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"Shareholder primacy" led to the invention of modern vaccines and mRNA discoveries. Was this a poor longterm corporate investment?

pinewurst 4y ago
Why is that true? It certainly led to the crippling of general corporate scientific research.
thfuran 4y ago
Did it really? Wasn't the research leading to mRNA vaccines performed in a grant-funded university lab?
- kjghkjghkjgh 4y ago
  It was Moderna and they are not a grant funded university lab
  - thfuran 4y ago
    They didn't do the foundational research. They licensed a patent that came out of research from University of Pennsylvania and applied it to COVID.
    - x-complexity 4y ago
      > They didn't do the foundational research. They licensed a patent that came out of research from University of Pennsylvania and applied it to COVID. Incremental research is still research. Application research is still research. The over-emphasis on foundational research from the media & the general public has led to a myopic view of "revolution"-ism, wherein incremental progress in science is considered to be worthless relative to incremental improvements. The discovery of penicillin was a medical breakthrough, but that doesn't mean that the industrial scale-up of penicillin production was comparatively worthless. In fact, in this specific case, the opposite is true: The benefits of penicillin wouldn't have been received if everyone thought that research into scaling up its production was worthless.
      - thfuran 4y ago
        Moderna spent a few months on it before they had a vaccine ready for trials. The lab spent just under a decade building on decades of prior research. It's pretty clear who did the bulk of the work when it comes to the mRNA discoveries, and it wasn't Moderna or its shareholders.
  - hkt 4y ago
    In almost every sector of the economy, companies partner with suitable university departments and then oddly enough the universities never get any patents, but the companies do. This is due to how our intellectual property laws work, not any special kind of magic that having shareholders will yield.
rurp 4y ago
Do those account for a significant portion of the effect, or are you just cherry picking a couple nice instances? The word modern is doing some heavy lifting as well; shareholder primacy certainly isn't responsible for most of the overall benefit from vaccines.
modo_mario 4y ago
I'd say it leads to things like an average overinvestment in things that benefit shareholders rather than things that might benefit the company or society over the long term. Weirdly timed stock buybacks instead of money going to R&D or attracting talent and the like.

pinewurst 4y ago

Why is that true? It certainly led to the crippling of general corporate scientific research.

thfuran 4y ago

Did it really? Wasn't the research leading to mRNA vaccines performed in a grant-funded university lab?

kjghkjghkjgh 4y ago
It was Moderna and they are not a grant funded university lab
- thfuran 4y ago
  They didn't do the foundational research. They licensed a patent that came out of research from University of Pennsylvania and applied it to COVID.
  - x-complexity 4y ago
    > They didn't do the foundational research. They licensed a patent that came out of research from University of Pennsylvania and applied it to COVID. Incremental research is still research. Application research is still research. The over-emphasis on foundational research from the media & the general public has led to a myopic view of "revolution"-ism, wherein incremental progress in science is considered to be worthless relative to incremental improvements. The discovery of penicillin was a medical breakthrough, but that doesn't mean that the industrial scale-up of penicillin production was comparatively worthless. In fact, in this specific case, the opposite is true: The benefits of penicillin wouldn't have been received if everyone thought that research into scaling up its production was worthless.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Moderna spent a few months on it before they had a vaccine ready for trials. The lab spent just under a decade building on decades of prior research. It's pretty clear who did the bulk of the work when it comes to the mRNA discoveries, and it wasn't Moderna or its shareholders.
- hkt 4y ago
  In almost every sector of the economy, companies partner with suitable university departments and then oddly enough the universities never get any patents, but the companies do. This is due to how our intellectual property laws work, not any special kind of magic that having shareholders will yield.

rurp 4y ago

Do those account for a significant portion of the effect, or are you just cherry picking a couple nice instances? The word modern is doing some heavy lifting as well; shareholder primacy certainly isn't responsible for most of the overall benefit from vaccines.

modo_mario 4y ago

I'd say it leads to things like an average overinvestment in things that benefit shareholders rather than things that might benefit the company or society over the long term. Weirdly timed stock buybacks instead of money going to R&D or attracting talent and the like.