3 ms·

Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations? As o

by hga 12y ago

Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations? As our friendly grad student in the C4 rice project discussion noted, 100 years of this sort of thing has made famine rare and lifted a billion people out of starvation (I knew the world had changed when I read in The Economist in 1982-3 that INDIA was sending relief grain to Ethiopia). As for the "keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us", a lot of us aren't that Manichean and therefore your position falls flat.

jacquesm 12y ago
> Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations? I don't think I said that. > As for the "keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us", a lot of us aren't that Manichean and therefore your position falls flat. A lot of us are exactly that Manichean and that's something to be genuinely worried about. Not everybody has mankinds welfare at heart. Monsanto strikes me as a mixed blessing in that respect, they may do accidental good but in the meantime their goal seems to be to gain control of the worlds staple food supplies.
- hga 12y ago
  Well, they're doing a poor job of it, the patent on the GMO part of Roundup Ready soybeans has expired or will expire this year in the US. Others will obviously follow. Note that there's a separate patent system for old fashioned plant breeding with a longer 25 year term that will cover a variety of these germ lines if you copy the relevant traits vs. just the Roundup hack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights And I submit you are saying we shouldn't benefit from these inventions. Since you differ, what is the regime you envision in which they get developed and propagated? No points for saying non-profits or the government, the profit motive clearly played a role here (although not in a lot of the Green Revolution developments).

by hga 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

> Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations? I don't think I said that. > As for the "keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us", a lot of us aren't that Manichean and therefore your position falls flat. A lot of us are exactly that Manichean and that's something to be genuinely worried about. Not everybody has mankinds welfare at heart. Monsanto strikes me as a mixed blessing in that respect, they may do accidental good but in the meantime their goal seems to be to gain control of the worlds staple food supplies.

hga 12y ago
Well, they're doing a poor job of it, the patent on the GMO part of Roundup Ready soybeans has expired or will expire this year in the US. Others will obviously follow. Note that there's a separate patent system for old fashioned plant breeding with a longer 25 year term that will cover a variety of these germ lines if you copy the relevant traits vs. just the Roundup hack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights And I submit you are saying we shouldn't benefit from these inventions. Since you differ, what is the regime you envision in which they get developed and propagated? No points for saying non-profits or the government, the profit motive clearly played a role here (although not in a lot of the Green Revolution developments).