When you look at international business history, it is clear that symmetric tit-for-tat is a dumb way to operate. Even if China is doing everything from currency manipulation to protecting its markets and stealing IP (not news) it is dumb for the *US* to retaliate in kind
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The tools China is using are economic weapons of the weak. The US used those tools when it was weaker than Europe in the 19th century. The US stole textiles IP. It put up trade barriers. It protected fledgling industry and got European expertise to the US by any means necessary.
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Replying to @vgr
If you’re referring to Slater, he did his IP “theft” based purely on human memory. If labor laws were civilized like we have here in California modern day, there would be no foul (per the ban on non-compete agreements, a person’s working memory is their own).
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Replying to @johanatan
There was a broad, vast pattern of IP spillover from Europe over ~150 years that people like Trump would consider “moral theft” (as in not ethics, but react to with grievance as “unfair”). Specifics of prevailing IP regimes and legal notions of IP theft are not that interesting.
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Replying to @vgr
That’s quite a different thing than the sort of corporate (and nation-state) espionage that China conducts against the US. Equating the two is not intellectually honest.
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Replying to @johanatan
I think it’s a perfectly valid. The self-serving IP regimes instituted by the west are not exactly noble gospel from heaven codifying an absolute morality for all humans. They’re expedient, advantageous artifacts created by powerful institutions at the height of their power.
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Replying to @vgr
No, they’re integral institutions to any current dispensation & technological reality. We may argue over the particulars but current IP laws are a good first approximation of what is necessary for fairness to and promotion of creators.
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We have deep moral/ethical differences that cannot be sorted out on twitter clearly
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