[coldtea]

>This is the most important line to me. I’ve heard so many horror stories along these lines.

Well, sounds like truly free trade.

No patents, no copyright, no BS.

If you can make it and sell it cheaper than someone else, you win (and people get it without artificial restrictions on its production).

[hopler]

And it causes a tragedy of the commons that disincentivizes invention and slows progress in the Useful Arts as the US Constitution calls it.

Truly free trade would mean I could just take one from a store since the owner isn't using all the duplicates in stock.

[coldtea]

>And it causes a tragedy of the commons that disincentivizes invention

Only when it comes to profit. There are other motives for invention...

>Truly free trade would mean I could just take one from a store since the owner isn't using all the duplicates in stock.

Only that wouldn't be trade -- because you don't pay (trade money for the product). So, no.

[rmrfrmrf]

Sounds like justification for exploitative labor practices.

[coldtea]

Sounds like totally orthogonal to labor practices.

[zozbot123]

It's not free or fair trade, because the West does have copyright/patent enforcement. It's free-for-all on the Chinese side and self-defeating protectionism from the West. Now, if the West actively rolled back IP restrictions we'd get closer to a fair situation, and I'm confident that other mechanisms (prizes, research funding, targeted subsidies) would be expanded to restore the incentive towards innovation that IP used to provide.