Create an Oasis with Greywater

Wow, great pix, Sal..I really like these phhtgorapoic journeys you do.. Like the cracks you make, like on the outhouses during the clean-up.. everyone needs one sooner or later! Beautiful blog!!

Patent law is not a bar to any kind of speech. It only bars the manikg, using and selling of the invention. I heard an interview on NPR this morning where a Senator was bemoaning the fact that the economy is not as strong today as it has been for the last 50 years and so government tinkering has to be done more carefully. He was talking like no one knows why the economy is not as strong, where it is pretty clear what the problem is. The economy has become less efficient. If the economy was more efficient, there would be more surplus available for growth. What has happened is that each little bit of the economy has gotten better at extracting the value-added of that particular little bit of the economy. If too much of the value-added is extracted by one party, there isn't enough left in the value-added chain to nourish the rest of the chain and the chain (the rest of the economy) cannot grow. This is what a monopoly power can do, it can extract value disproportionate to its value-added. That extracted value comes from somewhere, and so the economy is stifled. The marketplace doesn't favor the best inventions, it favors the most profitable ones because profit can be used as a weapon to defeat the less profitable ones. Spending $100 in IP barbed wire to make $10 in IP profit is no different than spending $0 in IP barbed wire and manikg $10 in IP profit to the producer, but the consumer pays $110 in the first case and $10 in the second.