing them to monopolize the market via supply scarcity. Naturally there would have been more recycling the entire time if it were not restricted by patents.

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Which patents were the biggest hold backs in the recycling industry? I am curious how the patent landscape looks today compared to a decade ago. Seems like it would be exploding in more recent history.

Or, less conspiratorially, it's because the volume of batteries that need recycling has been steadily growing.

Or because the possibility of profits incentivized invention.

All three of these theories can be true

In which case the market is working as intended.

If all three are true then the market is 2/3 working as intended and 1/3 held back by patents that aren't being licensed out enough.

Alternatively, if all three are true, 1/3 are held back because of the lack of incentive to develop an invention.

Is someone saying otherwise here?

YahooTube’s comment is heavily implying that the market systems in-place stifled invention via patent restrictions.

Yes, but isn’t that working as intended?

As we can see by this thread… It’s heavily debated as to whether the intentions we should be following are those of long-dead forbears, or the will of the people, and in the latter, which people.

Both can be true.

Sorry what?

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