| ▲ | maerF0x0 2 hours ago |
| Capital will seek the best opportunities, let's keep the incentive structure sane. Which means first tackling the biggest problems, with the highest probability of success, for the most people. As the opportunity space is explored or saturated, we'll move on to lower EROI opportunities. By getting the highest EROI initially we'l be richer still for chasing down philanthropic spaces (for the opportunities which do not make economic sense, but make moral, humanitarian sense) |
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| ▲ | mnky9800n an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| Capital didn’t seek quantum mechanics which led to semi conductors which led to computers. Capital didn’t seek weather prediction which led to chaos theory which led to modern control systems for basically everything. And it certainly didn’t seek neural networks for the first half dozen decades they existed. So it seems like capital may have a poor nose for long term reach investment. |
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| ▲ | biophysboy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I ask again: How are we going to produce all of the basic research that is non-excludable & non-rival? What incentive do companies have to produce results like this? |
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| ▲ | fzeroracer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Capital seeks the best opportunities, like deliberately lying about asbestos in baby powder, producing fraudulent research and continuing to profit off poisoning individuals. |
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| ▲ | biophysboy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is unfair: biotech/pharma companies do valuable work, particularly in translational medicine. | |
| ▲ | miltonlost an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Don't forget tobacco companies lying about cancer and oil and gas companies hiding climate change research. | | |
| ▲ | maerF0x0 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but that is an issue of ethics and regulation. Fraud is illegal and should be punished proportionally to it's effects. | | |
| ▲ | bulbar 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Capital doesn't seek the best opportunity, it can only seek the best monetary opportunity and that can involve fraud or products that are bad for society. Without market-independent research you often wouldn't even realize that is what's going on. | |
| ▲ | justin66 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Fraud is illegal and should be punished proportionally to it's effects. That's adorable. | |
| ▲ | fzeroracer 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who got punished for the J&J asbestos issue? Who got punished for cigarettes and their deceptive advertising? And how badly did the Sacklers get slapped for causing the opioid epidemic? If you're making the argument that they should be punished proportionally to their effects then all of these cases should result in the individuals being jailed for life at bare minimum and their assets forfeited. Yet this hasn't happened. Why? | | |
| ▲ | maerF0x0 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I can't answer why, but I would suggest it has very little to do with the government spending on research, or in the way it allocates it annually vs 4 year blocks. I have noted in the past that I do enjoy how intense the FTC and other consumer protection style agencies get when Democrats run the whitehouse, ideally companies would behave because if they dont the institution that has a monopoly on violence will club em really good, so to speak. IMO Citizens united and the way we fund the political game has broken the incentives to being a company on good merit rather than on legalized corruption. |
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| ▲ | wibby an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
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