They immediatly lost people upon showing the agreement
You as group told them to go screw themselves
What i want to emphasise is that from 1) they got a really big red sign, so when 2) came they didn't try hard to force the issue.
<RANT>
It's always a pleasure to see management finaly come to the conclusion that contrary to popular belief, it's not the employees that are easily discardable for companies, it's the other way around - companies are easily discardable for employees
</RANT>
My problem is that most solo individues have no access to the same tools (ex: big campaign contributions, lobbies, permanent legal conseling, image campaigns ) to adjust the risk ratios, than groups of individues have. Many times even groups of individues lack proper access to those tools - non-profit organizations many times lack the economic strength for campaign contributios or smart lawyers.
Corporations (specially big ones), have easier access to those tools.
I have NO problems with corporations. In the end they are just well organized (or one hopes so) groups of individuals.
I have problems with a system in which some entities have beter access to information and more influence in setting legislation than others.
Such a system does not balance goods and bads so that the whole comes up beter off. In some cases (for example enviroment), smaller but beter organized groups of people (say the oil lobby) get the good side of the deal while big unorganized groups of people (everybody that has to breath poluted air) get the bad side.
It's not the corporations that have to change - they are just doing what's best for them, like everybody else does - it's the system that has to change.
Actualy i've heard before that the US has good universities in average. I have no proof for it and no proof against it. I don't know if it was just a past thing or if still is so.
I strongly doubt the average level of education in the US (everything, not just universities) is the best in the world... then again after seing the Jerry Springer show once of twice, i kinda got disapointed with american society
I'm living in Holland right now, and the (percieved) average level of education for dutch people seems quite good.
Consider: If your customer, Person X, believes that you produced enough value to pay you $Y, but in doing so you additionally hurt Person Z enough to pay them $W, if Y>W then you did society as a whole good. Also, if Y>W then you turned a profit. Profit == good.
Very well, let's now consider the payment to person Z. When confronted with the alternatives:
Pay Person Z the ammount $W, no risk for the corporation
Pay Person Z an ammount < $W, risk R1 for the corporation
Don't pay Person Z, risk R2 for the corporation
a decision will be taken that balances risk with reward, tipacly following the rules:
If R2 is zero or considered negligible against reward $W, then option 3 will be taken
Otherwise if R1 is zero or negligible against reward delta-$W the option 2 will be taken.
Otherwise the option 3 will be taken
Also there are several ways of reducing risks R1 and R2, some more expensive, others less so:
Containement of information - Avoid that Person Z knows he/she is loosing ammount $W
Disinformation - Feed Person Z with wrong information (for example: by paying experts to produce reports saying that in fact Person Z is not loosing $W)
Legislative influence - Influence legislative bodies so that you are not oblidged by law to pay Person Z the ammount $W
What you're saying is something like:
In my city there's a guy which owns a Ferrari. Another one owns a Jaguar. Cars in my city are the best in the world.
Wrong
Just because there's a Ferrari and Jaguar in your city doesn't mean all cars are good. All the rest might be "how do they manage to still work", "rusting junk" sort of cars.
Try "average quality of universities" instead of "top 10".
People were saying: The Bible says Do not murder . (So, it's OK to go around hating people-- that's not murder). Wrong: the rule was made to promote peace.
Actualy that's your interpretation. It's the result of you reading it, through your point of view, which derives from your cultural enviroment, then doing a mental exercise in which you will consciously or unconsciously fill in the gaps in your understanding with things taken from your experience (or from other people's experiences), and finaly coming to a conclusion.
Different people in different times and with different cultural settings will come to different conclusions (otherwise why the Crusades or other things i shall not mention?)
This is not to say that you are wrong, is just to say that being right is a question of point of view.
First let me state that i do not agree with the concept of built-in obsolescence.
As i see it, i buy things (say a TV) to use them for personal gain (easier work, entertainment, aestetic pleasure), not to stimulate the economy. If a new product comes out with an improvement that i consider worth my hard earned bucks (for TVs: color TV; remote control; 3D imagery) i will buy a new one. Otherwise i'll stick to the old one (why ditch my money for a new TV just because it now comes in a semi-transparent purple plastic model???). Actualy, durability is one of my top criteria when buying new equipment.
Beyond this, there's also the fact that a whole class of things cannot have built-in obsolescence:
"Ladies and gentleman, this is the captain. I regret to inform you that our airplane has reached it's built-in obsolescence deadline of 10 years. The engines are falling-off so we will have a slight delay."
Say that the product costs $100 to manufacture, package, distribute and retailer percentage.
The product is sold at $150 with a $50 rebate.
The rebate takes (in average) 4 weeks to be processed.
That means that all the profit is from investing that money during those 4 weeks.
Putting it in the bank would get you (just guessing) 8% * 4/52 = 0.59% - not a very good profit margin.
So they had to invest the money somewhere else where the returns were bigger (but so were the risks) - the stock market.
Now the stock market is in a down-turn, which means thei're losing money (or getting that 0.59% profit)......
Re:Science is ignoring global warming?
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 2
Actualy what matters is not the numbers but the process used to obtain them.
By tunning your statistical processes you can generate whatever results you want. For example:
I can generate numbers that "prove" that the average temperature of the planet in the last 100 years has come down by 10 degrees.
I simply limit my sample of temperatures to values taken around vulcanos which were active in the past and are not active anymore. (actualy i could use it to prove a decrease in temperature of 1000 degrees)
By looking at my process it seems immediatly obvious that the values are skewed.
However if all i present is a nice chart of values that "definitivly prove my theory" plus a nice headline like "Global Cooling in the 20th century", i can convince a lot of people...
Disease prevention - beware
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 2
Research is already underway to create fruits that can prevent diseases simply by being eaten
Actually, the regular consumption of "disease prevention substances" might end up being bad for you (and everybody else) in the long term.
It goes like this:
Some disease prevention substances work by being "unpleasent" for viruses and bacteria (ie killing them).
Viruses and bacteria mutate a lot.
The more common it is for a certain substance to be in the host's body (the more people consume it), the more probable it is that those viral and
bacterial mutations face that substance. When it happens the best mutations survive and the others die.
The next generation of viruses, bacterias will be born (and mutate) from some that are already partialy-imune to the substance
Sooner or later a bug comes up that can thrive on the stuff (maybe even eat it).
Now you have a viral/bacterial strain that's resistat to the substance...
... and a substance that could previously be used to cure that disease and now is worthless
This problem also affects plants that are geneticaly modified to contain a certain antibiotic - resisting strains develop faster, and then the whole culture field (because of monoculture practices) die.
Also because of this people shouldn't take antibiotics before they are actually sick.
This makes me think of the Chastity Belts in the middle ages - only the guy with they key (or the locksmith or a thief that can pick the lock) can get to the goods.
In this case the thing is reversed - it's the male that's locked (no reproduction) and the female has to have the key (be infected).
Maybe nature can invent the thief (or the locksmith).
It's at the same time simple and complex but it will get you results.
How to do it:
When asked to give estimates for something you hadn't had time to check, say you MUST have time to analyse it.
Check the task and try to divide it into component parts.
For each part that you feel you had enough experience doing it before, come up with a duration value and add 10% for problems (they always happen). If that part depends on something else (ex: having certain data from the costumer) the state it very clearly (and put it down on a note, you might need it if the other part doesn't deliver on time)
For each part that you do not feel you had enough experience doing it before, say so and refuse to give estimates. Never forget the argument that it's the manager's responsibility to come up with project times not yours (they get the money, they get the laurels so they should also get the blame).
If pressed from management with irrealistic estimates say they ABSOLUTLY WILL NOT BE ACHIEVED. Don't forget to tell your manager that you will reafirm the IMPOSSIBILITY OF DELIVERING ON TIME AND THAT YOU SAID SO TO YOUR MANAGER to anyone that asks you (or not), including the costumer and your manager's manager
If the management still decides to go ahead with impossible schedules no matter what then flattly refuse to work extra ours. If you usually work 10 hours/day immediatly reduce it to 8 hours/day so that they get the message. You might also consider VISIBLY looking for a new job (at the start of a new project that will make them go crazy).
Beware of working extra hour for any shitty-shit problems - if you are SEEN as willing to got the extra mile for small things you will be COUNTED UPPPON to always go that extra mile to finish irrealisticly scheduled projects on time. It WILL NOT STOP - for every project you manage to pull out against incredible odds you will be "rewarded" with at least one other project like that
Never forget that THEY need YOU more than YOU need THEM. When you leave the company might not go bankrupt but the project you just left might very well go belly-up (or have an incredible delay), and that will surely have a negative impact on the preson(s) responsible by that project
The beter you are at what you do the beter it works!!!
It's not just the quantity of information that matters - the quality might be very important.
I once worked in a place where my manager was in the same room as the development team.
The next level manager was in a separate room all to himself.
Although he was just in the next room, he was not an easily reacheable person for us.
My manager knew her manager for a long time and talked to him a lot, and freely - in practice she always told him anything that happened and anything she heard from/talked with us
What happened was that in front of her we only said things that we didn't care that Him new - sometimes we even said things for Him to know about
We did speak to her freely about most things, but some work related subjects were not talked about in front of her. For example: she only knew that i was leaving when i gave them my resignation
The conclusion of this:
People will not say everything to everybody. There are levels of trust, and you will give more or less information to someone depending on what you trust that person for.
If people acted as switches (all information comes out/no information comes out) the method we're discussing in this thread would be 100% applicable. In practice, you might install the system, run the programm, look at the resulting picture and figure out you're well connected well informed, when in reality you are kept in the dark about a number of subjects.
So I propose a small refinement to the model: I imagine their "communications" already include email, telephone and scheduled meetings. Now add a factor that measures physical distance to calculate the probability that the boss and employee talk face to face. If the distance is only a few meters, add a bunch of "face time" to the communication list. If the distance is thousands of feet (or more) add little if any "face time".
I don't think it is a linear relation - you might just "live on the room on the other side of the corridor" and rarely speak with your manager.
I guess that being in the same room as your manager probably helps a lot, beyond that the probability of speaking with him/her falls down a lot.
The BIG drives (the ones with so much Gigs that my mind hurts when thinking of it) are the ones where the REALY BIG MARGINS are - the smallish stuff can be manufacture by any no-name factory in half-way-to-the-end-of-the-world, so there's a lot of competition (and thus small profit) in that area.
Big manufacturers (like IBM), who spend loads of money in HD research need the premium price sales to pay for that research.
The thing is - it's not John Doe who buys that stuff - those things are bought by companies, and it's John Techie Doe (IBM sales people can call him "Sir") who chooses them (as in: "If i cannot backup this we're not gonna have it here")
So maybe the market will bring us some surprises... (like IBM giving a profit warning)
As in "non limits to usage, no controls from external entities"
The "Industry" is creating an empty space in thei're product range, and somebody will fill it
The best way to kill limitation/control moves from external entities is to turn them into market gains for those who don't go with it (and losses for those who do go with it).
In the current market (i.e. decrease in PC sales) if a move by any hardware company turns out to be a market loosing action... well, shareholders won't be very happy (except the ones that stick with the other companies)
I sugest the creation of an identifying brand-like marking (NOLIMITS) to be placed on control-free product (ie NOLIMITS-videos: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-tv: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-dvd: no MACROVISION, no Region Coding; NOLIMITS-pc: no CPRM) - this can increase sales of otherwise nameless products from nameless companies by creating brand around a concept...
The problem is that any new invention is made using existing knowledge and previous inventions.
The expression "The three of knowledge" transmits several ideas:
Them bigger the three the more knowledge you have and the more venues of knowledge (simbolized by the leafs) you can take
Knowledge is built from existing knowledge
To get to any leaf you have to start from the root and travel through a lot of wood (OK, this one came out a bit strange)
My point (finally):
If every scrap of knowledge, every piece of any procedure, every splinter of every method is patented, you end up in a situation in which any advance is confronted with with a wall of patent royalties, or, keeping with three methaphor, if every cell of the trunk tries to eat-up as much water and nutrients as it can, all the leafs will die!!!
Suppose you are company A. You have this idea, that you start working on. Someone else, independent of you, gets the same idea, and also starts develloping it. Though you start "innovating" before company B, they "innovate" faster than you do, for some unknown reason. So, they apply for the patent, yet you got the idea years before they did. Guess who gets the patent ?? What about all those millions you invested in innovating ?? They are lost. Even if you have a better product, and thats why you were longer innovating.
Going one step further from this:
Company A has a patent on a drug for some disease or other, which covers all derivative products.
Any other company or individual that improves that drug (for bigger efect; reduced side-efects; more precise dosage) or creates a new medication which uses, amongst others, the that drug, will have to pay royalties (maybe very big ones) to company A to distribute said product - there will be thus less tendency to make that investment.
If there is only that drug in the market for that disease, company A will also not improve the drug for things like ease-of-use or less side-efects since:
Any other company trying to enter that market will have to use a completly different approach (specially if copany A has a really broad pattent), and thus will have a really big barrier to entry (bigger that company A initialy had, because they were the first so they could try anything)
Consumers don't have any other choice
Think AIDS.
Several drugs are out there but none cures the disease
Possibly some of those drugs could be improved upon and turn into cures
The other companies in the market will not invest in derivative/improved drugs because there is little money to be done from it
Only non-profit institutions will try it because they are not in it for the money - let's say they represent 10% of the research investment that could otherwise be done
The companies that manufacture the drugs will not invest in transforming them from "survival drugs" into "cure drugs" because that will make them loose money - why sell something once per-person when you can sell it once every month for the whole life of said person
Actually if you extend this tought further, it's in the best interest of any for-profit drug companie to investigate a venue of attacking the disease just long enough to be able to patent it, and then move into the next venue.
Given enough time any disease will be surrend by a mure of patents covering any-and-all pathway to cure, and a constelation of maintenace-take-it-the-rest-of-your-life drugs.
Self assemblable structures - Got to the middle of africa with a little glass vial, open the vial and drop it's contents on the ground. Move back, wait a couple of minutes and a house start appearing from the ground up (nano-assembled from local materials - say carbon-dioxide from the air). When the house is done go inside, and put the vial in a small hole in the wall. Wait a bit and get back the vial, filled up again and ready for another use.
Cheap space launch, transportation and terraforming technologies - just think how many more humans could live (given that we do not seem to be able to control our population), if we colonized Mars.
Self-maintenance, self-repair equipment - for example, a factory that you can deploy in a third world country and does not need specialized technitians. Or a computer that does not break down (watta dream)
Slashdot Mirror
I think your scheme worked because of 2 factors:
- They immediatly lost people upon showing the agreement
- You as group told them to go screw themselves
What i want to emphasise is that from 1) they got a really big red sign, so when 2) came they didn't try hard to force the issue.<RANT>
It's always a pleasure to see management finaly come to the conclusion that contrary to popular belief, it's not the employees that are easily discardable for companies, it's the other way around - companies are easily discardable for employees
</RANT>
Corporations (specially big ones), have easier access to those tools.
I have NO problems with corporations. In the end they are just well organized (or one hopes so) groups of individuals.
I have problems with a system in which some entities have beter access to information and more influence in setting legislation than others.
Such a system does not balance goods and bads so that the whole comes up beter off. In some cases (for example enviroment), smaller but beter organized groups of people (say the oil lobby) get the good side of the deal while big unorganized groups of people (everybody that has to breath poluted air) get the bad side.
It's not the corporations that have to change - they are just doing what's best for them, like everybody else does - it's the system that has to change.
I strongly doubt the average level of education in the US (everything, not just universities) is the best in the world ... then again after seing the Jerry Springer show once of twice, i kinda got disapointed with american society
I'm living in Holland right now, and the (percieved) average level of education for dutch people seems quite good.
Very well, let's now consider the payment to person Z. When confronted with the alternatives:
- Pay Person Z the ammount $W, no risk for the corporation
- Pay Person Z an ammount < $W, risk R1 for the corporation
- Don't pay Person Z, risk R2 for the corporation
a decision will be taken that balances risk with reward, tipacly following the rules:- If R2 is zero or considered negligible against reward $W, then option 3 will be taken
- Otherwise if R1 is zero or negligible against reward delta-$W the option 2 will be taken.
- Otherwise the option 3 will be taken
Also there are several ways of reducing risks R1 and R2, some more expensive, others less so:- Containement of information - Avoid that Person Z knows he/she is loosing ammount $W
- Disinformation - Feed Person Z with wrong information (for example: by paying experts to produce reports saying that in fact Person Z is not loosing $W)
- Legislative influence - Influence legislative bodies so that you are not oblidged by law to pay Person Z the ammount $W
just to name a fewIn my city there's a guy which owns a Ferrari. Another one owns a Jaguar. Cars in my city are the best in the world.
Wrong
Just because there's a Ferrari and Jaguar in your city doesn't mean all cars are good. All the rest might be "how do they manage to still work", "rusting junk" sort of cars.
Try "average quality of universities" instead of "top 10".
Actualy that's your interpretation. It's the result of you reading it, through your point of view, which derives from your cultural enviroment, then doing a mental exercise in which you will consciously or unconsciously fill in the gaps in your understanding with things taken from your experience (or from other people's experiences), and finaly coming to a conclusion.
Different people in different times and with different cultural settings will come to different conclusions (otherwise why the Crusades or other things i shall not mention?)
This is not to say that you are wrong, is just to say that being right is a question of point of view.
As i see it, i buy things (say a TV) to use them for personal gain (easier work, entertainment, aestetic pleasure), not to stimulate the economy. If a new product comes out with an improvement that i consider worth my hard earned bucks (for TVs: color TV; remote control; 3D imagery) i will buy a new one. Otherwise i'll stick to the old one (why ditch my money for a new TV just because it now comes in a semi-transparent purple plastic model???). Actualy, durability is one of my top criteria when buying new equipment.
Beyond this, there's also the fact that a whole class of things cannot have built-in obsolescence:
"Ladies and gentleman, this is the captain. I regret to inform you that our airplane has reached it's built-in obsolescence deadline of 10 years. The engines are falling-off so we will have a slight delay."
So how about if it's a guy?
Woman --looketh on--> Guy
or Guy --looketh on--> Guy
Why specifically a woman?
The product is sold at $150 with a $50 rebate.
The rebate takes (in average) 4 weeks to be processed.
That means that all the profit is from investing that money during those 4 weeks.
Putting it in the bank would get you (just guessing) 8% * 4/52 = 0.59% - not a very good profit margin. So they had to invest the money somewhere else where the returns were bigger (but so were the risks) - the stock market.
Now the stock market is in a down-turn, which means thei're losing money (or getting that 0.59% profit)......
By tunning your statistical processes you can generate whatever results you want. For example:
I can generate numbers that "prove" that the average temperature of the planet in the last 100 years has come down by 10 degrees. I simply limit my sample of temperatures to values taken around vulcanos which were active in the past and are not active anymore. (actualy i could use it to prove a decrease in temperature of 1000 degrees)
By looking at my process it seems immediatly obvious that the values are skewed.
However if all i present is a nice chart of values that "definitivly prove my theory" plus a nice headline like "Global Cooling in the 20th century", i can convince a lot of people ...
Actually, the regular consumption of "disease prevention substances" might end up being bad for you (and everybody else) in the long term.
It goes like this:
- Some disease prevention substances work by being "unpleasent" for viruses and bacteria (ie killing them).
- Viruses and bacteria mutate a lot.
- The more common it is for a certain substance to be in the host's body (the more people consume it), the more probable it is that those viral and
bacterial mutations face that substance. When it happens the best mutations survive and the others die.
- The next generation of viruses, bacterias will be born (and mutate) from some that are already partialy-imune to the substance
- Sooner or later a bug comes up that can thrive on the stuff (maybe even eat it).
- Now you have a viral/bacterial strain that's resistat to the substance
...
- ... and a substance that could previously be used to cure that disease and now is worthless
This problem also affects plants that are geneticaly modified to contain a certain antibiotic - resisting strains develop faster, and then the whole culture field (because of monoculture practices) die.Also because of this people shouldn't take antibiotics before they are actually sick.
In this case the thing is reversed - it's the male that's locked (no reproduction) and the female has to have the key (be infected).
Maybe nature can invent the thief (or the locksmith).
Just imagine - you're walking down the street and every advert (including posters glued to walls) will have movement.
Animated images - HTML's worst practice transfered to the real world
- When asked to give estimates for something you hadn't had time to check, say you MUST have time to analyse it.
- Check the task and try to divide it into component parts.
- For each part that you feel you had enough experience doing it before, come up with a duration value and add 10% for problems (they always happen). If that part depends on something else (ex: having certain data from the costumer) the state it very clearly (and put it down on a note, you might need it if the other part doesn't deliver on time)
- For each part that you do not feel you had enough experience doing it before, say so and refuse to give estimates. Never forget the argument that it's the manager's responsibility to come up with project times not yours (they get the money, they get the laurels so they should also get the blame).
- If pressed from management with irrealistic estimates say they ABSOLUTLY WILL NOT BE ACHIEVED. Don't forget to tell your manager that you will reafirm the IMPOSSIBILITY OF DELIVERING ON TIME AND THAT YOU SAID SO TO YOUR MANAGER to anyone that asks you (or not), including the costumer and your manager's manager
- If the management still decides to go ahead with impossible schedules no matter what then flattly refuse to work extra ours. If you usually work 10 hours/day immediatly reduce it to 8 hours/day so that they get the message. You might also consider VISIBLY looking for a new job (at the start of a new project that will make them go crazy).
- Beware of working extra hour for any shitty-shit problems - if you are SEEN as willing to got the extra mile for small things you will be COUNTED UPPPON to always go that extra mile to finish irrealisticly scheduled projects on time. It WILL NOT STOP - for every project you manage to pull out against incredible odds you will be "rewarded" with at least one other project like that
- Never forget that THEY need YOU more than YOU need THEM. When you leave the company might not go bankrupt but the project you just left might very well go belly-up (or have an incredible delay), and that will surely have a negative impact on the preson(s) responsible by that project
The beter you are at what you do the beter it works!!!I once worked in a place where my manager was in the same room as the development team.
The conclusion of this:
People will not say everything to everybody. There are levels of trust, and you will give more or less information to someone depending on what you trust that person for.
If people acted as switches (all information comes out/no information comes out) the method we're discussing in this thread would be 100% applicable. In practice, you might install the system, run the programm, look at the resulting picture and figure out you're well connected well informed, when in reality you are kept in the dark about a number of subjects.
I don't think it is a linear relation - you might just "live on the room on the other side of the corridor" and rarely speak with your manager.
I guess that being in the same room as your manager probably helps a lot, beyond that the probability of speaking with him/her falls down a lot.
If it farts it's an animal ...
The BIG drives (the ones with so much Gigs that my mind hurts when thinking of it) are the ones where the REALY BIG MARGINS are - the smallish stuff can be manufacture by any no-name factory in half-way-to-the-end-of-the-world, so there's a lot of competition (and thus small profit) in that area.
Big manufacturers (like IBM), who spend loads of money in HD research need the premium price sales to pay for that research.
The thing is - it's not John Doe who buys that stuff - those things are bought by companies, and it's John Techie Doe (IBM sales people can call him "Sir") who chooses them (as in: "If i cannot backup this we're not gonna have it here")
So maybe the market will bring us some surprises ... (like IBM giving a profit warning)
The NOLIMITS-PC
As in "non limits to usage, no controls from external entities"
The "Industry" is creating an empty space in thei're product range, and somebody will fill it
The best way to kill limitation/control moves from external entities is to turn them into market gains for those who don't go with it (and losses for those who do go with it).
In the current market (i.e. decrease in PC sales) if a move by any hardware company turns out to be a market loosing action ... well, shareholders won't be very happy (except the ones that stick with the other companies)
I sugest the creation of an identifying brand-like marking (NOLIMITS) to be placed on control-free product (ie NOLIMITS-videos: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-tv: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-dvd: no MACROVISION, no Region Coding; NOLIMITS-pc: no CPRM) - this can increase sales of otherwise nameless products from nameless companies by creating brand around a concept ...
Oops - i kinda confused the number with the plant a couple of times ... 8-))))
The expression "The three of knowledge" transmits several ideas:
- Them bigger the three the more knowledge you have and the more venues of knowledge (simbolized by the leafs) you can take
- Knowledge is built from existing knowledge
- To get to any leaf you have to start from the root and travel through a lot of wood (OK, this one came out a bit strange)
My point (finally):If every scrap of knowledge, every piece of any procedure, every splinter of every method is patented, you end up in a situation in which any advance is confronted with with a wall of patent royalties, or, keeping with three methaphor, if every cell of the trunk tries to eat-up as much water and nutrients as it can, all the leafs will die!!!
Going one step further from this:
- Company A has a patent on a drug for some disease or other, which covers all derivative products.
- Any other company or individual that improves that drug (for bigger efect; reduced side-efects; more precise dosage) or creates a new medication which uses, amongst others, the that drug, will have to pay royalties (maybe very big ones) to company A to distribute said product - there will be thus less tendency to make that investment.
- If there is only that drug in the market for that disease, company A will also not improve the drug for things like ease-of-use or less side-efects since:
- Any other company trying to enter that market will have to use a completly different approach (specially if copany A has a really broad pattent), and thus will have a really big barrier to entry (bigger that company A initialy had, because they were the first so they could try anything)
- Consumers don't have any other choice
Think AIDS.- Several drugs are out there but none cures the disease
- Possibly some of those drugs could be improved upon and turn into cures
- The other companies in the market will not invest in derivative/improved drugs because there is little money to be done from it
- Only non-profit institutions will try it because they are not in it for the money - let's say they represent 10% of the research investment that could otherwise be done
- The companies that manufacture the drugs will not invest in transforming them from "survival drugs" into "cure drugs" because that will make them loose money - why sell something once per-person when you can sell it once every month for the whole life of said person
Actually if you extend this tought further, it's in the best interest of any for-profit drug companie to investigate a venue of attacking the disease just long enough to be able to patent it, and then move into the next venue.Given enough time any disease will be surrend by a mure of patents covering any-and-all pathway to cure, and a constelation of maintenace-take-it-the-rest-of-your-life drugs.