"What isn't here, and probably never will be, is the SciFi "self-assembly" nanotech. Throw out some powder on a rock and watch it turn it into a new car. Or something equally silly."
Well I'm a sucker, then. The guy at the garden store talked me into buying this packet of seeds. Said if I just sprinkled them on some dirt, in 3 months I'd have tomatoes. Too bad I didn't see your post first. Then I'd know he had no idea what he was talking about.
Stop reading with Year 2003 eyes. People don't like dealing with kiosks and automated call centers because they're not intelligent _today_. Robots can't do most jobs _today_.
But he's not talking about today, he's talking about when C3PO is the norm, and his (and most other) extrapolations put it at about 2050. ATMs did replace bank tellers, just not all of them. Once robots hit the level of C3PO, then pretty much all the rest of them will be gone, as well. Along with all the other jobs he mentions.
And no, this will not be offset by new jobs in the 'robot maintenance' sector. For one, most of them will be done by other robots. For another, the percentage of the population with the smarts to be able to design, program and build a robot is pretty small.
Start with the assumption that C3PO is real, can be bought for about $10,000 and costs maybe $50 a year to maintain. How long would it take for your employer replace you, and what do we (society) do with you now?
There is no artificial scarecity. It's the clinical trials that cost money. And you absolutely do not want to do away with the clinical trials. FDA is not Big Pharma's friend, they're your friend. FDA mandates the trials not because of "19th century horror stories", but because it takes about 10 years of testing in real, live people to be sure things do what you think they're going to do. Not to mention they help catch the rare cases where scientists falsify data.
Clinical trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars per NCE (new chemical entity). Nine out of 10 NCEs turn out to be duds by Phase III trials. Do the math on how much money the tenth one has to make. Do the math on how much cash you need on hand to hedge against the real possibility that everything currently in your pipeline is a dud. Clinical trials are critical things, but they're expensive. Therefore, you have to milk every last penny you can out of your successful discoveries or there will be no more discoveries.
Now keep that in mind and extrapolate what happens when "poorer" countries decide that they're not obliged to ante up their fair share of that cost. The pharma comapnies had factored that income into their budgets and now it's gone. Well they have no choice but to pass it on to the people still willing to put up their fair share. Now suddenly I have to pay for me AND you? Or worse, I have to watch R&D budgets get cut and possibly die from lack of a discovery because you didn't pay your fair share? How is that any more ethical?
This stuff costs a lot of money. Stop pretending it doesn't and start paying your fair share. I'm not asking you to match me dollar for dollar, just to put in your fair share. If you don't want to, that's fine, but then you have no rights to the fruits of the labor.
Slashdot Mirror
"What isn't here, and probably never will be, is the SciFi "self-assembly" nanotech. Throw out some powder on a rock and watch it turn it into a new car. Or something equally silly."
Well I'm a sucker, then. The guy at the garden store talked me into buying this packet of seeds. Said if I just sprinkled them on some dirt, in 3 months I'd have tomatoes. Too bad I didn't see your post first. Then I'd know he had no idea what he was talking about.
"If they can cause headache and nausea, I think you can reasonably expect it to have other effects such as malignant tumours."
I don't know. That leap to a massively unfounded conclusion is causing me headache and nausea, but I don't think it'll give me a tumor.
Stop reading with Year 2003 eyes. People don't like dealing with kiosks and automated call centers because they're not intelligent _today_. Robots can't do most jobs _today_.
But he's not talking about today, he's talking about when C3PO is the norm, and his (and most other) extrapolations put it at about 2050. ATMs did replace bank tellers, just not all of them. Once robots hit the level of C3PO, then pretty much all the rest of them will be gone, as well. Along with all the other jobs he mentions.
And no, this will not be offset by new jobs in the 'robot maintenance' sector. For one, most of them will be done by other robots. For another, the percentage of the population with the smarts to be able to design, program and build a robot is pretty small.
Start with the assumption that C3PO is real, can be bought for about $10,000 and costs maybe $50 a year to maintain. How long would it take for your employer replace you, and what do we (society) do with you now?
There is no artificial scarecity. It's the clinical trials that cost money. And you absolutely do not want to do away with the clinical trials. FDA is not Big Pharma's friend, they're your friend. FDA mandates the trials not because of "19th century horror stories", but because it takes about 10 years of testing in real, live people to be sure things do what you think they're going to do. Not to mention they help catch the rare cases where scientists falsify data.
Clinical trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars per NCE (new chemical entity). Nine out of 10 NCEs turn out to be duds by Phase III trials. Do the math on how much money the tenth one has to make. Do the math on how much cash you need on hand to hedge against the real possibility that everything currently in your pipeline is a dud. Clinical trials are critical things, but they're expensive. Therefore, you have to milk every last penny you can out of your successful discoveries or there will be no more discoveries.
Now keep that in mind and extrapolate what happens when "poorer" countries decide that they're not obliged to ante up their fair share of that cost. The pharma comapnies had factored that income into their budgets and now it's gone. Well they have no choice but to pass it on to the people still willing to put up their fair share. Now suddenly I have to pay for me AND you? Or worse, I have to watch R&D budgets get cut and possibly die from lack of a discovery because you didn't pay your fair share? How is that any more ethical?
This stuff costs a lot of money. Stop pretending it doesn't and start paying your fair share. I'm not asking you to match me dollar for dollar, just to put in your fair share. If you don't want to, that's fine, but then you have no rights to the fruits of the labor.