🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <65707@bbn.BBN.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
|> Fine by me: let talented amateurs do all of the research and
|> development and give away the fruits of their labors.  I don't recall:
|> what was Franklin actually doing for a living at that time that allowed
|> him to have the spare time to do all of this 'dabbling', not to mention
|> purchasing all of the tools, equipment and raw materials?

His main income was as a printer and publisher.  (actually he was amazingly
prolific in a number of fields -- they don't make Renaissance men like
they used to).  He probably was satified with the money he made on the
pamphlets describing his inventions.

!> Did he
|> expect the folks to whom he gave his designs, in turn, to give away the
|> items?  After all, his concern here was for the 'savings of wood', and
|> what better way to get even WIOER distribution of his stove than to
|> somehow force/convince the ironmongers to give stoves away at free (or
|> close-to), too.

Franklin knew that there was a distinction between material property
(things that, if you give to another, you no longer have) and ideas
(things that increase in value the more they are shared).  There's no
connection between "giving away" an idea and giving away a material
object.

I think that inventors should be rewarded, but granting them a state-enforced
monopoly for a couple of decades is a bit much.

--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck