[gpm]

No. But I do want to limit the amount we reward NVIDIA for calling the shots correctly to maximize the benefit to society. For instance by reducing the duration of the government granted monopolies on chip technology that is obsolete well before the default duration of 20 years is over.

That said, it strikes me that the actual limiting factor is fab capacity not nvidia's designs and we probably need to lift the monopolies preventing competition there if we want to reduce prices.

[JumpCrisscross]

> reducing the duration of the government granted monopolies on chip technology that is obsolete well before the default duration of 20 years is over

Why do you think these private entities are willing to invest the massive capital it takes to keep the frontier advancing at that rate?

> I do want to limit the amount we reward NVIDIA for calling the shots correctly to maximize the benefit to society

Why wouldn't NVIDIA be a solid steward of that capital given their track record?

[gpm]

> Why do you think these private entities are willing to invest the massive capital it takes to keep the frontier advancing at that rate?

Because whether they make 100x or 200x they make a shitload of money.

> Why wouldn't NVIDIA be a solid steward of that capital given their track record?

The problem isn't who is the steward of the capital. The problem is that economically efficient thing to do for a single company is (given sufficient fab capacity, and a monopoly) to raise prices to extract a greater share of the pie at the expense of shrinking the size of the pie. I'm not worried about who takes the profit, I'm worried about the size of the pie.

[whimsicalism]

> Because whether they make 100x or 200x they make a shitload of money.

It's not a certainty that they 'make a shitload of money'. Reducing the right tail payoffs absolutely reduces the capital allocated to solve problems - many of which are risky bets.

Your solution absolutely decreases capital investment at the margin, this is indisputable and basic economics. Even worse when the taking is not due to some pre-existing law, so companies have to deal with the additional uncertainty of whether & when future people will decide in retrospect that they got too large a payoff and arbitrarily decide to take it from them.

[gpm]

You can't just look at the costs to an action, you also have to look at the benefits.

Of course I agree I'm going to stop marginal investments from occurring into research into patent-able technologies by reducing the expect profit. But I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much. Meanwhile I'm going to greatly increase the investment into the existing technology we already have, and allow many more people to try to improve upon it, and I'm going to argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.

Whether I'm right or wrong about the net benefit, the basic economics here is that there are both costs and benefits to my proposed action.

And yes I'm going to marginally reduce future investments because the same might happen in the future and that reduces expected value. In fact if I was in charge the same would happen in the future. And the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit of the same actually happening in the future and us not being hamstrung by unbreachable monopolies.

[whimsicalism]

> But I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much

I think you're shifting it by a lot. If the government can post-hoc decide to invalidate patents because the holder is getting too successful, you are introducing a substantial impact on expectations and uncertainty. Your action is not taken in a vacuum.

> Meanwhile I'm going to greatly increase the investment into the existing technology we already have, and allow many more people to try to improve upon it, and I'm going to argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.

I think this is a much more speculative impact. Why will people even fund the improvements if the government might just decide they've gotten too large a slice of the pie later on down the road?

> the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit of the same actually happening in the future and us not being hamstrung by unbreachable monopolies.

No the trade-off is that materially less is produced. These incentive effects are not small. Take for instance, drug price controls - a similar post-facto taking because we feel that the profits from R&D are too high. Introducing proposed price controls leads to hundreds of fewer drugs over the next decade [0] - and likely millions of premature deaths downstream of these incentive effects. And that's with a policy with a clear path towards short-term upside (cheaper drug prices). Discounted GPUs by invalidating nvidia's patents has a much more tenuous upside and clear downside.

[0]: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/d/312...

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'm going to do so very slightly because I'm not shifting the expected value by very much

You're massively increasing uncertainty.

> the same would happen in the future. And the trade-off I get for this is that society gets the benefit

Why would you expect it would ever happen again? What you want is an unrealized capital gains tax. Not to nuke our semiconductor industry.

[hluska]

You have proposed state ownership of all successful IP. That is a massive change and yet you have demonstrated zero understanding of the possible costs.

Your claim that removing a profit motivation will increase investment is flat out wrong. Everything else crumbles from there.

[gpm]

No, I've proposed removing or reducing IP protections, not transferring them to the state. Allowing competitors to enter the market will obviously increase investment in competitors...

[salawat]

>Why wouldn't NVIDIA be a solid steward of that capital given their track record?

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

[tick_tock_tick]

> That said, it strikes me that the actual limiting factor is fab capacity not nvidia's designs and we probably need to lift the monopolies preventing competition there if we want to reduce prices.

Lol it's not "monopolies" limiting fab capacity. Existing fab companies can barely manage to stand-up a new fab in different cities. Fabs are impossibly complex and beyond risky to fund.

It's the kind of thing you'd put government money to making but it's so risky government really don't want to spend billions and fail so they give existing companies billions so if they fail it's not the governments fault.

[hluska]

So, if a private company is successful, you will nationalize its IP under some guise of maximizing the benefit to society? That form of government was tried once. It failed miserably.

Under your idea, we’ll try a badly broken economic philosophy again. And while we’re at it, we will completely stifle investment in innovation.

[whimsicalism]

there is no such thing as a lump-sum transfer, this will shift expectations and incentives going forward and make future large capital projects an increasingly uphill battle