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Comment by empath-nirvana | Hacker News Reader

I think the more archetypal example is that _treating_ a disease is a lot more profitable than _curing_ a disease -- would the Epipen manufacturer ever develop and market a allergy _vaccine_ that cured an allergy with a one time shot?

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One of the most successful drugs in recent times was one that actually cured a previously chronic and not curable disease. It was also a controversial one because it was very expensive. But Solvadi, which cured Hepatitis C was certainly a huge commercial success and shows that the whole idea that pharma companies are never incentivized to cure diseases instead of treating them is just wrong.

Nice example, but one exception doesn’t disprove a trend.

What trend? In which cases specifically are companies avoiding to create a cure that would be possible and promising?

What trend? You need to show evidence of cures being suppressed many times to indicate any kind of trend.

Any trend. I’m not making a claim—simply a logical statement. Those making claims need to show evidence.

This is one reason it's essential to have a free enterprise system, where anyone can take on such problems.

Free enterprise is not a necessary precondition for research. You'll note how much of the last 50 years of technological advancements were direct or indirect results of government funded research programs.

If it's too free, nobody will do the research because they'll get scooped by copycats while everyone will claim to have a cure because they'll already have the customer's money by the time their fraud is discovered. Freedom is a good default and a good guiding principle, but it's a terrible absolute principle.

Or a system that removes profit from the equation. From the article, I don't think any one bureaucratic system is immune from the effect.

In the tech sector, we see many examples of the disruptor opening a temporary wedge to either get acquired by the dominant player or becoming the new hegemonist.

A system where it's not profitable to solve problems won't do much problem solving.

This is just taking the rational consumer model, forgetting it's just a model and treating it as a fact of life, and then inventing corollaries from it. Plenty of people find intrinsic value in solving problems without there needing to be a profit. See, e.g. Open Source Software, The Apollo Program, Academia, the BBC.

The Apollo Program, Academia, and the BBC all pay their workers, which makes it profitable for them to do the work.

I get your point: These are not for profit enterprises and they still get important work done.

I'm making a different point: People don't work for the benefit of others without being rewarded.

Open Source Software is not a bad counter example. I think there are rewards in the joy of programming, making a name for yourself, and a few other things, but I'll concede that there is some nuance there.

And that only works for problems that are cheap to solve. Most aren't.

You are replying to a post that references exceptionally expensive efforts. The inflation adjusted cost of the Apollo Program was hundreds of billions of dollars[1]. By what measure is that cheap? Maybe I'm missing intended sarcasm?

[1] https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

Spoken like a true Ferengi.

Why would this happen when it's more profitable not to?

How do you make profit not doing something?

Right now I'm not doing billions of things, and don't see a cent is coming in!

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