For example, I may spend a great deal of time working on a concept, and arrive at an inventive solution, only to discover, when telling someone else about it, that it’s already been invented.

I myself have done that to others, told them their ideas already exist. I know Jeffy’s come up with a few.

After my most recent encounter with this problem, while working with a NAT traversal technique, I became annoyed at my education.

I’m wondering whether because I am not fully briefed and up to date with the goings-on of the fields in which I am attempting to create, I need to pursue a greater education, and evaluating what I’ve already had as incomplete.

But today I was reading a comic, and another possibility occurred to me. Independent Invention and Non-obviousness.

Theoretically issued patents have satisfied the non-obvious clause, so any joe contemporary in the field shouldn’t be able to come up with it. But maybe when I spend days thinking about it, and come up with an answer, it still counts as non-obvious.

But it’s still independent invention. It seems to me that creating something that happens to be patented by others but totally unknown to you should still count. Still allow you to benefit from it, and possibly now fail the obviousness test.

Under that logic, someone who is only partially educated in the field experiences greatest advantage. On one hand, they’re not familiar with pre-existing solutions to the problems they’re encountering, so they waste time working on them. On the other, they could reinvent just about anything and use it carefree. But if we are to consider development of the field, and we assume that we’re fully versed, all the new technology is in non-obvious development along the same paths as have already been followed. History tells us that while much development happens along these lines, it is more the natural progression of the field than the sort of developmental leap that tends to happen when not versed.

There seems to be a natural point at which an invention is no longer non-obvious, and the point at which it is independently invented would seem to qualify. More to the point, techniques that would otherwise be considered public domain, and presumably taught in schools,

Under current law, that’s still infringement.

Seems to me that there’s a finite number of lawns to mow. There are economies of scale, and it’s well known that when providing a service or doing business, that results in a natural monopoly.

So if you push it all the way out, you have “MicroLawns INC”, that owns all of the lawn care business. Maybe there’s room for specialty? OK, that seems to be happening in the medical profession.. each doctor is a specialist, and the fields of specialty are rapidly narrowing. General practicioners are more and more rare, just because the development of new fields has been so aggressive.

So the extreme situation there is that everyone’s job is unique. Everyone works as hard as they possibly can on the thing they’re absolutely best suited to do, because anywhere that someone else can do better becomes grounds for them to outcompete you.

The monopoly would be composed of such people, so that the gestalt entity can handle all such situations, and thus compete better than a standalone individual.

There’s a lot lost in the fray.. no matter how diverse the menu of options, preferences are also diverse.. If every need shares that diversity, then there’s an unending list of meetable needs, which can be met optimally but not exactly by one provider. And that has a margin for improvement.

In a lot of ways, it’s a multidimensional market. I’m speaking in general and more abstract terms, but we’re all familiar with the idea, to use another context, of buying a new computer. Dozens of parts and features, you decide what you like or want, look at what’s available, and choose something that’s imperfect but close enough.

So there are a lot of margins… availability of information, availability of service/goods providers, mutability of aspects of the need..

Specifically, I’m trying to look at the situation in which those margins disappear. Because I think that’s what happens when the American dream is executed by all players until there is no more benefit possible to any player..

Further, I think as the game progresses, it becomes more and more challenging for the individual players. Jeffy’s got a thousand ideas on how to make a good product or make something better, like his automatic plant waterers.. But he can’t compete with wal-mart or sky-mall.

I do believe there are upper limits to an individual’s ability. So what happens when you have someone who, trying as hard as they possibly could, fulfilling all the potential they have, has nothing to offer?

It’s easier to analyze with world of warcraft toons, because they have a finite set of abilities/attributes, a definite maximal ability, yet still participate in an economy. My paladin can’t become a better engineer than the best engineer on the server. Someone’s already got every recipe and max skill. There is a limited need for those people, assuming any of them will be happy with 10% of the available business, after the minimum availability is 10, there’s nowhere for my paladin to peddle. Wow still has margins of locality, but we can narrow it to the number of major cities reasonably. All that’s left is price, and we all have the same lower limit of costs, somewhere it’ll come down to the minimum gold value of playtime. (Sweatshops anyone?)

I wonder how close we are to that today.

Seems to me there should have been a few questions on that civic literacy quiz about why it’s good to be a citizen.

I would love to have seen a question “What is The American Dream?”

Because it seems to me that there’s been a shift. I spoke with a friend recently regarding Rights of Stewardship. Specifically, why we, as Americans, are allowed to be here and have the opportunities we do, and others aren’t. Immigration type stuff.

I’ve previously been lax on immigration; the US already accepts a huge influx, and obviously there’s interest in more. Most of the anti-immigration sentiment I see is regular bigotry and greed. Much of the real issue in my mind, has been the load on social services. Costs to provide public services, such as police, road maintenance, mail delivery, etc, increase with the population. Illegal immigration, which I’ve not specifically addressed, costs as much as legal immigration, but without the returns of tax collection.

That’s one reason the border states CA/TX/FL have higher sales taxes, to derive income from otherwise untapped people.

Which had left me in the position of being pro-immigration. Opposed to illegal immigration, of course, but in favor of general immigration provided the social services scale appropriately. Which just means that we accept whatever we can. Maybe that’s already true, I don’t know.

Recently, however, I’ve been thinking. Thinking about what entitles we citizens to be here and voting and not others. Strong in my mind is the reminder that we too have not been here very long. Colin made the point that other countries could certainly have followed the path that we did over the last 300 years. Had the policies we had, the culture, people, and resources, they could be where we are too. While much is debatable there, the single most important thing is the people, because they determine much of the rest.

I’ve read “People have exactly the government they want”. And it seems to me there’s some truth to that, once you get past the initial problem of knowing what they want, and knowing what their actions will give them, they continue to perpetuate the ideals that make their country what it is today.

What sets early America aside from other developing countries, at the time it was developing, and continually today, was the ability and desire for people to make something of themselves. That is “The American Dream”. Though if you read the wikipedia article or other references, you’ll find that it’s grown to mean you can make your life anything you want it to be through work and choice.

Seems like a lot of Americans today want independence. The ability to do whatever they want with nothing required of them. Ironically, yet predictably, they don’t want to work to achieve that.

So part of every American’s civic literacy is that dream. What entitles us to this country is that difference. That desire to work to better our lot, the ability to do so. I rather suspect many would rather win the lottery.

I suspect my Immigration policy has changed along those lines. As has my social program policy.