4 ms·

I didn't downvote you, but WhatsApp affects more people than obscure scientific research.

ForHackernews 13y ago
WhatsApp is just cheap text messages. If we had a sane telecom market to start with, SMS would already cost nearly nothing and there'd be no market for WhatsApp. They've done a good job filling a niche in a broken market, and delivered real value for consumers, I admit.
- fennecfoxen 13y ago
  Monopoly profits don't get redistributed back into the consumer surplus all by themselves. Somebody's got to do it.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
I understand your point. Startups can be be obscure in the same ways as research: Interesting idea, but turned out to be wrong. Interesting, and right, but no significant application in the broad world. Or not even a very interesting idea. There's value to a system where plausible things get funded, even if only 1 turn out to pay for the 9 that suck.
cabalamat 13y ago
If it wasn't for obscure scientific research, WhatsApp wouldn't exist.
- bduerst 13y ago
  Slippery Slope: If it wasn't for obscure scientific research, almost nothing we know would exist. It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything.
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    > It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything. Of course not. Food, for example, has much more immediate use. But it does mean that science is pretty valuable, and more valuable over longer periods.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Oxygen has little market value, nor does language. Market value is a measure of many things. Net benefit to civilization isn't one of them.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      > Oxygen has little market value Don't tell that to the atmospheric gas industry.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        What's the size of the atmospheric gas industry? What's the size of the global food industry? To a rough approximation: everyone who eats must pay for food (at least some of it). To a rough approximation: nobody who breathes pays for oxygen. I'm not saying there's no market at all for oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, etc. But that the vast amount of use for these gases is done without the mediation of a market, or the imposition of a market cost or fee. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the industrial gases industry shipped products valued at nearly $9.5 billion in 2007 http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/chemicals/industrial-gases http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/chemicals/indu... For agriculture, wheat alone accounted for $10.6 billion, corn $48.7 billion, soybeans $32.4 billion. . The total value of U.S. wheat production in 2009 was $10.6 billion. As was traditionally the case, in 2009 corn far surpassed other U.S. crops in value at nearly $48.7 billion. For comparison, soybean crops, the second leading field crop, were valued at about $32.4 billion. http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/wheat http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/wh... http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/corn http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/co... Total food expenditures? Somewhere north of $600 billion: http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011-september/food-spending.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011-september/food-spen... Your atmospheric gasses industry represents 1.6% of the value of food spending in the US. And again, virtually nobody who uses oxygen directly actually pays for that privilege. Which is to say: there is no market value.
selmnoo 13y ago
I don't know about that. NIH's annual budget a few years ago was about 20 billion dollars. WhatsApp was sold for almost nearly 20 billion. The studies funded by NIH cured diseases, extended lifetimes, made lives better. Why don't we get 5 more WhatsApp so that existed postdocs are paid better, and those thinking of academia actually join it and make discoveries to make human lives even longer and healthier.

WhatsApp is just cheap text messages. If we had a sane telecom market to start with, SMS would already cost nearly nothing and there'd be no market for WhatsApp. They've done a good job filling a niche in a broken market, and delivered real value for consumers, I admit.

fennecfoxen 13y ago
Monopoly profits don't get redistributed back into the consumer surplus all by themselves. Somebody's got to do it.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago

I understand your point. Startups can be be obscure in the same ways as research: Interesting idea, but turned out to be wrong. Interesting, and right, but no significant application in the broad world. Or not even a very interesting idea. There's value to a system where plausible things get funded, even if only 1 turn out to pay for the 9 that suck.

cabalamat 13y ago

If it wasn't for obscure scientific research, WhatsApp wouldn't exist.

bduerst 13y ago
Slippery Slope: If it wasn't for obscure scientific research, almost nothing we know would exist. It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything. Of course not. Food, for example, has much more immediate use. But it does mean that science is pretty valuable, and more valuable over longer periods.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Oxygen has little market value, nor does language. Market value is a measure of many things. Net benefit to civilization isn't one of them.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    > Oxygen has little market value Don't tell that to the atmospheric gas industry.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      What's the size of the atmospheric gas industry? What's the size of the global food industry? To a rough approximation: everyone who eats must pay for food (at least some of it). To a rough approximation: nobody who breathes pays for oxygen. I'm not saying there's no market at all for oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, etc. But that the vast amount of use for these gases is done without the mediation of a market, or the imposition of a market cost or fee. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the industrial gases industry shipped products valued at nearly $9.5 billion in 2007 http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/chemicals/industrial-gases http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/chemicals/indu... For agriculture, wheat alone accounted for $10.6 billion, corn $48.7 billion, soybeans $32.4 billion. . The total value of U.S. wheat production in 2009 was $10.6 billion. As was traditionally the case, in 2009 corn far surpassed other U.S. crops in value at nearly $48.7 billion. For comparison, soybean crops, the second leading field crop, were valued at about $32.4 billion. http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/wheat http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/wh... http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/corn http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/agriculture/co... Total food expenditures? Somewhere north of $600 billion: http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011-september/food-spending.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011-september/food-spen... Your atmospheric gasses industry represents 1.6% of the value of food spending in the US. And again, virtually nobody who uses oxygen directly actually pays for that privilege. Which is to say: there is no market value.

selmnoo 13y ago

I don't know about that. NIH's annual budget a few years ago was about 20 billion dollars. WhatsApp was sold for almost nearly 20 billion. The studies funded by NIH cured diseases, extended lifetimes, made lives better. Why don't we get 5 more WhatsApp so that existed postdocs are paid better, and those thinking of academia actually join it and make discoveries to make human lives even longer and healthier.