[schiffern]

>Nobody would invest millions into figuring out the right arrangement of atoms that cures some disease

Sure they would. It's called public research, most of which is promptly handed to private companies to profit from. Pharmaceutical research is hugely taxpayer subsidized.[1]

Let me be clear: I think the funding is a good thing, but the privatization (read: theft) of subsequent profits is bad.

[1] https://other98.com/taxpayers-fund-pharma-research-developme...

[zeroname]

Obviously I'm talking about private investment, not public funding.

Of course these companies use information obtained through public research, they're supposed to, because there's a long process from research to an approved product, which is what the research institutions do not do. Public and private research goes hand in hand, just like in other industries. The study quotes a hundred billion in public funding over six years, compare that to private R&D budgets of well over 50 billion per year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#The_co...

It's not "a scam", as that article wants you to believe. You should stop reading that website, it's making you more uneducated.

[schiffern]

> Obviously I'm talking about private investment, not public funding.

Obviously both can "[figure] out the right arrangement of atoms that cures some disease." How does that not answer your question? Furthermore, how would 'obviousness' negate a counterexample? You're just moving the goalposts here.

>It's not "a scam", as that article wants you to believe. You should stop reading that website, it's making you more uneducated.

My apologies, your friendly suggestion is misguided. My "source" was the notoriously uneducated Noam Chomsky, but I knew you'd pooh-pooh that (can't stop you tho! :D) as appeal to authority. I confess I lazily Googled the citation.

Direct link to the timecode of Chomsky's comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szIGZVrSAyc&t=11m18s (~4m long)

[zeroname]

> Obviously both can "[figure] out the right arrangement of atoms that cures some disease." How does that not answer your question?

I didn't ask a question.

> Furthermore, how would 'obviousness' negate a counterexample? You're just moving the goalposts here.

You are playing a semantic game. The obvious, honest interpretation of my words is that I'm talking about preserving private investment. I'm of course aware that governments can and do fund research. I didn't expect to be discussing with a person that has such poor debating skills as to resort to such nitpicking, otherwise I wouldn't have replied at all.

> My apologies, your friendly suggestion is misguided. My "source" was the notoriously uneducated Noam Chomsky, but I knew you'd pooh-pooh that (can't stop you tho! :D) as appeal to authority.

No I wouldn't, because Mr. Chomsky isn't considered an authority on that particular subject (or most any of the many subjects he has opinions on).

Again, I'm not denying the contributions of publicly funded universities. You're (apparently) denying the contribution of privately funded R&D. It's true that companies rely on public research, why shouldn't they? What else is supposed to happen?

[schiffern]

>I didn't ask a question.

Allow me to rephrase: that disproves your statement, "nobody would invest millions into figuring out the right arrangement of atoms that cures some disease, if there wasn't a way to profit from that."

Everything else is noise.

[zeroname]

> Allow me to rephrase: that disproves your statement, "nobody would invest millions into figuring out the right arrangement of atoms that cures some disease, if there wasn't a way to profit from that."

You really want to play that dumb semantic game? Fine, I'll play: I didn't specify financial profit. When publicly funded research leads to the cure for a disease, then the public profits.

> Everything else is noise.

No it isn't, "everything else" is the whole damn point that you fail to address.

[schiffern]

If calling false statements false is a "semantics game," then yes I'm happy to play.

>Fine, I'll play: I didn't specify financial profit. When publicly funded research leads to the cure for a disease, then the public profits.

Your attempt to walk back isn't credible. Your immediately previous sentence that this backs up was "IP laws also support innovation." Tautologically, if your goal is public benefit then it belongs in the public domain, with no need for IP protection.

_Unless_ your purported goal of "public benefit" is just private enrichment in disguise: corporate R&D subsidies, wherein publicly-developed tech is handed over to private companies for "commercialization" (typically by licensing it 'for a song' compared to the taxpayer's risky R&D expenditure, with private companies cherry-picking 'winner' technologies to license while the public picks up the tab for the many inevitable losers that come from anything risky). This is very common, of course.

If your true goal is public profit then no IP is needed. Only if your goal is private profit (handing over an exclusive license to one's buddies) does IP come into play.