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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 6191117" data-attributes="member: 19675">Property rights do not prevent dissemination, they prevent unauthorized dissemination.  If someone invented the bow or wheel today, nothing in the law would prevent them from letting someone else make those.  Look at Mercedes Benz: they allowed the free use of hundreds of their automobile safety patents, including major ones like 3 point harnesses, ABS, crumple zone technology and (as I recall) the airbag.Economic fact: Since property rights in land were expanded beyond royalty, a gater percentage of people have been able to increase their wealth.Economic fact: as property rights have expanded beyond the rule of "self-help", the pace of technological advance has increased, as well as the acceleration of that increase.Those combined factors are essentially the ONLY reasons we have a middle class at all.  When Russia finally did away with its version of the feudal society to embrace a more capitalist structure (IOW, Pre-Marx & Lenin)- their economy boomed.  Modern China's economy is growing in large measure due to adopting more capitalist practices AND more vigorously protecting the property rights of its own citizens (though not the rights of foreigners).Are concepts of property rights universally held?  No.  But if you look at the societies that continue to innovate versus those that stagnate*, you'll find nearly every one protects property rights vigorously.* or those that stave of stagnation by ignoring the property rights of others.</blockquote>

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