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What's some really unpopular opinion you have? (lemmings.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2237 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it's actually pretty popular.

Do you have some that's really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree with your view on IP, at least for pharmaceuticals. For most drugs, the exclusivity period is only 5 years, after which generic companies reverse engineer the product with ease and create a low-cost alternative. Without this period allowing pharma companies to make their money, there'd be no reason to invest the billions upon billions of dollars into R&D to discover and develop the drug in the first place. Most drug candidates fail, and the wins are what prop up the whole industry.

I'm not defending price gouging and I think all governments should control pricing, preferably with a single payer system (looking at you USA), but we would be so much further behind without patent protection. Especially for orphan diseases.

Don't really agree with you on IP for most creative purposes either. There should be a reasonable length of time you get exclusive rights to something you create. But this doesn't excuse Disney's stranglehold on the mouse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah with pharma in particular you need that initial profitability, as you say.

Additionally...

People will say “what would give someone the incentive to make new things?” Without actually thinking it through. For a great example of how lack of IP is a good thing, look at how Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a Chinese San Francisco in a few short decades… one company will take the product of another and iterate on top of it.

This doesn't really make sense. Shenzen company's might have copied products developed by other companies, but surely you still need another company to invest the R & D initially in order to have something to copy.

Consumer products don't "evolve". Developing and producing are two different processes. If there's no IP then there's only an incentive to produce things, and no incentive to develop them. I think this is especially true of pharmaceuticals given that there's no incremental / evolutionary pathway to discovering new drugs and the costs of conducting trials et cetera is preclusive.