[njharman]

If biotech crops are indeed key to our survival then that is incentive enough. No monetary incentive is needed. In fact something "key to our survival" should not be allowed to be for-profit.

Although, I seriously doubt biotech is key to survival. It's more likely to encourage, overpopulation, resource depletion, and push us towards monoculture / susceptibleness to catastrophic disease / crop failure.

[mseebach2]

> In fact something "key to our survival" should not be allowed to be for-profit.

Why this knee-jerk suspicion of profit? Sure, Monsanto seems to be jerks, but it's not like non-profits never screwed anything up.

Food is key to our survival and it's produced and distributed mostly for-profit - this clearly shouldn't be allowed?

[r00fus]

Because a profit-based market only works if supply/demand is elastic. In the case of, for example, healthcare, it becomes extremely inelastic [1] - at some point, if your life is at stake you could be willing to pay exorbitant prices for what should have a lower market cost (ie, say, blood at the right time).

Key-to-our-survival is a very strong leading indicator that the demand curve can get inelastic - giving inordinate bargaining power to private enterprises whose entire charter is to get as much money as possible (which makes sense given a normal elastic demand curve).

Healthcare, Energy, and Food should all be places where regulation prevents extreme arbitrage, or those doing the arbitrage will eventually be the de-facto rule-makers. If you want to live in such a society, fine, but I'd rather not. Note: some say we're already at this point, which is depressing to contemplate.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand