Rekna

Can the free market be trusted to further along science?


I don't believe it can and here is my logic. The free market is driven by profit and only profit. If something is not profitable the free market generally will not push for it.

I'd like to look at 2 cases.

The first is biofuel. Recently a man with an 8th grade education modified a hummer to run on used cooking oil. His modifications have reduced his emissions, increased his gas millage, and increased the power/acceleration. In a similar case a man modified a mustang with similar results. The mustang was able to soundly defeat a viper in a head to head race running on used cooking oil!!!!

What motivation is there for the free market to push for advancements like this when it will hurt their profits? By decreasing the dependency on oil the revenue from oil shares will also decrease. The free market doesn't care about helping the consumer or the environment only maximizing profits. If profits don't line up with helping consumers or the environment it is put on the back seat. This is why there has been little in car advancements in the last 100 years.

Onto my second case AIDS. AIDS is a very profitable disease for the drug industry. It is a slow killer which cannot be cured currently. Not only that but people suffering from AIDS will suffer from a multitude of curable illnesses resulting from AIDS. To the drug companies this means AIDS causes many of there drugs to be purchased leading to profit. In fact to the drug companies it is much better to treat the symptoms than the disease. If they cure the disease people won't need the drugs anymore and their profits will decrease.

(Update)

What motivation does a company focused on profits have to develop new technologies that will potentially hurt their profits?

loquitur

Rekna, your premises leave all sorts of things out. For example, cooking oil is created by means that use energy, and has less dense energy content than petroleum. It is created by using land, fertilizer, water, and other inputs. The issue isn't whether you can run a car on cooking oil - clearly you can - but rather you can run a car more efficiently and cheaply on cooking oil than on gasoline. That's the type of answer the market supplies, and the answer is no. Because if it could be done, we'd all be driving cars running on cooking oil, since someone could make a bloody fortune commercializing it.

As for the AIDS example, the same thing could be said of any non-chronic condition. Yet we now have vaccines for all sorts of diseases, which under your theory shouldn't have happened: rubella, measles, mumps, diphtheria, etc etc etc. We have cures for certain kinds of cancers. The list goes on and on - and many of these were created by private drug companies for profit (or else created by universities and then licensed out for profit).

The market isn't perfect, but it usually produces good stuff at reasonable cost. Nonmarket economies aren't known for creating great science or improving their people's standard of living. Under your theory the Soviet Union should have been a cornucopia of scientific advances - when in reality their primary scientific contributions stemmed from military projects (think Sputnik).

See, the one thing I wish we could come up with is a feasible substitute for petroleum as an energy source. If there's one thing I'd like to do it's tell the misogynistic dictatorships sitting on the underground pools of oil that they can go drink it for all we care. Whoever comes up with a way to do that will make a bloody fortune, the same way that Google gave Yahoo a run for the money when they came up with a better search engine. Unfortunately, the densest energy content at the cheapest price right now is in petroleum. We have to find an alternative, and as petroleum gets more expensive it becomes more likely that we'll find economically feasible alternatives - that's what the market does.

dksuddeth

as far as running a vehicle on anything, if it comes to a consumer cheaper than the current product, you can bet that people (the consumer market) will buy and use it.

I sometimes wonder why it is that people bent on a socialist idea (cleaner anything by way of legislation) don't get it that the world revolves around what people are willing to spend their livelihood on.
People buy hot dogs and ramen because it's cheap or it's what they can afford. Others buy steak and seafood because they can afford to. It is the same way with gasoline, automobiles, and yes even pharmas if they are allowed to compete in a particular market.

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Rekna

The point of the cooking oil is that it is USED cooking oil and is thus recycling it. While fueling all cars on it is not necessarily feasible fueling some machines on it is. Also most of the medical advances were not done for profit and were done for science. This is why so much of our taxes go to universities to perform research because the free market won't further those fields and the government has to step in. In some cases there are decent people working within the free market who choose to do what is best for society instead of what is best for profits. Also I made no statement about what research under the soviet union should have been like and only stated that a pure free market has no motive to further many technologies.

Why do you think the drug companies lobby against marijuana? Because it would kill their profits. A drug that people could produce themselves!!! We can't have that. Not that I want to side track this thread with marijuana discussion (note: I have never smoked marijuana and am not advocating the use of it for personal reasons)

Thats only true if the corporations choose to sell it cheaper or sell it at all. They are the ones who can afford and have the knowledge to further such technology but refuse to do it because it could hurt their profits.

It is my view that the pure free market does not work and neither does pure communism. Both fail for the same reason, people cannot be trusted to act for the benefit of society when it is contradictory the benefit of themselves. I think the market needs independent regulatory agencies whose sole purpose is to make sure the market is acting toward the benefit of society as a whole and not to any one person.

ratbastid

How would oil companies (the world's single largest political group, measured by dollars in campaign contributions) feel about that?

Why you haven't seen a "french fry-mobile" on the market isn't because the public doesn't want it or it wouldn't sell. It's because anyone who tries it is crushed and silenced and turned into a fringe eco-loony wacko.

I can hear Ustwo playing his conspiracy nutjob violin about this, but it's not a big leap in logic to see that new technologies--new GREEN, recycling-oriented technologies that would hugely benefit the driving public, largely by allowing them to keep their gas money in their pocket--directly threaten those who have a lot of power to prevent it.

Ustwo

If the shoe fits.

The reason you don't see frenchfry mobiles for sale is they would not sell. They would not sell because its really a pain getting a full tank from McDonalds on your way to work.

The only reason biodiesel is viable for home tinkerers is because the demand isn't very high. Multiply that demand by millions and guess what happens?

Its easy to claim 'conspiracy' when you THINK there should be something better, but it gets old. You have no proof, nor does anyone sane but you start to imagine this shadow world where you assume evil things are going on. Sure some people would lose money, but the first guy/company to come up with a real alternative fuel to petroleum will make so much money that they would need to think about buying countries if they wanted to spend it all.

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Willravel

Ah, so because Ustwo doesn't know or doesn't care to know, it doesn't exist!
Read the following carefully:
True Conspiracy 1
True Conspiracy 2
True Conspiracy 3

You better pray Host doesn't read your post, Ustwo.

filtherton

The free market can only be trusted to further science only in circumstances where it is exceedingly obvious that furthering science will be profitable.

For example: most of the material data available for steel and aluminum alloys is available because of the auto and aerospace industries, and it was because they foresaw that it would be profitable to perform experiments and collect data.


That isn't to say that business wouldn't invest money in buying up patents for technology that could potentially put them out of business- to deny this is to be naive.

Another example: the free market would never have given us the space program, nor probably any of the resulting technologies.

samcol

You really think communication companies wouldn't of figured out it would be very profitable to use satellites?

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Rekna

Have private companies come up with a way to send anything into space yet?


Another example, it is in the interest of insurance companies to deny coverage whenever the costs are high. Does the free market protect us there?

filtherton

Why would they have figured this out? Who were their potential customers? This isn't a very good chicken and egg scenario. Telecommunications infrastructure definitely existed before telecommunications, and definitely before the telecommunications industry. Sure, it's hypothetically possible that someone might have foreseen and cashed in on cell phones and gps navigation and satellite communication as a mass market opportunity, but it's pretty unlikely, since most shareholders frown upon insanely large r & d investments in completely theoretical technology.

Even so, in this alternative universe, your bold capitalist visionary wouldn't be able to leech off the long chain of government funded research that was a precursor to the ability to send things into space because that would mean he wasn't using solely the free market. I wonder how long it would have taken the private sector to develop rocket propulsion in the hypothetical world where it wasn't developed for strategic advantage with military funding during ww2?

As kind of threadjack, do you think that weapons technology should be solely controlled by market forces? Would it bother you if this hypothetical rocket company sold rockets to anyone who had enough money for them?

dksuddeth

insurance companies are not operating in a free market environment. They are probably one of the top 5 heavily regulated industries out there.

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The_Jazz

Dk is right. All 50 states have a department to regulate insurance companies and agents. The federal government is going to step in to regulate a small part (my part actually), and that's being welcomed with open arms because it will help everyone to transact business in other states. Given what I do, that's absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, once the regulatory guys have leveled the playing field, it is a surprisingly free system within its boundaries. Rekna, to directly answer your question, it is always in the insurance company's favor to deny claims. It is simple math. That said, insurance policies are contracts and have terms and conditions. When a loss meets those terms, the company pays out. Things like the Mississippi flood claims after Katrina, when the state tried to force companies to pay for something that EVERYONE knew wasn't supposed to be, just make everyone look bad, including those who file suit. If you own property in a flood plain, you know it, or at least you should.

To finally get around to the OP, I think that the free market is incredibly good at short-sited science. By that I mean things that can have an impact on the bottom line in the near future. For things that are farther out, ie anti-gravity, and don't have an immediate monetary value, I don't think that the free market does a particularly good job. It is notoriously bad at funding pure science.

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Ustwo

The question at hand isn't does the government help R&D. It does, even though it tends to overspend when it does and a lot gets wasted, government money can be quite useful in jump starting something where profits are too far ahead for investors to feel confident.

The space race is one of those places, yet, as has been already proven, once private industry does it, it does it at a far better price, and didn't require tax money off the labor of the top 50% of the citizenry (the bottom 50% doesn't pay enough to matter).

But the real power in a free market is you don't have to trust it to have your best interests at heart for it to work. In the pursuit of profits, the self interest of the system, is what allows the innovations to take place. Despite the stories about a lucky idea, what most people don't think about is that this is WORK. It takes hours and hours, it takes failure after failure to finally come up with a solution. One of the more interesting companies in this is Dyson (dunno if I spelled that right), which took 4 years and 5000 prototypes to come up with their vacuum cleaner. You just won't find that sort of effort in government work. The old cliche 'good enough for government work' is there for a reason. When self interest is out of the picture so is motivation for 90% of the people involved. A gold plaque and a citation for a 'Job well done' isn't enough for most people to sacrifice time with friends and family.

But...but...but...the oil industry doesn't want cars to run on water, the pharmaceutical industry wants us to be sick...blah blah blah.

Yes, I'd be shocked if there has never been a time where a company said 'yes this is better but it will cut profits so lets not use it'. So what. The better solution wouldn't have even been invented had that free market not existed in the first place. Such a ethical dilemma is only really a factor if the company involved is the company who comes up with the new technology in the first place. Now maybe, as in its possible, the same way anything is possible like Big Foot, the oil industry or the like came up with something as amazing as cars running on water (which they can sorta with H2) and hid the technology. Ok fine. The issue is obviously no one in the communist world came up with it either, or the university level, or the private level not in big oil (unless you imagine men in black showing up when the lab tech secret agent phones them, in which case you watched way to much Xfiles as a kid). I know if I came up with it I'd get that patented ASAP and then spend the rest of my life making love to supermodels on piles of money.

Which leads me to what government DOES do really well in the whole free market process.

The patent office and protecting intellectual property. This is the key to it all. If you want to hug a bureaucracy hug this one. This allows not only the inventor profit, but also means you don't have to hide how its done. Its not a perfect system, some have abused the patent office, but its still the biggest part of the puzzle to why our technology has advanced so rapidly in the last 150 years (no Jimmy it wasn't due to a crashed UFO).

So in summery, you don't have to TRUST the free market to have your best interests at heart, it doesn't. You have to understand that its the best system there is for creating and advancing new technology.

Replace 'pure science' with 'theoretical science' and you would be correct. Science that may have no basis in reality, no use for mankind, its bad at. Still a lot of companies do spend quite a bit on this kind of research hoping they get lucky. After all if you were the first to invent something that was 'anti-gravity', well lets say you would be making love to 3 new supermodels on a mountain of money nightly.

I'd also add that there are very esoteric conferences that industry scientists attend where they close the doors and talk theory without worry about company secrets. My old research mentor used to attend one of those held in New England once a year.

Edit: By pure coincidence I just walked into my waiting room and saw this magazine.


From a quick read, it appears every single one of those advances is being advanced by private companies for profit. Go figure.

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dc_dux

From a quick read of the US News article...this caught my eye....go figure:

...Range Fuels, a Broomfield, Colo., firm founded by Khosla, aims to beat that projection by two years. One of six companies that received Department of Energy grants to accelerate the new technology, Range will be the first to break ground on a commercial plant on November 6 near Georgia forestland, where it plans to refine abundant timber-industry waste wood.

Much of the private geothermal work is also underwritten by federal grants.

Many of the recent advances in solar technologies are building on nanotechnology developments resutling from federal R&D.

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Ustwo

Hey take it if you get it, and thats a good use of federal money in my book, but the technology itself ...

Edit: I'll also add it mentions google as a major underwriter of solar power advancements. Go Go private sector.

Edit Edit: I'm typing this so not the whole quote.

In short, this isn't a government led advance, its a private sector led advance that the government is helping to sponsor as well.

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dc_dux

It is absolutely a "government lead advance".....the federal government is the major source of funding for applied R&D. I would suggest that is much more than "heping as a sponsor"
Just one example:
I agree its a great use of federal money.....but hardly fits within the model of a true "free market"

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Ustwo

Ummmmm

I'll see your 300 million and raise you 10.7 billion.

or in this graph....



I'll see your 5 billion and raise you 124 billion.

I don't MIND the government spending that 5 billion, its a good use of government money even if most will result in naught, its worth the risk, but this is really private sector led.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Rekna

They may be regulated but they are definitely not regulated enough. The health insurance companies are the worst about denying claims. One of the major problems with regulatory agencies in the US is they are controlled by the executive branch which can lead to a reduction in there independence. This is been very clear in the last 7 years especially with the EPA.

These agencies need to be made more independent and safe guards need to be put in to avoid political and other influences on them.

What happens when the pursuit of profits goes against my self interests? You know like say I live next to a chemical plant and it is cheaper for them to dump the waist in my back yard than dispose of it properly?

Thats funny that you say this because I think our patent system is broken. To many people are patenting things that should not be patentable (especially when it comes to software). If the car was invented today people would have patented the door, the windows, the gas tank, the tires, the paint color, etc. The patent office has a bunch of people with bachelors degrees approving patents on things they have no clue about. How else could someone patent a single mouse click?

dc_dux

UStwo...what your graph omitted was the $35+ billion in tax breaks and other incentives to those (big) oil and gas companies and $5-8 billion in tax breaks to small alternative energy start-ups.

That $40+b in tax incentives, along with the direct $5b in R&D grants recognize and support the basic "anti-free market" concept of the government providing the necessary seed money to spur private investment.

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Rekna

Google is one of the exceptions to the rule. Google seems to be a company whose primary motivation is society and profits come second. There company motto is "do no evil". Do you think Halliburton, Blackwater, or Enron share this motto?

If you want to look at an abuse of the free market look at enron....

Bill O'Rights

I call Bullshit!

Are trying to tell me that you...a dentist...has a current (11/5/07) issue of The U.S. News & World Report in your waiting room?

Isn't that some kind of Dental Association violation?

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Ustwo

Whats funny is we have about 100 magazines out, and there is only one we pay for (the most read one btw) and thats People.

The rest are sent to us for free by the companies.

Every time I see a patient reading People, or god help us, US, I threaten to take them out and replace the with Nature and Science.

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roachboy

interesting thread.

just a couple of general observations because once again i have no time.

1. the opposition between markets and the state is false--there are no markets in the capitalist sense without frames of regulation (law, conventions, norms)--the legal frames that enable markets to function are state creations. so the interaction of state and market actors is a question so strategy, not based on a violation of some division (either at the level of type of agent or at the level of rationality) between state and firms.

2. most free-marketeers do what ustwo has done in this thread--when they define their starting point as a Firm modelled in the way that an econ 101 class models a firm, they tend to exclude factors like already existing state supports for r&d and other infrastructural functions (is r&d a type of infrastructure? i would think it should be understood as such...infrastructure geared around maintaining coherence in the future, just as electricity and water and communications are geared around maintaining operations and coherence in the present)

this is only logical as a function of neoliberal conceptions of the market, the particular definitions of market actors, of the way in which neoliberal political economy defines "nature" or the given, which is the basis for its construction of the notion of a firm.

3. it seems to me that the americans are really quite blinkered in this regard--they do not use state funding well to help firms face uncertainty in the future--instead, they tend to use funding to maintain advantages--particularly economies of scale--in the present. think the massive subsidies that are poured into corn production, by product extraction, etc. that the system is irrational has nothing to do with the fact that the state instituted it--and everything to do with the powerful corporate interests which use the state as a proxy, as an element in the machinery of externality generation.

dc hasit right on oil r&d...others above on other areas of r&d.
i dont see the market oriented position as saying anything, really: except that it repeats the premises around which it is built. neoliberal political economy is circular. that's one reason it is incoherent.

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ASU2003

There is Orbital and a few other private satellite launching companies. If you have a few million, they can blast a few kilograms of stuff into orbit.


The law is supposed to protect us, but the legal system's problems are a whole other thread.

The 'free' market isn't perfect, and once everything gets established, it will be very hard to make a better product or compete against a large multi-national corporation when they can buy you out. The internet/personal computers has changed a lot of stuff, and it is a big reason why things are doing so good since 1989 to now. (War also tends to R&D and new technology, but following the money gets hard real quick.)

I would like to see an R&D tax, it would fund reasearch that might not be immediately profitable (or ever profitable if it makes things free).

Charlatan

Excellent thread.

I think there is a bit of rose coloured glasses element on both extremes of this issue.

The truth is somewhere in the middle (as always). An entirely free market is not desirable, not is a heavily controlled market. Businesses need laws and regulations in forms of things like intellectual property rights, bankruptcy laws, anti-trust, etc. It is not a surprise to find that the most robust economies of the world have a very smooth and well-functioning bureaucracy.

On the flip side of this, citizens benefit from things like environmental controls, anti-trust (it benefits both businesses and citizens), labour laws, etc. Some of these regulations can hinder businesses to the point of crippling their ability to compete, the key is to regulate in such a way as to prevent a race to the bottom.

To my mind, the best and boldest way that a government (and by extension citizens) can influence industry is through seed money. This can take the small scale form of R&D support to Universities or it can be on a huge scale such as the race to the moon (imagine for a moment if Bush, instead of waging a war in Iraq had used his post 9/11 political capital to push for America to break the bonds of oil dependency, to push for a technological shift by inspiring a generation of youth to think differently, to seed technological developments and create new forms of green industry all in the way that Kennedy's push to the moon inspired and brought about change). Governments have the power to influence in very positive ways through selective legislation and incentive.

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ASU2003

I might have voted for him. That would have been the correct response to the attacks. Along with covertly taking out some terrorists and preventing them from selling their oil to other nations to fund terrorism. Then in ten years (2010 or so), we would be selling more fuel efficient cars and such that other nations would be buying from us.

Now we are 9 trillion in debt and rising.

dksuddeth

you're letting your hatred of republicans/conservatives show again. Care to take a guess as to why these agencies are under executive authority? Because congress put them there. Not only that, but most legislation that created these agencies, also empowered said agencies to regulate themselves. YOUR congressional representatives made these agencies super independent to the point that they can make their own rules on just about anything they have the authority to regulate. They only fall under the executive because congress has no power to enforce the law, only the executive does.

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Willravel

DK, do you trust the oil industry? How about the cigarette industry? Cell phone industry?

Ustwo

All the money in the world means nothing without that scientific breakthrough, which often happens by pure accident. I think the 135 billion spent on it currently should be sufficient.

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dc_dux

dk....once again, you only have it half right.

Every agency has an semi-autonomous Inspector General that is responsible for oversight of waste, fraud and abuse within the department. The IGs have a dual and independent reporting relationship to both the agency head and to the Congress. While Congress cant enforce the law, it does have oversight authoriity, with subpoena power and the power to recommend legal action for potentially criminal activities within the exec branch....as well as controlling the funding for all discretionary executive branch programs through the annual appropriations process.

Ironically, its explained pretty well in material developed by Bush's Council on Integrity and Efficiency.

It worked reasonably well since its inception under a law signed by Pres Carter in 1978....at least until 2000, when many IG appointments became politicized by Bush (with numerous current IGs under investigation) combined with the Repub Congress' lack of oversight from 2001-2007.

Over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Bush had prior political experience, such as service in a Republican White House or on a Republican congressional staff, while fewer than 20% had prior audit experience. In contrast, over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Clinton had prior audit experience, while fewer than 25% had prior political experience.

NASA IG Robert Cobb allegedly suppressed investigations and penalized his own investigators for pursuing allegations of theft, safety violations, and other wrongdoing.

Commerce IG Johnnie Frazier is under investigation for taking trips with no apparent official purpose at government expense, retaliating against employees who objected and refused to sign the travel vouchers, and destroying emails after he was informed of an investigation into his travel. A report from the Office of Special Counsel recently concluded that he illegally
retaliated against employees who challenged his conduct by demoting them.

Acting EPA IG Bill Roderick recently announced plans to cut 60 of 360 staff positions in the IG’s office due to potential budget cuts. However, the IG office budget increased for FY 2007

DOD IG Joseph Schmitz resigned in 2005 during a Congressional investigation into whether Mr. Schmitz had blocked criminal investigations of senior Pentagon officials. Sen. Charles Grassley also investigated whether Mr. Schmitz had submitted a report to the White House for review before it was issued. Senior officials in the IG’s office reportedly used code
names in referring to persons under investigation, out of fear that Mr. Schmitz would tip off Pentagon officials to pending investigations.

Former HHS IG Janet Rehnquist, the daughter of late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, resigned in 2003 amid investigations into charges of interfering with an investigation and mismanagement.

http://governmentmanagement.oversigh...0620214436.pdf

Its not hatred of republicans....its the facts.

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dksuddeth

will, you should know enough of me by now, through my posts, that I don't trust any industry. Nor do I really trust any person, but that's just me. Not that my 'trust' has anything to do with the topic of how free market either supports or detracts from scientific discovery due to profit margins, but most people don't get the idea of what a free market is supposed to do for people and that's offer them 'choice'. If you feel that you should be able to go to just any gas station, grocery store, retail outlet, shopping mall, auto seller, or air condition repair shop and get the same exact service, quality product, and guarantee of same, then you're looking for our neighbors across the ocean where the government makes nearly all business operate in that manner. In a free market economy, companies 'compete' for your money, it's your choice whether to give it to them or not.

once again, you've mistaken GW Bush for a republican conservative. He is neither. Bush's report means squat to me because it's not based in conservatism, nor is it based in any true means of how the government was supposed to be handled and ran, but how it is done now (according to the last decade anyway)

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Charlatan

It's not just about the money. It's about leadership. It's about inspiration, initiative and direction. The moon shot was about all of those things and the payoff was huge.

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Ustwo

So you are saying GWB could have inspired scientists to come up with new technology that doesn't even exist yet with an impassioned speech and perhaps his ghost like Kennedy?

Let me show you that alternative history....

November 1 2007.

"George W. Bush has done nothing to stop Saddam Hussein, who continues to stockpile weapons of mass destruction." - Hilary Clinton

"We have spent billions and billions on this pipe dream program of alternative fuels with nothing to show for it." - Ted Kennedy

"Why is it that most of the research money has gone to energy companies? GWB is obviously rewarding his friends in the oil industry!" - Daily KOS

"I saw a UFO while visiting Shirley MacLaine" - Dennis Kucinich

A good speech at the right time can capture the public imagination, but the public isn't who figures out how to get things done. With the moon, it was truly a pie in the sky idea. As it is the benefits from it are all secondary, going to the moon itself was a waste of money as we never followed up. The public got bored, the money didn't seem worth spending, and instead of moon base 1, we have a flag and some tire tracks up there for the last 30 years.

The moon itself required this kind of speech and public funds, as all benefits were unknown surprises. It would be like someone today saying lets drill to the center of the earth. Throw enough money at it and you will most likely see a lot of side inventions which are worthwhile but we can't predict what they would be or if they will justify cost.

Alternative fuels/energy on the other hand are not pie in the sky pipe dreams of unknown worth. Their worth is very well known, their stocks are traded daily, there are companies racing trying to get there first. The public doesn't need convincing that its worth while, everyone knows it who could matter.

The money is there, the incentive is there (unlimited fame and wealth), and the reason is there. Now its a waiting game to see who comes up with what. No speech would make that go faster.

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Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

dc_dux

Your notion that scientific breakthrough often happens by pure accident may be correct, but quaint its in assumption that its some guy fiddling around in his basement workshop. That may have been correct in Edison's time.

In more recent times, many (most?) scientific developments and breakthroughs occur in university research settings supported by government funding.

Biotech breakthroughs and the resulting emergence of a new biotech industry in the last 20-30 yeras is a good example. The problem that stiffled private development of those breakthroughs was that, if it was federally funded, the feds owned the patent. That changed in 1980 with the Bayh-Dole Act:
That three-way partnership was critical to the growth and success of the biotech industry....even with the downside noted in the article.

The same would apply to many other industries.....nanotechnology, alternative energy, etc. Government funding in university research settings serves as the foundation for growth and development.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Ustwo

It would be quaint, but I never said that. Normally its some guy in a lab, trying to do one thing and seeing something else and saying 'what the hell is that?'

Well I can't say if its most or not, trying to quantify breakthroughs is a bit hard.

You recall this thread was about trusting the free market, and here obviously we needed the market in order to do anything with various breakthroughs. Coming up with the idea is the first half, making it practical, affordable, and usable is the second half.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

ratbastid

Leaving aside the "could there have been a speech" thing, which IMO is a red herring:

So... Are you saying there was NOTHING GWB could have done that wouldn't have gotten him blasted by those goofy liberals? Even when his approval rating was in the 90s and everybody was behind doing SOMETHING... There's NOTHING he could have done to unite the nation and move us forward into a new era?

I don't believe that for an instant. I was ready for us to use the tragedy that 9/11 was to foster international understanding, further the cause of peace, and unite America for something constructive. That's not exactly Bush's style, but I promise you, there WERE things that could have been done that would have left him among the best presidents in history, rather than the miserable state we're in now.

dc_dux

I agree its hard to quantify the extent of the impact of federally funded research in university settings, but we both know such research takes place in universities across the country.

We absolutely need private entrepreneurs and even venture capitalists to do anything with those breakthroughs resulting from federally funded research......thus the three-way partnership.

I'm trying to understand how that fits into a model of a true free market..free of government interference or involvement....when its government funded research that created the breakthrough and the government's giving the patent rights to the guy in the university lab to pursue private development.

The problem with trusting the free market is also noted in the article:

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Ustwo

Having done both academic and commercial research, I'll say a couple of things.

Working for the company was nicer, better lab, better perks (really nice hotel at the research conference over the cheapest room), and better pay. Part of the issue was I was at a state university, private ones tended to be a bit nicer, but thats a whole other topic. The company required results, the academic one I could pretty much coast as long as I came up with something. Both worked out well for me in the end.

Now the question is, is the company subcontracting the academic researcher or is it a donation? If its a subcontract, like mine was, they were paying me to do a job, what they did with that was their business, quite literally.

The reason they would have a right to veto has nothing to do with trust. Sure you can get on about them covering up this or that, but its really about patients. Lets say I come up with a new polymer that doesn't shrink on cure. That would be a big invention, but lets say even though it doesn't shrink, its still not practical for the intended use. Its too soft, or its cure time is too long or whatever. If I go and publish this, it would be a nice little feather in my academic cap. It also gave away a piece to every competitor out there. Being that company X is funding the research they should be allowed to see it to its fruition. After thats over, publish what you want.

What you see are two different goals of those involved. When I worked for a company they told me 'This is happening, we don't know why, try to figure it out, here is money.' I did that and I did figure it out. Their goal wasn't to see me publish (I did but thats just a bonus) their goal was to solve a problem, and promote a product. They used my research to do so.

When in the academic world, solving the problem is good because now you have something to publish. It means you can add that to your C.V. and next time you apply for a grant you have that much more.

One of the ironic things in all this was that I was being written into a grant that would have payed me a lot of money (by Raman noodle eating student standards). It was a good project, and it was rejected by the N.I.H. because it had too much commercial value and they told the guy writing it to find a company to fund it instead.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

The free market is a funny thing. It doesn't actually exist anywhere, because as has been mentioned, the "freedom" of any market is necessarily provided for and protected by some external force- market forces can't make someone not steal your product, or your ideas, or your money.

It is also funny because of how often it is erroneously deified.

Markets don't necessarily drive technology, and, as has been alluded to above, in some instances they can actually stifle it. For instance, i know of a certain medical device start-up company that produced a product and process that would have replaced open heart surgery for a lot of people who would have otherwise needed it. In case anyone doesn't know, open heart surgery is pretty hard on the human body. The device and procedure were together promising enough that the start-up was bought by one of the major players in the heart device technology industry- this was news- i saw the president of the start-up company being interviewed on cnn's market-y show (i'm not sure what it's called) about the sale. But then, nothing. The company that bought the start-up sat on their hands. Didn't market it. Didn't work all that hard to sing its praises to doctors. Whether it was incompetence or conspiracy, they just didn't do shit with it. They ended up laying off everybody who worked at the start-up and essentially wrote it off as a loss.

Hooray for the market, and hooray for all the ways in which we benefit from it as consumers.

Often, the invisible hand is just giving us all the finger.