I disagree with this. Drug companies would have no incentive to invest in research if there was no benefit in doing so. Why would they dump millions of dollars into a drug if they had to give their findings away?

And Linux is not a success in the public arena. Sorry. Tech savy people think it's cool, and it is a great product, but it has zero market penetration for public use. Yet I think you confuse Microsoft's "monopolistic" success with capitolistic success. Microsoft is a monopoly, and because of that, it has little incentive to advance itself excpet when it wants to compete against itself. Monopolies are no good. My guess is that IBM and SGI have invested in Linux because of their dislike for Microsoft (because it is a monopoly, not a capitolistic success) and because investing in something like Apple would be helping a competitor.

I personally don't care if one drug company or another has a patent, as long as the product is available to the public. Sure, if companies worked together, they "could" get more done, but none of them would because there would be no competition. Competition breeds innovation. Just ask anybody who has only one local cable TV company or power company. Is there service any good or prices affordable? Now ask someone who lives in a community with competition.

But again, Hugo would not have been able to find any factory to make the empeg if there weren't there to make money. And he would not have found any of his investors. I for one would not have been able to afford one.

Just looking at the technology advancements of the last 100 years, wih the protections of the patent, and you'll be hard pressed to prove that competition doesn't work.

My main beef is that for Americans to be disgusted with capitolism makes no sense because our country IS a capitolistic democracy. There is nothing wrong with that. It is what makes our country what it is today. If someone has some romantic notions of socialism, they can move to France or China, that's fine with me.

Like many people have said, on a small scale this stuff can work. Just look at LogoEdit, HiJack, Jemplode, emphatic, etc etc all being given to us. But believe me, that won't work on a large scale.