| ▲ | burdock 14 hours ago | |
Intellectual property has rarely ever been "the golden goose", despite the anecdotes of the few Henry Fords that exist. Throughout history, the golden goose has typically been owning capital, and having market reach (see: advertising, the silk road). No matter how amazing your IP is, if you can't produce it at economically viable scales, and if you can't put it in front of people who will buy it, then you have nothing. So venture capital comes along, buys you out, and takes all your future profits in exchange for the "risk". On the other side of the coin, there's open source software developers, PhD's publishing papers for free, and your local musicians that like to play at events just for funsies. I mean, imagine the kind of world we'd live in if medicine were focused strictly on profitable moats instead of open research, and... oh. Right. | ||