More Support for basic income

This article discusses yet another study supporting the idea of a basic income.  Florida recently discovered each homeless person in the state costs the state about an average of $31,000 a year.  This is enough to keep each of them above (the Federal definition of) the poverty level if it was just handed to them.  It mostly covers wages for law enforcement involvement (according to the article, mostly for trivial crimes like trespassing, public intoxication and sleeping on park benches) and medical costs.  For far less than this, the state has found that it can provide long term homes for these homeless people.  The study estimates annual housing costs could be covered at around $10,000 a person.  This would eliminate nearly all law enforcement costs (since most of the "crimes" are caused by the fact that these people do not have homes to sleep and be drunk in) and it would dramatically reduce the medical costs (if they are not on the streets, they are less likely to get hit by vehicles and they are not going to have many medical emergencies related to exposure to extreme weather).  According to the study, Florida could save $350 million over the next ten years by paying to provide housing for the homeless in the state.  This averages out to $35 million a year in savings.

Evidently, Florida is not the only state to discover that well designed state welfare can actually save substantial amounts of money.  Colorado recently converted a prison into a homeless shelter.  The cost is around $3.9 million, but the cost to the state for caring for the homeless people served is just over a third of the original cost.  It turns out that Utah has been providing free housing to homeless people for almost a decade, to save money.  Some believe that Utah will eliminate long term homelessness in the state entirely within the next year or two.  As the article says, not only is it morally expedient that we end homelessness by providing free housing to the homeless, it is also financially expedient that we do so.

I am sure you can see how this relates to basic income.  Of the states mentioned in the article, two revealed the cost per person of homelessness to the state.  One was around $31,000 a year, and the other was around $43,000 a year.  In both cases, the amount of money spent is enough to take the homeless population entirely out of poverty just by giving them the money with no strings attached.  In fact, Florida could keep $6,000 of the $31,000 and still bring their homeless out of poverty.  Colorado, which spends over $43,000 a year per homeless person (not counting the savings seen from converting the prison), could keep $18,000 per person and still bring them out of poverty (using $25,000 as the required income to eliminate poverty; this is close to the Federal government definition of poverty).  Not only is $25,000 a year enough to pay for a small apartment, in most places it is enough to pay for food, a cell phone subscription, and maybe even internet.  It will not cover a car payment with all of this, but we are talking about people who do not have jobs and thus do not need a car to get to work.  Homeless people typically already "live" near places that sell necessities (otherwise they would starve), so they will probably already be close enough to walk.  And of course, I have already discussed the proven fact that given the resources, many homeless people will get out of poverty on their own (in a previous article).  This means that many homeless people given the money that is normally used reactively to help them would become tax paying citizens, further reducing the cost.

Again, I want to point out that basic income is cheaper than welfare with restrictions.  Every restriction placed on welfare recipients costs more money.  If the state has to check bank accounts and employment records to make sure that welfare recipients really are poor, the state has to pay someone to do it.  The costs can go very deep.  First, the welfare applicant has to spend time filling out and filing the forms.  Second, the welfare worker has to review the forms. Third (assuming no revisions are required), the welfare worker has to contact the banks and employers.  Fourth, the banks and employers have to spend time and effort verifying the validity of the legal information release forms.  Fifth, the banks and employers have to look up the requested information and send it back to the welfare worker.  Sixth, the welfare worker has to do whatever math is necessary to determine whether the applicant qualifies.  Seventh, the welfare worker has to send (or otherwise communicate) either a rejection or acceptance letter.  Eighth, the welfare worker has to communicate the acceptance or rejection to whoever starts the next phase of processing.  Do not forget to add to this the fact that few states require only back account and employment records.  Most states require even more.  This is not the end though.  Most welfare departments in the U.S. require recertification either every month or every sixth months.  When there are tens of thousands of welfare recipients in each state, this becomes a full time job for hundreds or thousands of employees.  Of course, this means that managers are also needed, as well as buildings, which have utility costs, and janitors.  Also, do not forget that all of these employees need office supplies and computers to do their jobs.  The welfare department of nearly every state is the size of a typical large business.  Unlike for-profit businesses though, they do not generate any revenue.  So each state has a large welfare business funded by the state, that only consumes funding, and rather large amounts of it.  An unconditional basic income could dramatically reduce the size and thus cost of state welfare systems.  A basic income that provides enough to avoid poverty would cost significantly less than the cost of living on the street for homeless people.  It is possible that taxes would have to be increased, but it would hardly matter, because for most people, the income increase would pay for most if not all of the tax increase.  In the end, it looks like many states could save money this way, even with little or no tax increase.  Do not worry to much about the welfare workers that would loose their jobs.  The basic income will provide enough to support them while they try to find new jobs.  What is the downside?  So far, every suggested downside of a basic income has either been disproven by research or was based on faulty interpretation of data.  It looks like there is no downside.

I am not going to pass judgement, but I do sometimes wonder about the intelligence of our government officials and those who elected them.  I mean, look at the evidence.  According to the evidence, strong welfare reduces government spending.  All evidence so far has shown that a basic income will result in a larger labor pool, happier family relationships, and cost less than anything we have tried in the past.  It is both morally and economically wise, according to the evidence.  The fact that we have not done it and are still not even considering it leaves me with two conclusions.  Either, the average American is an evil person who wants the poor to suffer, even if it means that it will cost the government huge amounts of money, or the average American is stupid.  Given these two options, if I am to give the benefit of the doubt, I have to assume the average American is stupid.  I hate to make such assumptions (especially out loud), but what alternative is there?

I have mentioned before that I am conservative.  While I register to vote as a Republican, I do not consider myself one.  The Republican party line wants to force everyone to work for their support in an economy where there is not enough work for this to happen.  While this plan seems fair, it is no longer economically feasible.  Sorry, but our economy cannot handle the weight of a large working class anymore.  Businesses cannot afford to hire enough workers to employ the entire population, because they produce so efficiently that the overproduction would cost too much.  It looks to me like the Republican party would have us massively overproduce and then spend huge amounts of money to either store or discard the surplus.  This does not make economic sense, and it could be very damaging to the planet.  A well run business does not overproduce, because overproduction reduces profits, and since the Republican party claims to support the best interest of businesses, it should recognize this and support government action that reduces the need for businesses to provide more work than is necessary.  The only way we will get the massive working class desired by the Republican party is to deliberately make businesses less efficient (see Luddite).  I sincerely hope the Republican party leaders are not so deluded that they think this is an acceptable solution.

Conservative does not mean that a person does not support wisely designed welfare.  In fact, what it technically means that a person supports small incremental changes in government, instead of large unpredictable changes.  I prefer a government that slowly changes, and that considers evidence and consequences carefully before making big decisions.  I do not support large government actions that have poorly understood consequences.  I think that we should consider our decisions in small increments and back up when we find undesirable consequences.  In cases where things cannot be done incrementally, I would like to see a good deal of strong evidence supporting the decision before it is made.  Basic income has plenty of very strong evidence that it will be successful.  All major concerns have been resolved in various experiments and studies on basic income or closely related things.  A great deal of positive side effects of basic income have been discovered in studies that implement very limited versions of the idea, and even more have been found in experiments that have fully implemented a basic income.  As a conservative, I think that we have enough evidence that basic income will improve our society and reduce government spending to justify making this major decision.  To add to this, we need to realize that we can always reverse it if it does not work.  One of the great things about our form of government is that law can be repealed fairly easily.  In my opinion, we have not used this feature often enough, but if we go into this recognizing that this is an option, and if we go into it determined to see the experiment through (instead of bailing at the first sign of difficulty), we can safely test the evidence and ultimately make the best decision for us.  Instead of following outdated and illogical party lines, we need to look at the evidence and use it to make the best decision.

Economic Value of Religious Freedom

A few years ago, I wrote an article on religious freedom, where I suggested that even atheists should support religious freedom, because it is the root of all of our freedoms.  Ultimately, if there was no belief in God, there would be no justification for the idea of human rights.  Survival of the fittest would be the only real law, and freedom would only exist so far as the fittest permitted.  Unsurprisingly, it goes further than this though.  I just read an article discussing recent research showing that religious freedom also impact economic well being.  The study found that religious freedom is one of only three variables that are reliable predictors of economic growth (measured by GDP).

There are several explanations for this impact of religious freedom on economic growth.  The first is that political and religious tension make the business environment of a country unpredictable.  Entrepreneurs do not want to try to start a new business in a political environment that may eventually damage, destroy, or even seize the business.  Existing businesses may choose to relocate or even shut down, as the risk of losses increase with religious tension and hostilities.  In short, hostilities over religious freedom will drive profitable businesses to leave or close.  The second (which is closely related to the first) is that tension or hostilities over religious freedom will tend to reduce government stability.  Besides the obvious affect on businesses, this also causes fears that reduce tourism.  According to the Deseret News article, this problem has been seen over the last few years in Egypt.  Besides these, it would also be reasonable to assume that hostilities against certain religions will cause immigration out of the country.  Since many of those leaving are obviously those wealthy enough to afford the costs, this will result in a exodus of wealth, leaving the country poor.  I can see more in the underlying causes than just the economic harm caused by lack of religious freedom.

In nearly all of the cases discussed in the article, the lack of religious freedom has caused significant internal unrest.  Freedom of religion has great economic value, but I think it also has significant political value.  Governments discussed in the article that limit religious freedom seem to all be unstable.  Also, we have seen over the last few decades, as the U.S. government has reduced religious freedom, increased political unrest and even some threats of rebellion (mostly in the form of states threatening to secede).  Religious freedom also seems to be a predictor of government stability, not just economic growth.

There are many things we can take away from this.  Probably the most important is that strong religious freedom is the road to economic success.  The second is that religious freedom is important to government stability.  I want to stress this second one a bit, because it appears to be counter intuitive to politicians.  Over the last few decades, politicians have repeatedly tried to limit religious freedom, because they believe it will solidify their political position and power.  This has become especially common during times of economic hardships, because it becomes harder to get votes when the economy has done poorly while a politician is in power.  It turns out that this creates a feedback loop that hinders the ability of the economy to recover, at the same time as reducing political stability.  Maybe this will get the politician needed votes, but if the economy does not recover, eventually it will not be enough, and if the government fails, those politicians will loose all of their power (and, they may get lynched for limiting religious freedom).

My point here is not that we should give unlimited religious freedom.  Some religious practices, for instance human sacrifice, should be prohibited by law.  There are also some places where limiting religious observances may be appropriate.  Schools should not be allowed to encourage or enforce the worship of a specific deity, or any deity for that matter.  On the other side though, forcing people to do things that violate their religions is unethical and unwise, in most situations.  There are cases where this cannot be avoided (for instance, I should not be able to avoid paying taxes by claiming it is against my religion), but there are many where it can.  When considering laws that would limit religious freedom, the value of the law needs to be carefully weighed against the costs of not enacting it.  If a specific minority group feels insulted that not all businesses will serve them, but there are plenty of reasonable alternatives, the economic harm of restricting religious freedom may be far greater than the harm caused by insulting a minority group.  On the other side, if a minority group will be significantly harmed by this, without anywhere to turn for relief, it may be better to restrict religious freedom a bit (as little as reasonably possible) to maintain freedom for the minority.  Minorities should not be allowed to leverage restrictions to religious freedom to harass others, but at the same time, religious freedom should not be a valid excuse to deny anyone a good quality of life.  If there are 5 good quality wedding shops in a town, it would be a travesty of justice to allow a gay couple to deliberately harass the one that is religiously opposed to serving homosexual weddings.  On the other hand, if there is limited housing, food, or clothing availability, religious freedom should not be a valid excuse to refuse to serve a homosexual couple.  If all 5 wedding had religious objections to serving a gay couple (and no others were available nearby), I could see limiting religious freedom to ensure economic fairness.  In fact, this had to be done in the South to stifle the rampant racism (some parts of the KKK did try to claim that requiring them to serve black people was a violation of their religious freedom).  The problem in the South was that a vast majority of businesses refused to serve black people, which was severely limiting the quality of life for black people.  Even if it is a limitation of religious freedom, it was necessary to restrict racial discrimination to ensure the continued freedom of the black population.  (In my opinion, any American has the right to hate someone for race or religion, but they do not have the right to harm or limit the freedom of others based on those beliefs.  Note that I do not hate anyone for race or religion.  I just recognize that freedom of thought, conscience, and religion includes the right to hate people of a certain race or religion, though not necessarily the right to act on those feelings.)

Anyhow, it turns out there is reasonable evidence to the effect that religious freedom is important to economic well being and government stability.  The idea that an atheist world where religion has been exterminated would be an ideal world has more or less been proven false on multiple occasions (the USSR provided one occasion), and now we have even more evidence that religious freedom is an important part of a strong economy.  Now when we consider restricting religious freedom to get the votes of a disgruntled minority group, we should seriously consider the harm it will do to our economy.

Glycemic Index

The glycemic index of a food in a measure of how it affects blood sugar.  Foods that cause rapid increases in blood sugar have high glycemic indices, and food that cause very low increases in blood sugar have low glycemic indices.  The references for this scale are pure glucose (which is what blood sugar is) and any food that causes no increase in blood sugar.  A glycemic index of 100 is defined as the increase in blood sugar caused by consuming pure glucose.  In theory, this is the highest glycemic index, because glucose requires no time or energy to be broken down, because it is already glucose.  Every other form of energy (for the most part) must be broken down into glucose to be useful to the body.  Counterintuitively, there are a few foods that have a higher glycemic index than glucose, though the reason is not well understood.

Glycemic index is important in measuring the impact a food may have on health.  For diabetics, glycemic index determines what they can and cannot eat, and how much insulin they will need before or after eating it.  Most non-diabetic people do not worry about blood sugar and thus do not care about glycemic index.  They should.

Having chronically high blood sugar can lead to type 2 diabetes.  Type 2 diabetes is caused by something called insulin resistance.  I have been asked how this works by people who were confused about how sugar could become resistance to another chemical.  The confusion was the result of a misunderstanding of what insulin is and how it works.  Insulin does not directly control sugar levels by reacting with it.  Insulin is a hormone.  It sends messages to the cells.  The cells respond by absorbing glucose from the bloodstream.  It is not the sugar that becomes insulin resistant; it is the cells.  The process is mildly complex, but the result is that chronically high blood sugar will make cells less responsive to insulin after about 25 years (give or take 5-10).  The timing and severity of the effect is different for each person, but the trend seems to be that people with a significant diet of high glycemic index foods tend to start showing symptoms of pre-diabetes at around 25 to 35 years old and actually get type 2 diabetes around 35 to 45, if they do not change their diets.  So far, it is not known if there is any way to reverse this.  In other words, once you have pre-diabetes, you had better stay on a good diet, or you will pick up where you left off.  (Note that eating high sugar foods occasionally does not seem to have any lasting effect of insulin resistance.)

Really everyone should care about glycemic index.  A few hundred years ago, most people did not live more than 40 to 60 years anyhow, so even those with the money to maintain high sugar diets would be unlikely to see the long term effects of it before dying of something else.  Now, most people live into their 70s or 80s, and sugar is much more accessible.  Given that it takes 20-30 years for a high sugar diet to cause diabetes, and we tend to live two to three times that long, we need to care about this problem.  Some people do not care about their health.  I have occasionally heard people tell other that this is their own life and their own body, and they are the only ones being hurt by their poor decisions.  This is a lie.  If you have parents, children, friends, a job, or really any other long term relationships with other humans, dying at 40 or 50 affects a lot of other people.  If you die at 50 instead of 80, you could be hurting five generations of family or more.  If your job is important and you are hard to replace, you could be hurting all of your coworkers, your managers, your subordinates, the stockholders of your employer, and even the customers of your employer.  Just dealing with the emotional stress of well managed diabetes could be a strain on your family and friends, even if you do not die early.  If you seriously think that your health decisions have no impact on others, you should probably get counseling for depression, because only very seriously depressed people think that no one else cares about them.

So, how should you deal with this blood sugar issue?  There is always the option of stabbing yourself multiple times daily to check your blood sugar, but unless you have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, you probably do not need to do this far.  Glycemic index does not account for the volume of a food that you consume, so there is no real measure of how much glycemic index you should consume in a day.  For that, look into glycemic load, which adjusts glycemic index based on amount consumed.  Using glycemic index alone, reduce consumption of foods with a high glycemic index, and increase consumption of foods with a low glycemic index.  For instance, if you drink a lot of normal soda, which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, drink less and consider replacing it with a soda sweetened with table sugar (sometimes advertised as cane sugar).  High fructose corn syrup has a glycemic index around 88, which is fairly high, while table sugar has a glycemic index around 68, which is considered medium.  Corn syrup will make your blood sugar spike and then drop.  If you constantly consume it, it will keep your blood sugar constantly high.  Table sugar will cause a smaller spike, and your blood sugar will drop more slowly, because it takes longer to break down.  You may even have an easier time drinking less of the table sugar sweetened soda, because it will take longer for your blood sugar to drop to a point where you feel like you need more energy.  There is one problem with adjusting your diet based on glycemic indices of food.  Where do you find them?  I just gave you two that I found by doing a lot of research into the differences of high fructose corn syrup and table sugar.  While these two were not difficult to find, you may find it impossible to find reliable numbers for the foods you eat every day.

There are some places you can find information on glycemic index of foods.  In most cases, treat them as estimates, because glycemic index can be affected dramatically by things that seem trivial.  For instance, Russet potatoes have a glycemic index that is higher than glucose when cooked (this is one of the strange ones).  When they are not cooked, their glycemic index is much lower.  Most other varieties of potatoes have much lower glycemic indices.  Some potato-like root vegetables even have extremely low glycemic indices.  Sweet potatoes and yams range between 15 and 20, which is very low.  When looking for the glycemic index of a food, be very specific.  The more specific the result, the more likely it is to be accurate for the variety and cooking method you are using.  Sadly, no amount of search will find every food you might eat.  The glycemic indices of most very commonly eaten foods can be found easy with a few internet searches.  Generic brands or less common foods will be much harder to find, if they are even available.  And do not trust that the glycemic index for a name brand will be the same as the glycemic index for a generic brand.  Preparation techniques can have a substantial impact of glycemic index.

Now that you know all about the glycemic index (well, sort of), I want to make a suggestion.  I think that glycemic index should be considered as important as any other nutritional information.  The FDA should add glycemic index to the list of nutritional information that is required on labels.  We have Vitamin C listed, even though very few cases of scurvy have been seen in a century.  We have fat listed, which is ironic, given that studies have found sugars have a larger effect on weight gain and loss than fat (even though fat has a higher energy density).  The listing of sugars says almost nothing.  High fructose corn syrup is a mixture of molecular glucose and fructose, table sugar is made of composite molecules of fructose and glucose, and fructose is an entirely different basic sugar molecule.  High fructose corn syrup has a glycemic index of 88, sucrose (table sugar) has a glycemic index of 68, and fructose has a glycemic index of about 19.  All three of these are listed under "sugar" on labels.  This means that an apple, with a glycemic index of 39 (an average) might have the same amount of sugar as a shot of soda with a glycemic index of 88, even though they both could have the same volume of sugar.  A label would list both under "sugar," implying that the impact is the same for both.  (Fruits contain primarily fructose, which makes most fruits low glycemic index foods, even though they taste sweeter than higher glycemic index foods).

Some countries have a "low glycemic index" stamp that can be used on products with a low glycemic index (Australia seems to be one).  The U.S. does not have any requirement for disclosing the glycemic index of foods.  Companies might claim that it is expensive, but it should be no more expensive than getting the nutrient profiles required on product labels.  In fact, glycemic indices are obtained by having people eat the food, then measuring the impact on blood sugar over time.  Since blood sugar measurements are fairly cheap to take, determining glycemic indices should be far cheaper than the chemistry required to profile nutrients.  A sample of 50 people (a reasonable sample for getting an average) could go through the testing for 2 hours.  If they were paid $10 an hour (not bad for getting free food) and blood sugar was tested 4 times during that time (maybe even a bit excessive), it would cost only $750, if each test cost $1.25 (lower end test strips can be obtained for less than $1 a strip now).  That is extremely low for a regulatory requirement.  If each food only needed to be tested with the process changed, the long term cost per sale would not be enough to count.  Even if each product had to be tested yearly, the cost would not be enough to justify raising the price of the product.  It would probably cost more to add the glycemic index to the label than it would to figure out what the glycemic index was.

Anyhow, the point of this is that glycemic index has become a more important measure of nutritional value than most of the other information on product labels.  It is great to have a lot of nutritional information, but most people can figure out what foods are high in fat and what foods have more vitamins and minerals (fruits and vegetables are more nutritious, greasy foods have more fat, etc...).  Fiber content is often harder for people to guess, and calories are obviously important to list.  None of this is very useful, however, if the real primary factor on weight gain or loss is how blood sugar is affected.  Even listing the weight of sugar in a product does not tell us anything about how that sugar will affect people.  Some organizations even try to claim that different types of sugar have the same effect (the Corn Refiners Association claims that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar affect the body in exactly the same way).  This is such an important health concern that it should be mandatory to include the average glycemic index of foods on the labels, just like we do with other nutritional information.

Just for the record, putting the glycemic load of one serving of a product would be even better than putting the glycemic index on food labels.  The problem here is that glycemic load is less well known, and is more likely to be misinterpreted.  For instance, Altoids have a low glycemic load around 7, because the serving size is very small.  Tomato juice has a glycemic load of 27, for a 6 oz serving.  If a person forgot to consider serving size, and most people do forget, this might be interpreted to mean that eating a box of Altoids in one sitting is much healthier than drinking a glass of tomato juice, because the glycemic load of tomato juice is 4 times that of the Altoids.  Instead, drinking the glass of tomato juice is the same as eating 12 Altoids, while eating the whole box of Altoids would be like drinking 6 and a half cups of tomato juice.  Note that I am ignoring any nutritional value besides the effect on blood sugar.  That said, I would be happy with glycemic index, glycemic load, or both on labels.  Besides helping people to be healthier, it would also more clearly reveal the lies about how the body handles different sugars.

Our biggest health problem right now is not about getting the right nutrients or even about eating too many calories.  It is about managing blood sugar.  As such, we should be putting a higher priority on informing people about how their food affects their blood sugar than anything else.  (Of course, with the FDA's practical worship of Monsato, I do not expect it to do anything about this without very strong public pressure or even government intervention.)


Australian web site with advice on swapping high glycemic index foods with lower glycemic index foods:
http://www.gisymbol.com/

Lower sugar diets reduce weight, high sugar increases weight:
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e7492

This article is about a lawsuit over the claim that high fructose corn syrup is the same as sugar.  It discusses a small part of the chemical process.  It also discusses the opinion of some nutritionists that while there are differences, they are not significant.  Notice that no one mentions the substantial difference in glycemic index. One PhD., near the end of the article, is quoted as saying that the only difference is the ratio of glucose to fructose.  This is a filthy lie.  In corn syrup, the sugar molecules are separate, which allows the body to absorb them very quickly.  In table sugar, the body cannot absorb the molecules directly, because they are bound together.  They must be broken apart before they can be absorbed.  Note that this is also the same difference between sugars and starches.  Starches are long molecular chains of sugars, which cannot be absorbed until they are broken apart.  Even better, fiber is also composed of sugar chains, but the chains are organized such that the body cannot break them down.  Claiming that high fructose corn syrup is identical to table sugar is like saying that glucose is identical to most starches and fibers, because they are composed of the same molecules.  The body can tell the difference.  Most starches have a low glycemic index, because it takes time for them to break down.  Fiber has a glycemic index of 0, because it does not break down at all.  I am not impressed by the PhD. of a person that spouts lies.  (Note that this is not strictly in the realm of medicine anyhow.  This question should really be addressed by a nutritionist, though most of them seem to hold to the claim that it does not matter, because we should be consuming less sugars regardless of molecular composition.  This is also a lie, given that most Americans do not eat enough fruit.)
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/corn-syrup-versus-sugar-legal-fight-court/story?id=15969618

Inventor

Invention as a profession is dead.  It should not be.

Long ago, when someone decided to become an inventor, they committed to it.  Invention was a risky profession, but it also had the potential for great payoffs.  Most inventions were unsuccessful.  Failure was far more common than success.  Some inventors had to do work on the side to fund their profession, and others had to beg family or friends for funding.  The life of an inventor was filled with disappointments marked with occasional success.  Inventing was not an easy life, but we are very lucky that there were people willing to do it.  All of our modern technology is based on technologies and inventions created by these inventors.  Sadly, modern economics and politics have killed this noble profession.

In the early U.S., inventors were willing to deal with constant failure.  They would test absurd ideas, even though the chances of success were low.  Economically, this was often very hard on inventors.  When the occasional absurd idea was successful though, the benefits to the inventor and to society were often very large.  Also, regular failure taught the inventors more about how things worked, which has benefitted society to an even larger degree.  Modern science rides on the discoveries made from failed ideas.

Maybe it seems like the most successful inventors had fewer failures.  This is not true.  According to Edison, he tried 999 filament materials for the light bulb before he tried the carbonized bamboo that lasted long enough to be practical (it is probable that he tried even more than that).  That is a success rate of 0.1%.  Successful inventors have usually failed more times, but only because they have tried more things.

Modern economics have destroyed the profession of inventor, because it expects quick returns.  Modern economics suggests that ideas that do not have almost guaranteed returns are not worth pursuing.  It also suggests that ideas that will not turn profits in less than a few years are not profitable at all (though this does not apply to the pharmaceutical or tech industries).  Politics have made the situation even worse, by allowing companies to hoard patents they never intend on using.  Inventors now would have to navigate a legal minefield of patent trolls, a task which takes a degree in patent law to execute successfully.  Our current legal and economic habitat is hostile to inventors.

Now, I can hear some people saying that invention is not a dead profession, but rather it has evolved.  Not so!  Invention is the creation of new things.  Inventors create new things from new ideas.  Not just this, but inventors do this as their profession.  What I mean by this is, they do not occasionally invent new things when their job requires it.  Inventors spend most of their working time creating or testing new ideas.  When a guy at a semiconductor company comes up with a new communication technology, he is inventing, but that does not make him a professional inventor.  He may spend most of his time piecing together smaller components to make a larger component that does something that has already been done.  In fact, a large part of computer science and electrical engineering is not inventing, but just creating mundane solutions from existing technology.  Maybe a company will create a faster microprocessor using a new manufacturing technology.  The new technology is a new invention.  The work going into adapting old processor technology to the new manufacturing technology is mostly just adaptation, not invention.  Invention involves the creation of substantially new things.  Minor improvements to a product is hardly serious inventing.  Also, the number of patents a person has does not determine whether that person is an inventor or not.  The guy who patented "exercising a cat" with a laser pointer is certainly no inventor.  In part, because a single invention does not make a person an inventor, in part because a serious inventor may never patent anything (and inventor who always fails may still be an inventor), and in part because that particular activity was common knowledge, and thus does not even qualify as an invention.  Some engineers hold thousands of patents or more, but this still does not make them inventors.  Are the patents for real innovations, or are they for processes or products that are less than novel ways of doing things that are only marginally different from existing ideas?  Microsoft holds (or held, last I heard) a patent for a progress bar on mobile platforms.  This is hardly novel, and in fact, even in the infancy of computing, a graphical progress bar was not novel.  Such constructs have been used in writing for tracking time passed for centuries (tally marks are a form of visual progress indicator, very similar to the progress bar).  Serious inventors do not just take existing ideas and make minor improvements or alterations.  Serious inventors invent completely new things.  The first music player was a serious invention.  The MP3 player was a less serious invention, because it was just a more compact and convenient music player.  It did not really do anything that had not been done before.  It just did the same things a little differently (how it does it is different; what it does is not).  The first blue MP3 player created was not really an invention at all, because it did exactly the same thing as other MP3 players, but with a blue color.  It did nothing differently; it only looked slightly different.  Professional inventors do not just change the color or make trivial changes.  In fact, people who make trivial changes to improve a product are often referred to as "hackers."  Hackers make small improvements to existing technologies or products.  Inventors create entirely new technologies or products.

Why should the profession of invention not be dead?  Inventing improves technology, science, and society faster than the incremental innovation that is common now.  Modern companies invent only so much as is necessary to keep an edge over competitors, and they invent in as small of steps as possible to minimize risk of failure.  This is a very slow way of advancing technology.  It also minimizes the chances of discovering wildly new technologies that could revolutionize civilization.  It prevents or delays the successes that could be the most beneficial to society, civilization, and technology.  It retards technological advancement.

Can invention as a profession be revived?  I believe it can.  In fact, I believe it has almost everything going for it.  Back in the day of Edison, obtaining materials for inventing could be expensive and difficult.  I have been told that he once tried a special grass from Africa (I think), as a filament for the light bulb.  The first shipment rotted in transit, so he paid for a second one.  If he had not already gotten fairly wealthy from some of his other inventions, he would never have been able to try this (and, he would not have been able to afford the bamboo fiber that he finally settled on).  Now, almost anything can be obtained fairly cheaply on Amazon or EBay.  Most of the highly specialized inventing tools of the past can be obtained for free as software if you have a computer.  Math that was extremely advanced can now be abstracted away with free simulation software.  Prototyping has become very cheap with the wide availability of 3D printing.  In fact, a cheap 3D printer can be constructed for home use for only a few hundred dollars.  Perhaps the most dramatic improvement is welfare.  Back in the early U.S., inventors often risked their own welfare as well as that of their family.  Too many failed inventions could result in starvation or loss of property.  The economics of inventing could be like some sort of tightrope act.  Too much money spent on inventing could result in starvation, but too little could limit the potential for success, also ending in starvation.  Now, we have a half decent government welfare system that can function as a safety net.  The modern inventor no longer has to worry so much about starvation and homelessness.  Failure will still occur, but that will never change.  The true secret to success is to fail often, because failure teaches, and the more often you try, the higher your chances of success over time.  The inventor who tries 10 things a month has far fewer chances to succeed than the inventor who tries 100 things a month.

This situation can and should be improved further.  Unemployment is still very high.  The problem is no longer so much lack of jobs as it is lack of work.  We can produce everything we need and much of what we want with much less labor than is available.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, if we can find a beneficial way to use the excess labor.  There are several ways to do this.  The first is crowdfunding.  Kickstarter provides a very good service for helping to fund projects that are very well thought out and planned.  It does not do so well for larger, longer term research projects.  Invention often involves trying many ideas without a good idea of what will be the most likely road to success.  Kickstarter projects must have some kind of schedule (at least a tentative one), with a well defined definition of success.  Serious invention projects do not always have schedules, because there is not enough data to estimate how long things will take.  I imagine Edison expected to find an acceptable filament material for his light bulb in only a few hundred tries.  Instead it took at least 1,000 tries.  By Kickstarter standards, this would be a failure, but in reality, it was a very significant success.  Now, I am not trying to bash Kickstarter.  I think it is great, and the limitations are useful in defining and limiting the risk.  I do, however, think we need more crowdfunding systems for more risky projects.  Kickstarter is great because it only offers projects that are lower risk and that guarantee some kind of return.  This attracts a certain kind of investor.  More serious invention projects would likely attract fewer investors, and they would be funded less often.  There might be little guarantee of return, but investors will be aware of this up front.  One great idea I would like to see is an open source crowdfunding operation where the main requirement is that all research notes and discoveries be released under open source hardware or software licences.  One of the best things about this kind of system is that the researchers would get paid reasonably for their work, and the results become available to the investors with no strings attached (even if they fail).

Another option is government incentives.  Government incentives might include stipends for people who can prove they are spending significant time inventing or learning things useful for inventing.  Inventors might also get tax credits for money spent on tools and resources used for inventing.  People who spend more than 10 hours a week inventing might even be able to request invention grants, to help pay for more expensive tools or resources.  This would help reduce the unemployment problem and for those who are worried about anyone getting a free lunch, there could be some kind of requirement that the results of any useful inventions become public domain in a shorter time than the normal patent term.  Not only would this help alleviate unemployment by consuming excess labor, it would also give unemployed people more useful things to do than searching for jobs that do not exist, and it would help improve the rate of technology progression in the U.S. (which we sorely need).  Also, it would further reduce the risk of inventing.

High risk inventing is what drives serious technological advancement.  There is evidence of this in the fact that Japan used to be technologically very inferior to the U.S., but is now rather far ahead.  China is beginning to catch up as well.  People in Japan and China fear failure less than people in the U.S.  Japan has had many failed inventions, but there are some that have been successful against all odds.  There are some pretty absurd inventions that have been successful in Japan (for instance, a bidet with a massaging sprayer like those found in many shower heads).  China is catching up, because many Chinese people have less to lose, so they are willing to take larger risks (it also helps that labor is cheaper than is ethical there; note that I am not endorsing this).  In the U.S., we do not see absurd inventions, because no one bothers even trying to invent something that sounds absurd, because we fear failure.  We have a safety net, so we have no excuse anymore.  If an American tries to invent something and fails, or if it takes longer than expected, there is a welfare system to make up the slack.  Yes, it should be even better than this, but we have it far better than those early Americans who took great risks in inventing the technology that has brought us so far.  It would be a shame to abandon the profession that got us to where we are now, just because we are afraid we might fail.

Property Tax

I have heard arguments for and against property tax.  Those for are almost always the same.  The government needs money to run, and it has to come from somewhere.  Some claim that taxing property is reasonable, because people with property obviously have money.  Some of these claims are valid, for instance, the government does indeed need money to run.  Others are absurd.  How can anyone expect someone who has just paid obscene amounts of money to buy a house to have any left for taxes?  In the U.S., people who own property are typically making payments, which often means that they have less discretionary than those without.  The claims against property tax typically hinge on the absurdity of charging people money to retain what they already own.  This argument is so strong that most people see no value in coming up with any other argument against property tax.  I want to look deeper.  I think we need to understand where property tax comes from and what it purpose is, before we can really understand whether it is right or wrong.

From an American perspective, there should be two problems with property tax.  The origins of property tax are based on two fundamental assertions.  The first is that the government owns all land.  In Old England, the government was the king.  The king "gave" land to nobility, but the king still owned the land.  When land was granted, what was given was the right to hunt, farm, and rent the land (along with some other rights).  What was granted was the use of the land.  So long as the land was part of the country, it belonged to the kind.  As such, it was seen as entirely reasonable for the king to charge a tax to anyone granted rights to the use of land.  The land was his land, after all.  In the U.S., there is no king, and the government does not own all land.  The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution acknowledges this by requiring the government to compensate land owners fairy if the government must take land from private owners (the government does have the right to take land under certain circumstance, but the government must pay for it, and private citizens have the right to hire their own appraisers and challenge the government if they think the price is lower than the value).  This first fundamental assertion is not valid by U.S. law, so it is not valid to argue that land owners owe some kind of rent because the land belongs to the government.

The second fundamental assumption is that land generates profits.  When a person was given a title and land, he (almost solely males were given titles; females had to marry into a title) did not usually have a lot of money.  If the land granted did not generate a profit, a property tax would generate no value, and the land would immediately be repossessed.  No property tax would have lasted very long if the land did not generate profit.  Land granted to nobility typically had several means of generating profit.  The first, and maybe original, means of generating profit was farming.  Lands came with serfs that farmed.  The serfs were taxed on their production (depending on the period and the landlord, this could be a percentage or a set amount).  Later, landlords would allow more wealthy freemen (non-nobles, often merchants, artisans, or clergy) to rent housing and land.  These typically generated enough profits for nobility to live quite comfortably, in addition to paying a property tax.  Given that the lands produced significant profits, it also seemed entirely reasonable to charge a property tax.  This assertion is also not valid in the U.S., and it is especially invalid in the modern U.S., where a majority of landowners are only living on the land, not profiting from the possession of the land.

The two fundamental assumptions used to justify the creation of property tax are no longer valid.  This is even true in England.  It may be questionable whether the king owns the land or not, but the English government no longer treats the land as if it is owned by the king.  Further, many nobles have had to sell their land, because the land no longer generates enough profits to pay the property taxes.  It is a travesty that property taxes ever came to exist in the U.S., given that the major reason the U.S. declared independence against Britain was to escape economic oppression.  As mentioned, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution even grants protection to the private ownership of land.  Perhaps the biggest travesty, however, is the fact that governments feel entitled to steal the property of private citizens because they cannot afford to pay property tax on land that is not owned by the government and that does not generate any profit.

So, what about the argument that the government needs money to run?  This is a true and valid argument.  The government must have some form of income, and taxation seems to be the only fair and safe means of this.  In my opinion, the only fair form of tax is income tax or sales tax.  Both of these tax on profit that has already been realized, not on profits that are expected or assumed.  Similarly, these taxes take more money from those who gain more money, which is fair because they have more to loose and thus benefit more from the protection that the government provides.

In the past, I have been opposed to the idea of a graduated income tax, on the grounds that a flat tax already taxes the rich more than the poor.  If all things were just, I would still hold this opinion, however, I have seen clearly that they are not.  In the U.S., it is not only common practice, but it is even taught in our educational institutions that it is the right of the rich to rob the poor.  Employers are no longer expected to pay fair wages.  Inflation has far outstripped increase in wages.  The lower and middle classes are robbed of their time for paltry wages that do not even pretend to reflect the value of their labor to their employers.  In the past few years, I have learned through both research and reasoning that our economy and country cannot survive on a flat tax, because our lower class is no longer paid enough to survive without welfare.  Many conservatives argue that eliminating minimum wage would fix this, and the economy would ultimately balance more fairly.  Given the extremely high unemployment rate, I can guarantee this would not happen.  Many employers would lower their wages, and since there is a surplus of labor, the wages would remain low.  They will  not lower prices unless they cannot sell without doing so, and the fact that they are still selling fine even when a lot of people cannot afford the goods is evidence that this will not occur.  If more people get jobs, good will sell better, not worse, and prices will increase further, further widening the gap between wages and costs.  Many liberals believe that increasing minimum wage will fix this, by forcing employers to pay fair wages to the poor.  This is also not true.  Businesses will react to increased wages (and have, in fact, already done so in many industries as a reaction to our recent economic crises) by automating processes and eliminating human labor.  Changing minimum wage is certainly not going to fix anything.  At this point, fair taxation necessarily means taxing the rich at a higher rate to provide for the lower and middle classes what the rich have robbed from them.  Property tax does not accomplish this, because not all rich people own property and not all property owners are rich.  The most effective measure of wealth is income.  A graduated income tax, handled properly, can be an effective way of enforcing fairness where the rich refuse to do it themselves.

Property taxes are beginning to suffocate our middle class.  Thankfully, there is no Federal property tax, and not all states charge property taxes, but there are still many that do.  There are also many cities in the U.S. that charge property tax.  During the housing bubble burst last decade, some cities were made painfully aware of this problem when people who could not pay their property taxes were unable to sell their homes and were forced to let the city take them.  The banks were unwilling to repossess the houses because they were not worth the back property taxes owed.  Whole neighborhoods of large cities were left abandoned, and squatters took up residence in the abandoned houses (further reducing their values).  The lower class cannot afford property in the U.S., and in many places in the U.S., the middle class cannot afford to retain property, because their local or state governments charge them large amounts of money for the privilege (it is not a right if strings are attached) of owning land.

If a government needs money to operate, it should charge income or sales taxes.  These do not infringe of the right to own property.  They are inherently fair in the fact that they charge approximately only what people can afford to pay (presuming they are reasonable).  I would also assert that they are better for the economy, because they do not suffocate middle class landowners who are not profiting from their land.  We have clearly not eliminated all of the economic oppressions our forbearers fought so hard to escape.  This particular one is not only oppressive and harmful, but it is also obsolete.  We can do better.

"Your body can't tell the difference"

"Your body can't tell the difference."  Most people in the U.S. have probably heard this phrase at least once.  It is a phrase from commercials funded by the Corn Refiners Association with reference to sucrose and high fructose corn syrup.  Sucrose is table sugar.  It is the most commonly used kind of sugar for baking and for sweetening hot beverages.  High fructose corn syrup is a form of corn syrup that has been altered to have around 55% fructose and 45% glucose.  It is most commonly used in soft drinks, but it is also commonly used in commercial baked goods and some types of sweet snacks.  The above phrase is a response to claims that high fructose corn syrup is extremely unhealthy.  The Corn Refiners Association claims that the human body "can't tell the difference" between high fructose corn syrup and table sugar.  Is this claim true?

The first thing we need to know is how the two sweeteners are similar and how they are different.  Table sugar is solid and dissolves to be fairly liquid in water.  Without considerable heating, a table sugar solution in water will not become thick or syrupy.  Corn syrup is thick and viscous and will not dry out into a solid form of sugar (in a dry enough environment with the right amount of heat it might be possible).  The physical differences make it clear that they are not identical.  Chemically though, they are very similar.  Both sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are composed of fructose and glucose.  Sucrose is 50% of each, and high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose and 45% glucose.  So chemically there is little difference.  There is one other chemical difference.  Sucrose is exactly 50/50 because sucrose is composed of molecules that are fructose molecules bound to glucose molecules.  In high fructose corn syrup the glucose and fructose molecules are not bound together.  Clearly the two sweeteners are very similar.  The differences seem very minor.  If we want to figure this out, we are going to also have to look at how sugars are processed in the body.

The primary fuel for the body is glucose.  Cells can turn glucose into energy very easily.  Most other chemicals that the body can use for fuel (fats, proteins, and other sugars) must be converted to glucose before they can be used to produce energy.  When blood sugar is measured, the measurement is the amount of glucose in the blood.  The body regulates blood sugar by producing insulin, which tells cells to absorb glucose from the bloodstream.  If too much insulin is produced, cells will absorb a lot of glucose, reducing blood sugar to potentially unsafe levels.  If too little insulin is produced, cells will not be able to get enough energy and blood sugar will elevate to unsafe levels.  Insulin is produced in response to elevation in blood sugar, and the magnitude of the response is proportional to the magnitude of the increase in blood sugar.  An important factor in insulin response is how quickly sugars are converted into glucose and put into the bloodstream.  A small amount of sugar that gets into the bloodstream very quickly can cause an insulin response that will reduce blood sugar to unsafe levels.  If the blood sugar rises very quickly, the body expects that a lot of carbohydrates were consumed.  It responds by producing a lot of insulin.  If only a small amount of carbohydrates were consumed, they will quickly be absorbed, reducing blood sugar, but there will still be a lot of insulin telling cells to absorb more sugar.  This leads to low blood sugar.  Also, frequent high volume insulin production can stress the cells that produce insulin, eventually killing them.  This eventually leads to type 2 diabetes.  A metric has been developed to measure how various foods affect blood sugar.  This is called the glycemic index.  Foods with a high glycemic index cause rapid increases in blood sugar, while foods with a low glycemic index cause little or no increase in blood sugar.  A good diet will cause a small increase in blood sugar that lasts for a long time.  A diet that causes frequent or sustained large increases in blood sugar will ultimately lead to type 2 diabetes and potentially heart disease and other circulatory problems.  Now, how does this relate to sucrose and high fructose corn syrup?

The glycemic index of glucose is 100 (it is the reference).  The glycemic index of fructose is 19.  Fructose has the lowest glycemic index of all known sugars.  It would make sense that the higher ratio of fructose in high fructose corn syrup might give it a lower glycemic index than sucrose.  Unfortunately that is not how it works.  High fructose corn syrup does have a lower glycemic index than lower fructose corn syrups, but it is still much higher than sucrose.  High fructose corn syrup has been measured to have a glycemic index in the high 80s, which is considered fairly high.  Sucrose has a glycemic index in the high 60s, which is considered medium.  High fructose corn syrup has a significantly higher glycemic index than sucrose.  Why is this?  It is most likely because of how the molecules arranged.  In high fructose corn syrup, the glucose can be absorbed into the bloodstream almost immediately.  The fructose does still have to be processed by the liver, but this does not make much of a difference.  The fructose only slightly slows the absorption of the glucose (otherwise the glycemic index would be 100).  Because the glucose and fructose are bound in pairs in sucrose, an extra step must be taken before the glucose can be absorbed into the bloodstream.  The pairs must be broken.  This takes enough extra time to significantly reduce the glycemic index of sucrose.  Once this is done, the glucose and fructose are treated no differently from the same molecules in high fructose corn syrup, but the extra processing time makes sucrose a slower, steadier form of energy than high fructose corn syrup.

The implications of this should be clear.  Frequent consumption of high fructose corn syrup is very likely to eventually cause type 2 diabetes and may lead to heart disease.  Frequent consumption of sucrose is less likely to cause these problems, or at least will take longer to cause them.  Note that these are not short term complications.  Drinking a cup of straight corn syrup every day for a month will probably not cause type 2 diabetes or heart disease.  Drinking a liter of soda a day for 20 years will dramatically increase the risk of these diseases though (even a few cups a day may be enough).  Because different people react differently to elevated blood sugar (some may regulate insulin better than others), it is not entirely predictable how long it will take.  On average, a person who starts a high sugar diet around 10 years old will probably start showing symptoms of pre-diabetes in their early 30s and may have full on type 2 diabetes by 40, but again, each person is different.  Because it has a more dramatic effect on blood sugar, frequent consumption of high fructose corn syrup is more likely to cause these diseases, and sooner, than high sucrose consumption.

Clearly, the body can "tell the difference" between the two sweeteners.  In fact, the body can almost always tell the difference between two chemicals that have any difference, regardless of how similar they are.  Just because they are composed of similar compounds, or just because we cannot taste the difference, does not mean that the body cannot tell the difference.  It may take two or three decades before we will feel the full effects, but the body can definitely tell the difference between sucrose and high fructose corn syrup.

There is another myth that the Corn Refiners Association's lie was designed to counter.  Many people have been convinced that high fructose corn syrup contains harmful chemicals.  This is false.  While sugars may be harmful in excess, this is true of any sugar, not just high fructose corn syrup (extremely high consumption of sucrose will still eventually cause diabetes, and some links have even been found between excessive consumption of fructose and liver disease).  The point is, consuming high fructose corn syrup is not going to immediately make you sick unless you are allergic to corn.  (If drinking large amounts of soda makes you feel sick, it is probably because of the caffeine.  Of course, it could be a corn allergy, but those are fairly rare.)  In small amounts with other foods, high fructose corn syrup is entirely safe.  In general, a high sugar diet should be avoided anyway.  The best sources of sugar are fruits and vegetables.  Refined sugars are almost always easier to metabolize (read, higher glycemic index) than sugars in their original sources.  Also, refined sugars do not have significant nutritional value, which makes them "empty calories."  So, don't eliminate high fructose corn syrup from your diet because someone told you it is inherently unhealthy.  Reduce your intake because too much may eventually lead to having to stab yourself multiple time a day to avoid an early, miserable death (or, if you get hearth disease, even stabbing yourself will not prevent an early, miserable death).

Patentable Genetics

The U.S. government will allow you to patent almost anything, with very few exceptions.  You cannot patent food recipes.  You cannot patent mathematical algorithms, unless of course, you call them computer programs (which are nothing more than mathematical algorithms).  You cannot patent things that have already been patented.  You can patent things that have been done before, so long as no one catches you, and even if they do, there is no accountability.  Someone even patented the act of "exercising" a cat using a laser pointer to entertain it.  There are some pretty absurd things you can patent.  Genetics happens to be one of them.

Genetics should not be patentable.  First, genetic material is little more than a mathematical algorithm using a different form of math than traditional arithmetic.  Second, genetic material used to grow food (vegetables or animals) is nothing more than a recipe for creating food.  Neither of these things are legally patentable.  So, why are genetically engineered or even just selectively bread seeds patentable?  Personally, I think it is because our government is run by uneducated politicians (by uneducated I mean, they have almost no education in anything relevant to their job; an education in politics is little more than learning how to get into office; it does not teach anything about the real world problems you will have to deal with once you get there).  Really though, I do not care why.  I want to discuss why genetics should not be patentable.

For a patent to be enforceable, there are some requirements.  The first requirement is that the patented thing be easily distinguishable from similar things.  If someone invents a flint lock made from tool steel, and someone else makes one from spring steel, they cannot both patent their inventions, because they are almost impossible to distinguish from each other.  Any case of patent violation could claim that the stolen design was the one from the other guy, and while it is possible to test the metals, the cost would be very high.  Genetics has an even worse problem.  Compared to testing genes, testing metals is trivial.  It can cost hundreds or millions of dollars to check a sample of genetic material to see if it matches a specific sequence.  The problem is aggravated by the fact that most people do not have the ability to do this.  This brings me to the biggest problem with not being easily distinguishable.  What happens if someone gives me a bag of seeds, where they may be patented genetic material in some of the seeds?  If those patented seeds were not obtained directly from the patent owner (for instance, a friend gives me a bag of popcorn kernels where some of the seeds are from special Monsanto corn he grew), then it would be illegal for me to plant and grow those seeds.  Here is the problem: I now want to grow my own popcorn.  I could go to the store and buy seeds, or I could use the bag of seeds my friend gave me.  If I choose the later, I am legally obligated to pick through the seeds, removing the Monsanto seeds from my planting stock.  The cost of the genetic profiling required to separate the seeds is absurd.  Even most very rich people would not be able to afford it.  Because the patented material is not easily distinguishable from similar things, it is absurd to expect anyone to honor it.  Worse, if my friend neglected to tell me about the Monsanto corn, I could be breaking the law without any way of knowing.  So that sounds pretty bad, but it keeps going.  Let's say the bag did not actually have any Monsanto corn.  My friend grew some heirloom variety of corn that is so old it is not patentable.  So, I grow some of the seeds in my backyard.  From my harvest, I set aside some of the seeds to grow the next batch and so on.  It may sound like I am safe, but I am not.  What if my neighbor bought some Monsanto corn and grew it in their backyard?  Now, some of my corn is probably going get pollinated from the Monsanto corn.  The resulting seeds are now a cross between my heirloom variety and the Monsanto stuff.  At least half of the seeds pollinated with the Monsanto pollen probably have the patented Monsanto genes.  It is now illegal for me to plant those seeds, even though I may not have a clue that they contain patented material, and there is no reasonable way for me to tell that they have patented material in them.  And, the government still expects me to honor Monsanto's patent.  Thankfully, it is going to be extremely difficult for Monsanto to catch and prosecute me, because the cost for them to discover my patent infringement is very high.  Still, using law to define ethics is a rather tyrannical practice (in fact, it is exactly how tyrants work).

The second problem is obviousness.  This requirement is that things that are either obvious or common knowledge cannot be patented.  This one gets really hairy.  This is also a part of patent law.  Legally, a thing that is obvious or common knowledge cannot be patented (it still happens all the time though).  If something is common knowledge, it is subject something called "prior art."  Prior art is anything that has already been done.  If you sue me for infringing your patent, I can get your patent invalidated by showing that you were not the first person to come up with the idea.  Note that it does not have to be me that invented it first.  If I can show that anyone came up with the idea before you, your patent is invalid.  The idea with these is that if someone else could easily come up with the same idea, then you should not be able to have a monopoly on it.  Now, applied to genetics, this can be used to show how absurd it is to patent genes.  First, all genetics were created by one of two things.  The first is God.  If God created all genetics, then it is pretty much all prior art.  Nothing built on these genetics would be patentable because it has pretty much all been done (Monsanto looks for useful sequences in existing organisms and puts them into other organisms; no original genetic code is created).  The second is random chance.  If random chance created genetics, then I would argue that it must be obvious.  If it is obvious, it is legally unpatentable.  In this case, it is still also all prior art.  So, this argument may seem weak.  It is in some ways, but it still has the law behind it.  Prior art is legally acceptable evidence that a patent is invalid.  So, legally if I can find each genetic sequence used in a Monsanto seed in something else that has existed since before Monsanto created the genetics for the seed, I should be absolved of any wrong doing.  The problem is that Monsanto has the means to prove that I have used their seeds, but I do not have the means to show prior art, entirely because I cannot afford the massive genetic profiling that would be required to do this.  In other words, I am automatically guilty of patent infringement unless I can afford to prove innocence.  Further, Monsanto has no accountability.  If I do manage to prove the existence of prior art, they do not have to pay my research costs or even pay damages for the costs of the law suit.  They also do not have to compensate their customers who paid premium prices because Monsanto's invalid patent protected the company from competition.  They loose their patent, but they should never have had it in the first place, and they still did benefit from it.  Note that this does not only apply to genetics.  This lack of accountability applies to all types of patents.  In genetics, however, the high cost of proving innocence makes it far worse.

Now, let's take this one step further, into the absurd.  Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a device to make the arduous task of separating cotton fibers from the seeds much easier and faster.  Now, who would he have sued if nature had randomly created a cotton gin?  Let's say that a combination of a lightning strike, a falling tree, and the perfect position of iron ore and water managed to create a cotton gin without any human intervention.  Who would he sue?  We do not have to worry about this because it will never occur.  If the combination of random natural events could create a cotton gin, it would not be patentable, because it would be obvious.  Ideas like dams, which have been built by beavers for millenia or burning wood for heat, which has been done by lightning for even longer, are not patentable because they are obvious.  One consequence of this is that humans have learned from nature to do these things, as soon as we developed sufficient technology to do it.  Now, some might say that genetics is different, because it is so difficult.  I would argue that at one time, building a dam was an insurmountable task for humans.  We had to develop the appropriate tools before we could build dams.  Genetics is not any different.  Unlike the cotton gin, nature routinely combines and alters genes to create new varieties of organisms.  In fact, nature can alter individual genes and even small parts of genes.  We do not have a clue how small parts of genes interact to develop different life forms.  Even Monsanto can do nothing more than search of gene sequences that do things and hope that inserting them in the right place will add the desired traits to their plants.  Essentially, modern genetic engineering is nothing more that reverse engineering things nature has created, and trying to combine the "code" differently to get desired results.  There is no invention going on here.  It is all prior art.  As with the dam, we are just adapting things nature has created to do what we want.  Just because the tools for doing this were invented recently does not change the fact that we are doing nothing more than combining prior art in rather obvious ways. For instance, is it something novel to make a crop resistant to herbicides so that higher doses can be used to destroy weeds, given that the technology to do so exists?  Is it novel to use genetic engineering to improve the taste, texture, or nutrition of food, given that the technology to do so exists?  How many people have wished that some healthy food was better tasting?  How many people have wished the junk food was healthier?  If these are not obvious things to do with new tools capable of doing them, I do not know what is.  So, now for the hundred dollar question: If nature manages to randomly produce something that Monsanto has patented, who does Monsanto sue?  Nature will never randomly create a cotton gin, because it is too complex for natural processes to produce.  Genes are not too complex for nature to produce (right, a seed is, evidently, less complex than a cotton gin; take that, opponents to natural selection).  In fact, it is extremely probable that nature has produced "Roundup Ready" varieties of many plants throughout the millions of years it has been playing with genetics.  Evidence has even been found that ancient ancestors of wheat, corn, and many other grains were much more nutritious than modern varieties (in fact, some evidence support the theory that the "grain" classification of food plants contains exclusively human created plant varieties; otherwise stated, all plants classified as grains are man made, thus the entire classification itself may have been created through human intervention).

Anyhow, allowing genetics to be patented is absurd.  There are at least two legal reasons genes should not be patentable.  There are multiple ethical reasons they should not be patentable, including the fact that it is impossible for most people to distinguish the difference between patented genetic material and public domain genetic material.  It is like making laws against certain types of speech but not telling the people exactly what it is that is illegal to say (throughout history, tyrants have done this and similar things).  Also, the transfer of genetic material is such an easy process that it is almost impossible to tell whether or not it has even occurred.  Making arbitrary laws that are impossible to determine if they have actually been broken or not is the hallmark of an oppressive government.  While this is not criminal law (which would allow the government to punish people on charges that are impossible to verify), it is still wrong.  Technically speaking, if I used traditional plant breeding techniques to create an herbicide resistant variety of corn or rice, and if the random combinations of genetic material created in the process managed to match the genetic code of Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety of the same plant, I could be sued for patent infringement, even though I used a completely different technique without any means of comparing the two products.  This is ethically wrong!  This is actually not just a problem with genetic patents.  It is not horribly uncommon for two people to invent the same thing around the same time.  When this happens, the person that gets the patent papers in first wins.  This is extremely unfair to the other person, especially when the cost of inventing is high.  With genetics though, this is aggravated by the fact that most people do not have the means to tell when they are violating patents or not.  Plant husbandry can take years to create what genetic engineering can do in months.  The cost for both is ultimately very high.  It is also uncommon for either to be used in a way that is really novel.  Probably the most novel use of plants is using tobacco to produce cancer cells used to illicit an immune response.  Nothing Monsanto, or any other plant producer, does with genetic engineering or even selective breeding is novel.  Outside the realm of food, flowers are often bread for specific colors or scents.  This is not novel.  People like pretty and good smelling flowers.  Within the realm of food, plants are engineered or bread for size, texture, nutrient content, flavor, and even aesthetic (colors, size, etc...).  These things are also not even remotely novel.  People have been successfully breeding food plants to favor one or more of these traits for thousands of years.  It is neither new nor novel.  Novelty is a legal requirement of patents.  There may be some things that can be done with genetics that nature has not done and that has some novel unique use.  Until at least one of these things is discovered, genetics should not be patentable at all.

Ultimately, gene patents are unethical.  They amount to little more than a way for companies to sue people without much risk of those people being able to prove their innocence.  Gene patents give great power to large corporations with a lot of resources at the cost of small businesses and individuals.  It is a manifestation of a common form of government oppression and tyranny.  Gene patents should be abolished.