Ineffectual Property

Not only am I a genius adult, but I was also a boy wonder. I spent countless hours tearing everything apart trying to figure out how they worked, and my mom loved it, no matter how much she screamed at me. You see, a curious mind is the cornerstone of intelligence, leading to all kinds of greatness, and nothing proves that greatness more than the number of accomplishments in life, like your diploma, a high-profile career, a blog where you cuss your face off and people beg for more, a girlfriend named Heddie, narcanon cake, etc. But today I want to talk about one particular type of accomplishment…patents.

I remember as a 10-year-old, taking two 30-cm rulers and serendipitously electrical-taping them together at the centers to form an X, and then discovering that when thrown, it magically glides through a predictable pattern, eventually returning to the thrower. Hence, the “Twirl-a-rang” was born, and I was going to be RICH!! I excitedly showed this invention to my buddy and the very next day he shows up with his own masterpiece in woodworking artisanship, the Twirlarang reimagined where it was entirely composed of a single piece of wood, no tape, sanded and hewn edges to form the perfect aerodynamics that allowed for much greater distance and flight times. He was going to be RICH!!

“You fucking thief!!”, I yelled at him, and didn’t talk to him for 20 minutes; I was that angry. Eventually at 21 minutes I got over it and we had endless fun with his far-superior Twirlarang till it was destroyed and we just never revisited the idea. Millions lost? Doubtful, going from a prototype to market saturation is a galactic leap, but I really felt like this idea was mine and mine alone to control and profit from.

POSSESSION

There’s something about discovering something that does two things to our feeble greedy human brains.

1. It ignites the belief that because we discovered it, we now have the right to control how the idea or invention can be used, and
2. we are solely entitled to profit from the idea.

These entitlements manifest from our primal possession instincts, which can be naturally selective (owning tools/weapons and such), but this is a bastardized application of those instincts in the modern world. In other words, it ‘feels’ right to ‘own’ ideas, but I’m going to smash your conviction of that belief into more pieces than my buddy’s Twirlarang after hitting that baby carriage and the mother jumped on it till it was dust.

Historically, great ideas were constantly stolen, credibility misassigned, ill-gotten fortunes made while the real brains behind these inventions were left to starve in obscurity. This supposed injustice led to the institutionalization of “Intellectual Property” (IP), which is a fancy way of legally assigning the very 2 rights we just described above.

This seemed to be a great step, and in many cases it has been historically, hard to deny that, but for all the cases where someone came up with an idea that they were able to retain the rights for and profit from, there’s probably 100,000 patents filed for bad ideas that never come to fruition, or are so poorly described that the real nuggets of these ideas are slightly altered by someone else into a new patent that is exercised without a dime going to the original nugget’s inventor.

Also, in many cases, companies own the rights to any ideas that their employees come up with, so the whole point of protecting individual ideas from IP theft, has been largely usurped anyways, making IP essentially a battlefield for corporations, and very little in the way of protecting/enabling the common man.

"BUT IP OWNERSHIP DOES MATTER, STUPID GALIGTRON!"

What has to be the most compelling argument for the enforcement of IP is the idea that companies invest a lot of money into manifesting ideas into products, and the RnD, specialized staff, engineering, testing, etc. Yes, it gets damn expensive, so also yes, what company would do that if another company is just going to steal the idea and undercut them making it all for nothing?

This is the lie that we’ve been told, and that we want to believe because it aligns very well with our instinctual greed that again, we’re entitled to points 1 and 2 above.

Why is this a lie? Because IP enforcement doesn’t actually work. In order for IP enforcement to work, there needs to be complete global jurisdiction for IP. This jurisdiction aspect works well for member countries, but China don’t give a shit. India don’t give a shit. Russia don’t have a shit to give. North Korea won't even take a shit.

Example. Go to any country in the world and you can get either Viagra (active ingredient is sildenafil), or that country’s sildenafil knockoff for a FRACTION of the cost. Any country in which Pfizer can enforce its IP rights, they’ve cornered the market and are charging WAY too much, and it’s pissing me off. Yet, if you go to a country where there is no IP enforcement, you can buy sildenafil for next to nothing, because it’s actually quite cheap to produce.

"YER DUM, GALGITRON!"

I know, the capitalist inside of you is losing its mind with rage. “Galgitron, how can you possibly argue Pfizer isn’t entitled to every dime of profit after spending sooo much on research??! You’re a socialist commie asshole!”.

Lol.. Give me a minute to enjoy your rage… ahhh. Morons. Let’s just be honest. You don’t give a flying fuck about Pfizer’s bottom line, you’re taking offense because you believe if you ever come up with that perfect beer coaster idea, that you’ll be able to make billions because of the rights you’ll get from IP laws.

OPEN YOUR EYES

Ok, so let’s talk now about reality, and not the ‘ideal’ that IP enforcement is supposed to be where profits are morally assigned to the proper creators. Here’s the reasons why IP enforcement doesn’t work:

• As mentioned, companies have cornered the IP markets, meaning virtually no ideas that the common man can originate remain theirs if they conceived these ideas while employed by a company that provisioned said employee with the setting/experience/facilities/supplies/collaboration to conceive said ideas. In other words, in most cases, the companies have already stolen your ideas before you even had them, and generally, most marketable ideas are going to be based on your profession.
• Most ‘ideas’ that are patented these days, are actually legalese-imbued head-fuckery trying to impart a spin on something so benign and trivial, in a way that it somehow evades being called out for what is clearly thinly-veiled prior-art (like my asshole buddy’s superior Twirlarang), that it amounts to theft of an idea anyways, like trying to patent a ladder because you added a doohickey.
• And the worst is trying to patent something for the SOLE purpose of blocking competition without actually inventing anything. A great example is how Amazon patented one-click-buying. Whut?? How the fuck is that a novel idea? Being first to implement it isn’t the same as inventing something so goddam obvious. This is nothing more than monopolization strategy, which is actually anti-competitive and hence ANTI-capitalist. (ohhh, how’d that feel, bitch)
• IP does ‘nothing’ to protect against corporate espionage. If even the Manhattan project leaked, you can believe that no secrets will remain secrets in any setting. I mean, just look at AI. A few years ago, the suggestion that AI was so imminent seemed like science fiction, and today, there’s Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic, etc., and even China’s DeepSeek, all surfacing at roughly the same time! You’re telling me they all came up with this technology independently? Give me a break. Ideas slipped out, so where’s all the IP protectionism here?
• There’s no centralized government patent enforcement body. No, you need to sue people that are using your idea without permission. Are you really going to go head to head in court against a company with bottomless pockets? Quick way to go bankrupt.

Given these realities, it’s pretty hard to say IP enforcement has done much to help the common man to protect their genius ideas from either being outright stolen by their employers, or non-shit-giving countries, or ‘legally’ copied with slight alterations because the common man can’t afford the perfect legalese it would take to adequately author an airtight patent, much less afford the legal costs of attempting enforcement of their ideas.

THE FAILURE OF IP PROTECTIONISM

IP enforcement as it has evolved, isn’t effective because it has so many gameable nuances. Its current form really is solely a battleground for the big companies to establish profit turf, and even they’re getting beat up trying to hang onto idea ownership. IP protectionism doesn’t work IN PRACTICE.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against the virtues of the ‘ideal’ form of IP protectionism that we all want, and nothing would make me happier than if we could put that together, but where the fuck is that version? It’s just not possible; it really isn’t. So do we persist in this half-assed non-working piece of shit IP law implementation because we so badly want the ideal version that we’ll settle for anything? Would you buy a pony if someone told you it was a lambo? It’s time to acknowledge the dismal failure that IP protectionism represents, and how the fallout is so much worse than the rare benefits.

I know, it’s frustrating. In a perfect world, I should be able to publish a pdf with a picture of my Twirlarang on the Internet, and because it’s timestamped, it acts as proof that I made it first, and that’s the end of the controversy. Any sensible person that sees my buddy’s knockoff can reasonably assume I’m entitled to royalties off his sales.

That world doesn’t exist.

So don’t twist my intent and say I don’t believe idea creators have inherent rights to their ideas, this is not how I feel about it. I’m saying we already DO NOT HAVE those rights because of the piece of shit implementation of IP laws that don’t stand a chance of reaching the ideal we deserve where there is no stagnation of ideas or obvious theft or exclusionist design. My intent is simple, since the common man can’t realistically protect their ideas, then neither should investors or companies be able to. Protection for all, or go fuck yourself.

But here’s an even more important perspective that I think will finally take you with me over the edge towards letting go of the need to ‘own/control’ ideas, and it’s premised off the notion that even your ideas, aren’t entirely your ideas. I’m going to call it my:

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS ARGUMENT ©

My Twirlarang idea was nothing short of spectacular. Who knows what tropical island mansion I’d be living in right now if that lady hadn’t overreacted; I mean, the baby was completely unharmed, chill yo. But let’s take a step back and be as objective as possible here. My ‘invention’ kinda smells like a one-click-purchase patent, doesn’t it? I simply took two pieces of manufactured wood, bound them with electrical tape, and voila, a world-changing toy! Or so I’d like to frame it. Let’s dissect this so called invention in a rigorous ‘credibility-focused’ manner to see just how much of this idea is mine:

• Composition: ok, I effectively stole the concept of the ancient boomerang, nothing new there. I didn’t invent the rulers, I just capitalized on their inherent aerodynamics, even though that’s probably the last thing on the minds of the ruler manufacturers. Still, I didn’t invent aerodynamics or flat pieces of wood. Nor did I invent the electrical tape, nor the rubber/glue that electrical tape is made of.
• Logistics: It takes equipment to manufacture tape and rulers, like lathes, glue/rubber factories full of workers. I didn’t enable any of that
• Science: Absolutely everything related to the building of the Twirlarang depends upon the libraries of scientific knowledge behind every single aspect. The chemicals used in the tape glue, the physics of the wood-cutting lathes, the electricity backbone to enable the manufacturing in the first place. The convergence of technologies behind this simple toy is phenomenal. I contributed to none of that.
• Contributors: Where to start with this one..wow. The guy that created the glue factory, the chemist that designed the glue, the guy that created the ruler factory, the guy that created the rubber factory, the professors that taught these guys their degrees, the unsung unrewarded geniuses that invented the maths/sciences (Newton, Archimedes, Tesla, etc.), your grade 3 fucking teacher. If you truly believe in the essence of IP rights, then be prepared to send money to EVERY SINGLE ONE of these manufacturers/contributors or their heirs, or else you’re completely and absolutely full of shit about having rights to an idea.

If you have an honest bone in your body, the inescapable truth is, trying to ‘own’ an idea is theft; theft from all of the shoulders you are standing on that makes your little tweak something marketable. Every single thing we are, is owed to those before us. You can’t even utter a SINGLE FUCKING WORD, without owing that word’s existence to someone who invented it. Everything you are, everything you build, everything you know, was given to you and brought you to the point where you could even have a brilliant idea. So unless you’re prepared to acknowledge and share your remunerations with each and every single contributor all throughout history that enabled you with the knowledge/experience plateau that your idea manifested from, then you are simply stealing from them.

So get your greedy head out of your ass and come to recognize that IP enforcement is simply unfettered greed disguised as ‘innovation catalyzing’, that ironically actually STAGNATES the inevitable proliferation of ideas that can benefit humanity as a whole. We need to abandon this incredibly twisted poorly-executed blasphemy of IP protectionism, if for no other reason than it doesn’t even do what it was intended to, especially in the context of protecting the common man’s ideas.

IT DOESN’T WORK

Nothing makes this more clear than AI. AI has literally stolen every single idea in the world, creditlessly pumping out refactored answers from information digested during training off every datapoint on the Internet, disrespecting each and every copyright/patent, and regurgitating it as its own. Where is the backlash? The majority don’t care, because they’re benefitting from AI! So for most people, IP protectionism is only relevant to protecting their own stuff, not necessarily other people’s stuff. Hard to make a moral case for IP if you’re not also fighting for others, right? Hypocrite.

This is the new world we’re moving towards, and it’s about fucking time. If I want to one-click a purchase on some other website than Amazon, then that should be possible. And don’t get me started on how ridiculous it is that we have to pay so fucking much for Viagra. But this isn’t a hill I need to die on; IP protectionism is being slowly deprecated regardless, I’m just the messenger here, preparing your broken hearts for the new reality.

As Elon Musk said, “We don't really patent things. Patents are for the weak... The problem is patents are generally used as a blocking technique. They're like using landmines in warfare. They don't actually help advance things.”

In other words, your ideas will be stolen, assimilated without your consent or compensation, your words rehashed and credited to AI, and the value of novel concepts will degrade to zero. And it should. Patent trolls have long been the obstacles to progress, while having no intent of building out their ideas themselves. Sure, it’s not fair to say that none of the patents are justified, but it’s my stance that virtually all patents are either to intentionally stagnate progress for monopolistic purposes, or the ideas will never be exercised because the creator doesn’t have the means to fulfill it themselves, again, blocking the ideas from proliferating, which doesn’t do anybody any good.

Let me put it this way: the only value of an idea is in manifesting it. If an idea gets blocked/monopolized by greed/ownership, then what good is being served by these IP protectionism laws? Particularly since literally every single idea is 99.99999% owed to the shoulders of the giants it stands on. Enough with this fucking pretend ownership game. It’s shameful and ridiculous to believe you can actually own an idea that you don’t owe anything to anyone for, and trying to position IP ownership as a virtue/right is nothing more than a spin on the embarrassed millionaire mentality.

EVOLUTION

The essential shift we are helplessly undergoing as a civilization is from the primitive insistence that we should be allowed to own ideas, to production based on unownable ideas. And what that means in practice is that soon it will be impossible to claim ownership of ideas (which I repeat are always 99.999999% stolen from the shoulders of giants anyways, don’t ever lose sight of that), and the only credit/profit one can ever expect in this world, is by ‘applying’ ideas. Whether it’s building electric cars, one-clicking purchases on non-Amazon sites, or a Twirlarang factory in China that doesn’t pay me one fucking dime in royalties; execution will be where the credit/money goes, not merely to concepts.

And we want this, we really do. At first glance, it really REALLY sucks for those that generate ideas, violating long-held very intuitive beliefs about owning those ideas. But for all the reasons stated above, there is no effective protection anyways, just this absurd placebo of IP laws we try desperately to shoehorn into efficacy. The ratio of true common man patent winners is so abysmally insignificant, that to desperately hang onto your billion-dollar beer coaster patent without making a single prototype, well, have another beer bro. But on the other hand, with the abolition of IP protectionism, suddenly every single company can implement whatever idea they want and now we all get cheap Viagra! Win for everyone!

Let me spell out your options:

1. Continue with blind faith that IP laws actually make a difference to the common man, even though it’s blatantly not doing so and its rights-protecting execution is typically out of their reach, meanwhile companies continue stagnating progress by monopolizing/blocking ideas in pursuit of maximizing profit or impeding competition so we all lose.
2. Take IP protectionism away from corporations and patent trolls, and allow millions of ideas to proliferate so industrial competition to manufacture those ideas produces best-of-breed variants at the best price for everyone so we all win.

Don’t believe all this horseshit that IP rights are an essential aspect to innovation, Musk’s success alone has demolished this fallacious narrative. He’s shown that the execution of ideas makes the point of owning those ideas moot. It may be true in a small subset of cases, but overall, IP protectionism is abused as a monopolistic anti-competitive weapon that just stagnates humanity’s quality of life improvements for no other purpose than to line investors’ pockets. They’ll try to make you believe that Viagra would never exist if it wasn’t for IP laws, but if you do the research, even Viagra was discovered ‘accidentally’ as a side-effect of other-intended heart meds, so let’s keep it real.

At the very least, these antiquated IP laws should be revamped to loosen the grip non-acting patent trolls have, and perhaps even shorten the duration from 20 years to maybe 3 or 4, which I believe is a fair compromise given the dramatic advances in ramp-up capability and RnD, and especially with the leverage of AI; 20 years doesn’t make sense in our modern world. IP protectionism maybe should evolve to simply serve as proof of the creator of an idea, so at least credit due can be bestowed, but without the blocking or monopolizing aspects. Because when it's all over, the only thing you can take with you...is credit.

GALGI, THE HYPOCRITE?

I’m completely aware of the irony of this diatribe clashing with that big copyright at the bottom of the page that’s been there from day 1. I did consider removing it, but then I’d get called out for removing it, so let me wordsmith some bullshit to make you believe there’s no conflict. It’s ‘because’ of so many failed attempts in my life at securing my ideas and inventions from others’ exploitation, that I’ve recently made this philosophical adjustment towards liberating ideas such that they can proliferate. If you want to take some of my ideas and present them as your own, that’s on you, but as I’ve pointed out, it’s theft. All I’m saying with this blog is I’m no longer expecting the world to protect my ideas, nor attempting to enforce whatever rights I believe I may have. Thus, the copyright remains as my preferred guidance if you wish to respect it; and in retrospect, that’s all it ever could have amounted to no matter what I believed my entitlements were.

—----

If some day I walk past a storefront, and there in the window is some high-tech Twirlarang, I want to believe I’ll be proud of myself for having conceived something that was good enough to make it to retail, rather than be bitter about not having the means or motivation to manifest it myself, claiming it was ‘stolen’ from me. No, the execution of an idea is what really matters and where compensation is justified, not pretending that anything I conceived is so special and original that I don’t owe thousands of people credit or their share of the riches I want to believe I’m due like a greedy entitled thankless fuck. No, if you cannot execute an idea, then at least pay your respects to those giants before you that freely contributed to making you and humanity better, by making your contributions for those yet to come…and maybe you too can become a giant to stand upon.

---

Comments welcome on Twitter

Prior Article