| ▲ | gwbrooks 4 hours ago |
| Not sure pricing to recoup costs is artificial. |
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| ▲ | DrewADesign 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I think the argument is that artificial comes in with IP law, which some people feel is superfluous. I do think that corporate price gouging is a huge problem that does need to be addressed. But especially with smaller business types — creatives, et al— I still haven’t gotten any grownup answers about what would compel people to get professionally good at something and innovate in the complete absence of copyright: the vastly better business model would be waiting for someone else to do something new and interesting, stealing their work, and then undercutting them in the market because you don’t have R&D/et al costs to recoup. You can’t say that wouldn’t happen because it’s exactly what the AI companies did to billions of people, scoffing at any protest. And ironically, they’re now whining about the Chinese doing it to them. |
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| ▲ | eszed an hour ago | parent [-] | | I'm with you on all of that. There is, nevertheless, a strong argument that IP protection (particularly for creative / "culturally significant" works) is too long. Twenty years - interestingly enough, the original time-period in the US - of protection seems like a better (for society) deal than life of the author plus seventy. I think, in fact, most artists would agree: if you went back in time and asked a playwrite or filmmaker in (say) 1940, I'd bet they'd rather someone freely revives their work in 2026 than that it be sat on by a corporation that has forgot it (or they) ever existed. |
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| ▲ | bee_rider 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Separating out what is artificial or not seems more like an exercise in rhetoric; defining things as fundamental and real. The whole economy is an imaginary thing dreamed up by our natural human brains. |
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| ▲ | rolymath 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not sure they're just recouping costs and not lining their execs pockets. |
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| ▲ | ncallaway 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The government backed monopoly to ensure that supply remains artificially restricted to ensure that the market will support the higher prices is |
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| ▲ | andsoitis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Drug companies have a portfolio of compounds they research. Most don’t pay off, so R&D costs make their way into the pricing of those superstar and other drugs that do work. Also, timelines are pretty long. | | |
| ▲ | mjhay 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Drug companies spend more on marketing than R&D | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So? | | |
| ▲ | DennisP 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So pharmaceutical companies spend far less on marketing outside the US, partly because every other country besides New Zealand makes those incessant drug ads illegal, and partly because government negotiate prices and keep profit margins down. If the argument is that R&D costs are what make drugs expensive, then we could easily eliminate an even greater expense by just copying what other developed nations do. |
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| ▲ | derektank 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In that light, the entire market itself looks essentially artificial, given drug manufacturing couldn’t exist without government guaranteed property rights, which are themselves a kind of monopoly on use. But yes, the reason brand name drugs are drugs are more expensive than generics is due to intellectual property, both the patent and the trademark. | |
| ▲ | octopoc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Without temporary monopolies granted by patents, those prescription medications wouldn’t exist in the first place. | | |
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