the congressman going on and on about “our IP” and “our technology” in the source article reminds me of a naomi wu tweet:

“Knowledge is property” is as counterintuitive to some as “the grass and trees and land that feeds and nurtures you is property” was to others.

When Westerners visited places that didn’t understand the wisdom of one person owning a piece of land and others paying simply to exist on “their” land, the inhabitants were at a disadvantage, but quickly educated at gunpoint, that land taken from them and every “rule” they had been told to follow, broken by those that made the rules.

Likewise, Chinese, with our foolish traditions of scholarship, didn’t understand at first that learning and sharing knowledge was dishonest. That we were wrong not to follow arbitrary rules of learning unilaterally imposed. As studious as we are, it took us quite a while to learn ideas should be owned and rented out, and that “learning wrong” is cheating.

But we’re getting there and have learned to play by those new rules- I even have Chinese patents myself, perhaps I am too Westernized? Imagine that- I “own” ideas? Should I rent my simple ideas out like a slum lord and sit back while others toil? So much to learn.