I have been looking into amateur boat building and come across a number of websites selling boat plans. On some of them I read that you pay once for the plans to build one boat; after that, if you want to build more, you have to pay them 50% the original price for every boat you build after that. I guess even if you burn the plans and build the boat from memory, you still have to pay them?
Anyway it got me thinking, in this world of IP, patents, copyrights, lawsuits, etc., if someone were to come up with a revolutionary new math (think something on par with algebra, trigonometry, etc) that would help all people in all walks of life, could they claim it as IP and/or patent it, and charge royalties for using it? I picture an architect requesting a quote for the usage fee for 9,000 instances of "Function X" in advance of designing a new bridge. Or a store owner paying a monthly fee for the math used in calculating supply & demand, upon which ordering quantities are based.
And if some math could be patented, and people had to pay to use it, then they would have to pay tax on the math that they used, and if the government uses the same math to calculate the tax bill, then I think that might be enough recursion to crash the system. Kinda like when I was paying federal income tax in employ of the federal government; effectively paying myself a portion of my paycheck. But that didn't crash the system.... damned system.
Anyway it got me thinking, in this world of IP, patents, copyrights, lawsuits, etc., if someone were to come up with a revolutionary new math (think something on par with algebra, trigonometry, etc) that would help all people in all walks of life, could they claim it as IP and/or patent it, and charge royalties for using it? I picture an architect requesting a quote for the usage fee for 9,000 instances of "Function X" in advance of designing a new bridge. Or a store owner paying a monthly fee for the math used in calculating supply & demand, upon which ordering quantities are based.
And if some math could be patented, and people had to pay to use it, then they would have to pay tax on the math that they used, and if the government uses the same math to calculate the tax bill, then I think that might be enough recursion to crash the system. Kinda like when I was paying federal income tax in employ of the federal government; effectively paying myself a portion of my paycheck. But that didn't crash the system.... damned system.