Geer: Trends in cyber security

To which I would add, the American market is rigged. The "Buy American" act. Defence contracts subsidising civil industry (the aircraft market is a classic).

Even today, the patent system (which lets American companies get patents on stuff that is unpatentable elsewehere - obvious or prior art), and then use it to exclude foreign competitors. (Ancient) Case in point - how many Americans know that Edison's first lightbulb patent (rejected) - in which he claimed to have invented the lightbulb - actually POSTDATED his visit to a FACTORY MAKING THE THINGS COMMERCIALLY?!!!!

Or look at copyrights - it's better today, but it wasn't that long ago that foreigners couldn't (in practice) get enforceable copyrights.

And as for a free market - well the Americans don't have enough history to tell them otherwise, but in England (NOT Britain), we had a pretty free market in the 1200s. And don't tell me that was a free society!!! King John, Magna Carta, all that, driven precisely because we did NOT have a free society!!!

Cheers,
Wol