14 Comments

I couldn't stop reading the plural of your name as the word for disorder. A thousand "Chao(s)" would indeed be chaos. I think for me the answer is to be able to produce new and valuable intellectual property every day, and just keep it coming. Consistency with your creative capacity seems like the only real protection you could ever have to ensure no can steal your essential value, which is not what you have thought, but the way you think.

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Oct 26, 2023Liked by Chao Lam

“Let a thousand Chaos reign” would be a better title, in my opinion. Reining in trademark wars with property-like taxes is what this essay is about. Dot That! :)

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So insightful! I distinctly remember the Chao showdown too. Let Chaos bloom!

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Very glad to hear you and the other Chao resolved things without a lawsuit Chao :)

I love the comparison of IP with realestate, because IP does in a lot of ways benefit from the law in similar ways.

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Oct 27, 2023·edited Oct 27, 2023

Dividing a pie between two unvested parties is a symmetric problem. It's a flawed comparison with property-like tax on IP for the reason that the property holder is *vested* but the interloper isn't, i.e., it is an asymmetric problem. Imagine your house that you have lived in for many years being assessed a valuation that you pay tax on every year, but then a raider comes along and pays double that—but just for one year—trashes the house beyond repair and then promptly skips town. Both you and the raider are worse off. Society is poorer because no one can afford to defend a property when it is openly raidable by anyone at any moment. No long-term investment in brand building. No Apple, all generics. No ads, too. A society without brands is colorless—no blooms.

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"It is progressive and increases equality" is a claim that is falsifiable. Imagine 999 BitCo's carving out a niche around BigCo to eke out a living with their little niche brands. BigCo is mightily annoyed. So BigCo outbid its tiny competitors on all 999 trademarks—and now owns them all. 1,000 brands belong to BigCo, all 999 BitCo's dispossessed of their niche brands. Not progressive, and highly unequal.

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