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> We wouldn't have vaccines without some form of protection for scientists and their backers. Pay them with public funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes

> We wouldn't have vaccines without some form of protection for scientists and their backers. Pay them with public funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_pa...

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
The difficulty with this is choosing what to fund in what amount. Bureaucracies are quite bad at this. Patents solve this by using the market. If you patent some garbage, nobody buys it and you make no money. If you invent something ingenious that everybody wants once it exists but nobody else would have thought to offer a prize for before it existed, you make a lot of money.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  If a company proves their vaccine "works" it would make sense for a government to want to buy it from them.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Is there is a patent for the government to have to buy? If they get to keep the patent unless the government is willing to pay the market price, you have a patent system. If not, they're doing research on faith that some unspecified money might possibly fall from the sky. Also, now there is only one buyer. Say six different companies all develop working vaccines. Is the government going to buy all of them? What about the tenth or hundredth? If not, what happens to the company that spent a billion dollars developing a working vaccine, only to have someone else beat them to the prize by a few days? And vaccines are something we know ahead of time that we want. How do you do a prize for inventing something you don't know you want because it doesn't exist yet?
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      >Is there is a patent for the government to have to buy? There would be no patents. >Also, now there is only one buyer. You could also sell them to other governments, hospitals, people, etc. >what happens to the company that spent a billion dollars developing a working vaccine, only to have someone else beat them to the prize by a few days? It's possible for competing products to exist. Is yours cheaper or more effective than your competitors? If you wanted your money building a bad product then tough luck. >How do you do a prize for inventing something you don't know you want because it doesn't exist yet? How do you make a vaccine for a disease that you don't know about? You don't. I'm not sure why you are talking about prizes. Along with just selling them normally, you could also have an unlock system like kickstarter. If you raise $x then they will release the drug, or they could kickstart the entire process. Or instead of a kickstarter they could find investors.
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        > There would be no patents. > You could also sell them to other governments, hospitals, people, etc. Sell what, exactly? > It's possible for competing products to exist. Is yours cheaper or more effective than your competitors? If you wanted your money building a bad product then tough luck. These are existing risks. You're adding a new one: Pfizer and Moderna each create a working vaccine. The government buys one of them to give away for free, so the other one makes zero dollars. Normally they would each take an equal share of the market. > How do you make a vaccine for a disease that you don't know about? You don't. Some forms of cancer are caused by a virus. It's possible to vaccinate against them. We did not know that a century ago. Two centuries ago we didn't even know that vaccines were possible. What don't we know now?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

The difficulty with this is choosing what to fund in what amount. Bureaucracies are quite bad at this. Patents solve this by using the market. If you patent some garbage, nobody buys it and you make no money. If you invent something ingenious that everybody wants once it exists but nobody else would have thought to offer a prize for before it existed, you make a lot of money.

charcircuit 5y ago
If a company proves their vaccine "works" it would make sense for a government to want to buy it from them.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Is there is a patent for the government to have to buy? If they get to keep the patent unless the government is willing to pay the market price, you have a patent system. If not, they're doing research on faith that some unspecified money might possibly fall from the sky. Also, now there is only one buyer. Say six different companies all develop working vaccines. Is the government going to buy all of them? What about the tenth or hundredth? If not, what happens to the company that spent a billion dollars developing a working vaccine, only to have someone else beat them to the prize by a few days? And vaccines are something we know ahead of time that we want. How do you do a prize for inventing something you don't know you want because it doesn't exist yet?
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    >Is there is a patent for the government to have to buy? There would be no patents. >Also, now there is only one buyer. You could also sell them to other governments, hospitals, people, etc. >what happens to the company that spent a billion dollars developing a working vaccine, only to have someone else beat them to the prize by a few days? It's possible for competing products to exist. Is yours cheaper or more effective than your competitors? If you wanted your money building a bad product then tough luck. >How do you do a prize for inventing something you don't know you want because it doesn't exist yet? How do you make a vaccine for a disease that you don't know about? You don't. I'm not sure why you are talking about prizes. Along with just selling them normally, you could also have an unlock system like kickstarter. If you raise $x then they will release the drug, or they could kickstart the entire process. Or instead of a kickstarter they could find investors.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > There would be no patents. > You could also sell them to other governments, hospitals, people, etc. Sell what, exactly? > It's possible for competing products to exist. Is yours cheaper or more effective than your competitors? If you wanted your money building a bad product then tough luck. These are existing risks. You're adding a new one: Pfizer and Moderna each create a working vaccine. The government buys one of them to give away for free, so the other one makes zero dollars. Normally they would each take an equal share of the market. > How do you make a vaccine for a disease that you don't know about? You don't. Some forms of cancer are caused by a virus. It's possible to vaccinate against them. We did not know that a century ago. Two centuries ago we didn't even know that vaccines were possible. What don't we know now?