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A comment on Paul Graham was right. It sure looks like ideas are worthless.. Parent comment

Re:Paul Graham was right. It sure looks like ideas are worth... by davidw on Thursday May 24, 2007 @07:37AM (#24298)
Which makes the transaction costs higher than the idea is probably worth. Execution is very important, and in an ideas market, there would probably also be a lot of crappy ones. So, you have to sign a bunch of NDA like contracts, risk being sued if you ever develop anything like the things you may have seen, and probably also have to wade through a lot of junk.

While it might be sort of doable, it's probably not worth it until we have a magic pill that lets you forget the last 5 minutes of your life completely and totally.

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Re:Paul Graham was right. It sure looks like ideas are worth... by MobileDigit on Thursday May 24, 2007 @07:59AM (#24306)
"Which makes the transaction costs higher than the idea is probably worth."

These costs could surely be lowered if there was demand for ideas in the first place.

I think this is more evidence that ideas by themselves are generally worthless.

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Re:Paul Graham was right. It sure looks like ideas are worth... by davidw on Thursday May 24, 2007 @08:14AM (#24310)
It's evidence that the value of ideas, on aggregate, is low (which makes sense), but doesn't point to a value of 0, just lower than the transaction costs inherent in the attempt to create a market for a more or less non excludable good. Markets do best when there is sufficient information, and so a market based around secrecy and potential lawsuits isn't going to be a very good one. Look at software patents, for instance... it's not a very nice or healthy market.
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Re:Paul Graham was right. It sure looks like ideas are worth... by juwo on Thursday May 24, 2007 @10:17AM (#24344)
see

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24338

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