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"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along." How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vacci
by neilwilson 6y ago
"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along."
How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine come about, and at the low price that it did?
By Fiscal Activism by the UK government.
That's how basic science, research and development comes about - by government fiscal activism making the results freely available. Once that breaches a risk threshold the private sector will jump on it and accelerate the innovation from it. The existence of the Internet shows the power of that approach.
- mousepilot 6y agoI think we can still have intellectual property rights even in this context. Some things are worth working on at a national level, like the vaccine, but that doesn't have to be an argument in abolishing all IP rights. We don't have to nationalize pop music for instance, heck it doesn't even make sense to do this.