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Originally Posted by Nodrog
Why? What do you mean by pragmatic?
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By pragmatic I mean regular reasoning applies over ideology.
Pro-market no-government-interference types by definition believe in some variant of 'the market / people / business is inheretly better at sorting out stuff itself'. They generally apply this to mean that various government responsibilites should not be government responsibilites at all. This includes, but is not limited to (remove from list depending on how moderate you are): public healthcare, unemployment benefits / social security, psychatriac help, help for disabled, childcare services, fire brigades, universities , schools, public transports, roads / ferries / rails, telecom infrastructure, etc
Patents however, is never on that list. This is always (atleast in my experience) the one single area where "the market" all of a sudden is completly unable to correct itself and the government needs to step in and regulate, creating artificial barriers to free competion in order to 'make it profitable to research'.
Incidently, it is also the one item which benefits the establishment.