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Just sat in a lecture that made me rethink capitalism

Dr. Zaus

Dr. Zaus

Lifer
So I was sitting in my technology commercialization class and the speaker, a former technology commercialization officer at a major bio medical researcher, said: "we had to turn down many discoveries that came out of our basic research; If it wasn't going to return 250million in the first 3 years we just didn't produce it"

Can you imagine the number of amazing discoveries this company simply didn't bring to market because it wasn't profitable enough to them?

Disgusting.
 
Capitalism is fine, this leaves the opportunity for someone to come along and figure out how to do it and make money.
 
If it isn't something people would buy (IE make money) I doubt the discoveries were that amazing.
 
Patranus said:
If it isn't something people would buy (IE make money) I doubt the discoveries were that amazing.
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They where worth money, just not the 250million in 3 years that the company demanded.

Brigandier said:
Capitalism is fine, this leaves the opportunity for someone to come along and figure out how to do it and make money.
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And so the productivity that went into the creation is lost? There are only a few such amazing discoveries to be made.
 
Pure capitalism wouldn't have mega-corporations as it skews the balance between buyer and seller. The mega-corps introduce huge barriers to entry due to their sheer size, and also, as you stated, prevent smaller innovations from occurring.

The government should have its own research arm that allows private business to use for profit later, as it was in the past. R&D in the hands of corporations, in conjunction with the absurd, overly long patents stifles innovation.
 
did you have a better system in mind? I cant think of anything anyone has tried that worked out better.
 
Another impressionable mind warped by a leftist lecture.

Isn't college fun kids!?


Why don't people realize that if you are presented only one side of a situation/debate, your mind will generally tend to find ways to agree with what is being said?
 
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Elias824 said:
did you have a better system in mind? I cant think of anything anyone has tried that worked out better.
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The government funding research through tax dollars. This prevents the problem the OP described and was a huge part of many advances in previous decades when most research was done by the government.
 
Medical discoveries shouldn't really be handled by private corporations anyway - those should be handled by universities with public grants. Pharma companies already use vast amounts of public money for their profits because they use lots of publicly funded studies that saves on their own R&D. There's also a perverse incentive to discover medicine that relieves symptoms rather than produce cures because that gives the companies a recurring revenue stream well into the future, rather than a one time shot.
 
Another impressionable mind warped by a leftist lecture.

Isn't college fun kids!?
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The person wasn't making a negative point, it was an MBA course explaining how to commercialize technology; She was simply pointing out that everyone has a 'limit' at which they are willing to commercialize.

No one in the room was against the free market.
Elias824 said:
did you have a better system in mind? I cant think of anything anyone has tried that worked out better.
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Rethinking the system and intentionally designing it to lead to the best possible outcomes for the whole of society.

I like competition and I hate the waste and stupidity that comes from government run organizations.

But there has to be a way to encourage the creation and sharing of knowledge that has less than maximum returns.

There's also a perverse incentive to discover medicine that relieves symptoms rather than produce cures because that gives the companies a recurring revenue stream well into the future, rather than a one time shot.
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True, the previous speaker was talking about how it is much better to create testing and diagnostic technologies.
 
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DixyCrat said:
And so the productivity that went into the creation is lost? There are only a few such amazing discoveries to be made.
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Academia spends all its time thinking of inventions, most aren't commercially viable. Eventually it will come out of patent and, if it can be marketed, produced. If not, I guess it wasn't that good.
 
HendrixFan said:
Pure capitalism wouldn't have mega-corporations as it skews the balance between buyer and seller. The mega-corps introduce huge barriers to entry due to their sheer size, and also, as you stated, prevent smaller innovations from occurring.

The government should have its own research arm that allows private business to use for profit later, as it was in the past. R&D in the hands of corporations, in conjunction with the absurd, overly long patents stifles innovation.
Click to expand...

Pure capitalism would absolutely have mega-corps, especially for commodity production. Capital gains reinvested into production leads to more acquisitions leads to economies of scale, leads to the ability to out-price competitors.

Wealth begets wealth.
 
Brigandier said:
Academia spends all its time thinking of inventions, most aren't commercially viable. Eventually it will come out of patent and, if it can be marketed, produced. If not, I guess it wasn't that good.
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This is an interesting thought; but do you think that the inventor will be able to afford all the work required to go through a patent when they company isn't going to go-ahead with the product?
RocksteadyDotNet said:
Capitalism the worst form of government besides all the others tried.
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Democracy is a governmental system, Capitalism is a means of allocating resources and productive energies. The latter and former interact, but there is nothing that precludes a democratic command economy or a totalitarian open market system (see china)

That said: GK Chesterton suggested that we allow businesses only to grow to a limited size, so as to increase competition and accessibility to the market for the common man.

This would hurt general productivity, but it would make passing on sub 250million dollar discoveries a thing of the past.
 
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DixyCrat said:
They where worth money, just not the 250million in 3 years that the company demanded.
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So then maybe the cost didn't justify the income? Sometimes market actors aren't rational but in the end the market allocates supply to demand better than any systems.

Econ 101.
 
You gotta pick your battles. There are opportunity costs to pursuing marginal ideas. Plus if you are projecting you are going to make $250M by bringing something to market, there is a chance it won't get approved at all, and you'll spend a lot of money trying, but make nothing. BTW, if they patent a discovery, but don't pursue it themselves, they may still be open to licensing that patent to a third party that wants to take a risk and pursue it.
 
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