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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.
      - Fomite 13y ago
        Regardless of whether or not most people spend money to breathe oxygen, any approximation that loses a 9.5 billion dollar industry to rounding errors is a poor approximation. And while most people don't pay for their use of atmospheric gasses, those who do are paying for something mission critical. You might as well say there is no value to sunlight because I can go lay on my roof deck.
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        rounding errors You're being obtusely blind to my point. It is a rounding error. Those who do pay (and, incidentally, with the reliance of most ag on industrial nitrogen fixation, that's probably pretty much all of us, indirectly) are doing so because the need they have cannot be met through the nontransactional atmospheric supply. What you're missing with your fixation on the atmospheric gasses bit is the remainder of total economic output ($70 trillion, give or take rounding errors of a few trillion), every last dollar of which requires humans, animals, plants, factories, fires, and god knows what else to have access to an atmosphere. Your $9.5 billion? 0.013% of the total. Again: air has, to any reasonable approximation, zero economic value. It has tremendous utility value. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        Apologies for dupe posts, was getting HN errors when this went through.
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        rounding errors You're being obtusely blind to my point. It is a rounding error. Those who do pay (and, incidentally, with the reliance of most ag on industrial nitrogen fixation, that's probably pretty much all of us, indirectly) are doing so because the need they have cannot be met through the nontransactional atmospheric supply. What you're missing with your fixation on the atmospheric gasses bit is the remainder of total economic output ($70 trillion, give or take rounding errors of a few trillion), every last dollar of which requires humans, animals, plants, factories, fires, and god knows what else to have access to an atmosphere. Your $9.5 billion? 0.013% of the total. Again: air has, to any reasonable approximation, zero economic value. It has tremendous utility value. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything. Scientific research is not (by design) excludable property, so attempting to assign a market value to it is actually a category error. Markets can only assign prices after definitions of ownership and trade are given.

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.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      Regardless of whether or not most people spend money to breathe oxygen, any approximation that loses a 9.5 billion dollar industry to rounding errors is a poor approximation. And while most people don't pay for their use of atmospheric gasses, those who do are paying for something mission critical. You might as well say there is no value to sunlight because I can go lay on my roof deck.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        rounding errors You're being obtusely blind to my point. It is a rounding error. Those who do pay (and, incidentally, with the reliance of most ag on industrial nitrogen fixation, that's probably pretty much all of us, indirectly) are doing so because the need they have cannot be met through the nontransactional atmospheric supply. What you're missing with your fixation on the atmospheric gasses bit is the remainder of total economic output ($70 trillion, give or take rounding errors of a few trillion), every last dollar of which requires humans, animals, plants, factories, fires, and god knows what else to have access to an atmosphere. Your $9.5 billion? 0.013% of the total. Again: air has, to any reasonable approximation, zero economic value. It has tremendous utility value. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        Apologies for dupe posts, was getting HN errors when this went through.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        rounding errors You're being obtusely blind to my point. It is a rounding error. Those who do pay (and, incidentally, with the reliance of most ag on industrial nitrogen fixation, that's probably pretty much all of us, indirectly) are doing so because the need they have cannot be met through the nontransactional atmospheric supply. What you're missing with your fixation on the atmospheric gasses bit is the remainder of total economic output ($70 trillion, give or take rounding errors of a few trillion), every last dollar of which requires humans, animals, plants, factories, fires, and god knows what else to have access to an atmosphere. Your $9.5 billion? 0.013% of the total. Again: air has, to any reasonable approximation, zero economic value. It has tremendous utility value. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>It doesn't mean that obscure scientific research has the same market value as almost everything. Scientific research is not (by design) excludable property, so attempting to assign a market value to it is actually a category error. Markets can only assign prices after definitions of ownership and trade are given.