iCP2: They're throwing in the towel.

[Exophase]

Now what some futurists (and Exophase) are worried about is that technology (AI) will begin to encroach on skilled work and even service work, which appeared to be a uniquely human domain.

I'm not going nearly that far. You don't need very hard AI for things like:

- Some fast food workers, where there are already some places that will take your orders electronically, and probably some food can be prepared this way too (imagine if Subway only needed one person working instead of two, or Chipotle only needed one instead of like five even during peak hours)

- Grocery checkout, which has already been well underway, and can easily extend to other stores

- Much of call center work, which has already been underway

- Vehicle driving, which is well under development, and could potentially start replacing things like cargo trucks

Just to name a few examples, far from anything wide reaching. Which is what the mention of Blockbuster was, just one example to illustrate the phenomenon.

I get a lot of job markets have been extinguished by technology before, like farming, a lot of factory work, phone operators, etc. But I think it's naive to think that there will always be jobs. It's not that people couldn't find something to do that has at least some marginal value to society, it's that the players that make most of the goods - including most of the vital ones - aren't finding new jobs. And there's not only zero incentive for this, companies that waste money on needless jobs won't remain competitive.

Kicking back and saying it's always worked and always will is like saying Moore's law will always deliver. No growth is sustainable forever.

 

[rohezal]

I don't think constructive critic is bashing .

I'm pretty sure people will vote massively for a statue of Justin Biber, but not for some dull investigation about amoebas (which could lead to a new medicine).

This is a big problem but I think you can solve it. There should be 2 kinds of money (public and private). One which can be spended for personal use. And one which can be spended only for doing science, creating buildings etc. You give 50% of the public money to the public to choose what to do with it and 50% to the universities to decide what in area they want to do research. Do the same for building, productions etc. THIS WORKS ONLY IF ALMOST ALL OF MANUAL WORK LIKE DRIVING, RISING CROPS ETC IS DONE BY ROBOTS / MACHINES.

To clarify the next slide: Personal Bussiness means an artists etc. If you like him, he will count as "working person" and will get the money for himself from the personal money share. The stuff he needs for his tasks (like a costume, some balls etc) is paid from the culture fund.

Production is oriented in:

actual public demand

extrapolated demand

calculation of the universities

calculation of other peoples

10% saving for bad times

Investment in factories and science:
Engineers and scientists

A bit from the public

10% of the private money will be saved for bad times too.

Money would be in this system actual industrial production capacity. 66% of the capacity could be used to be private money, 34% as public money.

Everyone will get the same amount of 70% of the public money. The remaining 30% will be distributed between working people. How is up to them to decide. To decide who works, you could take likes for your work or / and private money payments. Everyone with 100 likes a month (like a doctor) is a worker. There could be different types of works, where it  a different amount of likes. You could say, you must not take money from other people for you work to get some of the 30% private for working people.

Everyone can start a science project like in kickstarter, but you need 100 bidders to start. They system could work a bit like flatter.

The industry could work like Amazon, where the production requests are translated directly into commands for factories. Amazon wanted to build local post places in the cities where they can deliver the packages and people will get there packages there. A bit like a free shopping center.

This would only work in a very automatised industrie but this will happen. Robotics, Computer Vision, AI are making progress. There are a few jobs like doctors, psychologists etc who can't be automated. But see above. Sorry it is very crude, what I write I don't have much time.

You are obviously discarding the fact that you can work for yourself and be your own boss, like millions of people do in each country - so, no, my statement is entirely correct. Socialism reduces your freedom.

This doesn't work for everyone but only for a few. I have my own small bussisness (I am a server administrator (and master student)). It works for me. But no for my mother, not for friends, not for most people. And it would not work for big things like creating an own aircraft, car and mass produce it, you need investors for it. Maybe kickstarter could help, but it rather very very small when you compare it to shares.

It's already the case. You are voting with your dollars.

You can only buy what allready exists. You need basic research for creating really new things. And basic research is expensive, slow and will maybe not come up with useful results. This is why most basic research is done by universities. The industry says what it wants and the universities will deliver it ("Drittmittelforschung"). And if the oil industry says it wants better gas motors, people will do mostly science in this area. Other areas will get far less funds. If the big industries don't want a cheap electric cars, there won't be cheap electric cars for decades. A single person or a group can't compete with industrial mass production, they can maybe build a prototype, but thats it. If patents even allow it.

Look at SpaceX, they have achieved more in a couple of years than NASA has done in the past 20 years with your tax dollars.

One did a lot of basic research. Found a way to do faster then light travel (still need a material with negative energy density), found new planets, understand better how the universe was created etc. And builded spaceships with its basic research. And shot satellites into space and robots onto an other planets.

The other one took the basic research which was allready there, tweaked it a bit and builded a space ship.

Look at Kickstarter

In fact kickstarter, flattr and amazon is one the basic idea how to know what people want produced. But in a different way, see at FBnils answer.

Oh, but you are. Farmers in all socialist countries were dispossessed of their lands

Production goods like farming land, factories etc are not property of a single person but of all humans, since without the production of the farming land people would starve. Which not includes gardens etc but industrial food production.

edit: added graphics and fixed the forst worst grammar errors.

 

[ekianjo]

I get a lot of job markets have been extinguished by technology before, like farming, a lot of factory work, phone operators, etc. But I think it's naive to think that there will always be jobs.

As said before, every time jobs are taken away from one sector, new opportunities arise in other ones. What industrialization brings is commoditization of certain goods, so that goods' price goes down, leaving more disposable income for other goods or activities. Hence the development of the leisure industry over the past 50 years, because the price of many other goods have gone down and made it possible for people to travel or enjoy other things. 

And you missed my earlier comments that even in factories you still rely on a lot of workforce (maintenance, constant improvement of operations, supply management, etc...) that can't be easily replaced with a bunch of software or robots. And you are also missing the fact that there's a ton of jobs out there where robots won't make sense because the cost of development/purchase/maintenance is 100 times fold what you could expect from ROI by switching. And then there are countries like Japan where having someone serving you in a store is more valued that having a machine dropping the shit in front of you, and people want to pay for that.

You remind me a little of Kurzweil with your comments that jobs are going to disappear. He thinks Singularity is going to destroy humanity altogether, by replacing people with super intelligent machines who don't need humans altogether. I think he's a crackpot, just like all those sect leaders out there, using pseudo scientific arguments to make his point seems like Science. 

 

[ekianjo]

I have my own small bussisness (I am a server administrator (and master student)). It works for me. But no for my mother, not for friends, not for most people.

There are millions of small shop owners and freelance folks in every single country. It works for a damn lot of people.  

And it would not work for big things like creating an own aircraft, car and mass produce it, you need investors for it. Maybe kickstarter could help, but it rather very very small when you compare it to shares.

There's not only kickstarter. There are banks. There are private investors. There are public companies investing in other companies or startups. There are tons of investment opportunities out there.  

You need basic research for creating really new things. And basic research is expensive, slow and will maybe not come up with useful results. This is why most basic research is done by universities.

Actually, no. Most basic research is done by the Industry. What the industry publishes and develops every single year dwarfs whatever the universities are discovering and developing, by far. Unless you are talking about stuff like the CERN which has no direct industrial application for the coming 20 years, but that's a very small piece of the research going on worldwide. 

If the big industries don't want a cheap electric cars, there won't be cheap electric cars for decades.

Apparently that did not prevent Elon Musk from disrupting the electric car industry with the Tesla. Seems like it's working fine, actually.  

 

[ekianjo]

Found a way to do faster then light travel (still need a material with negative energy density), found new planets, understand better how the universe was created etc. And builded spaceships with its basic research. And shot satellites into space and robots onto an other planets.

You are grossly overestimating what NASA did, and that tons of discoveries were made before NASA even existed. Besides, as for their rockets, NASA based most of their earlier work on what was done in Germany for WWII rockets, and even employed Nazi scientists to continue working on them. So, that's not really an example of "basic research" at all. They tweaked it and made it more massive. See, I can say the same thing as you say about SpaceX. 

The other one took the basic research which was allready there, tweaked it a bit and builded a space ship.

Apparently you have no idea what SpaceX is about. SpaceX is about making re-usable rockets, which would drive down the cost of launching anything in space dramatically. This is MAJOR disruption to the existing way to make business with launching stuff in space, and this is basically coming from private research, not government one. And when it is fully capable, it will change the space business completely.  

 

[ekianjo]

Production goods like farming land, factories etc are not property of a single person but of all humans, since without the production of the farming land people would starve. Which not includes gardens etc but industrial food production.

I disagree. Farmers bought the land, and exploited it with their own means. When they bought the land it was allowed by the State they lived in. The fact that you take their land away is expropriation, no matter what reason you try to give for it. It's stealing. It belongs to them in the first place, just like a House I buy belongs to my if I buy it. Land is just land, if you don't sow any seeds in it and work on it over and over again, it won't bring fruits and vegetables out by itself. It's obvious that the person who works the land and increases its productivity over NOTHING should ripe the benefits from it, just like you get your benefit from your own work on a daily basis.

And by the way, the communalization of lands and agricultural means of productions has been DONE before, and experimented in many countries, and has shown clear FAILURE and ended up in STARVATION. Seriously, wanting to go back in that direction, knowing how it ended up in the death of millions of people in Russia and China, is like promoting mass-murder.

Despite the fact that the communist movement promised to abolish hunger; famines managed to occur several times under state socialism. Russia experienced a famine from 1919 to 1920, as did the Soviet Union from 1931 to 1933 and again in 1947. Famines also occurred in the People’s Republic of China (1959-1961), in Cambodia in 1979, and in North Korea in the nineties. The Chinese famine during the Great Leap Forward is even considered as the most devastating  in world history, as it took 15 to 45 million lives. 

ANd Wikipedia about the great leap forward in China which was also about collectivization of agricultural production (among other industries) :

Despite the harmful agricultural innovations, the weather in 1958 was very favorable and the harvest promised to be good. Unfortunately, the amount of labour diverted to steel production and construction projects meant that much of the harvest was left to rot uncollected in some areas. This problem was exacerbated by a devastating locust swarm, which was caused when their natural predators were killed as part of the Great Sparrow Campaign. Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous pressure from central authorities to report record harvests in response to the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These were used as a basis for determining the amount of grain to be taken by the State to supply the towns and cities, and to export. This left barely enough for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in.

During 1958–1960 China continued to be a substantial net exporter of grain, despite the widespread famine experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain face and convince the outside world of the success of his plans. Foreign aid was refused. When the Japanese foreign minister told his Chinese counterpart Chen Yi of an offer of 100,000 tonnes of wheat to be shipped out of public view, he was rebuffed. John F. Kennedy was also aware that the Chinese were exporting food to Africa and Cuba during the famine and said "we've had no indication from the Chinese Communists that they would welcome any offer of food."[39]

 

[klapse]

It is a bit depressing to see that the lessions of socialism have not been learned by our wannabe Maos.

By the way, an excellent podcast for economic issues is http:/www.econtalk.org

 

[Klumpen]

The important factor is always "people", not the theoretical system...

 

[_wb_]

You need basic research for creating really new things. And basic research is expensive, slow and will maybe not come up with useful results. This is why most basic research is done by universities.

Actually, no. Most basic research is done by the Industry. What the industry publishes and develops every single year dwarfs whatever the universities are discovering and developing, by far. Unless you are talking about stuff like the CERN which has no direct industrial application for the coming 20 years, but that's a very small piece of the research going on worldwide.

Do you have numbers on that? That statement is completely contrary to my perception of reality and by my view on history.

I think very little basic research (as in fundamental) is performed by industry. Industry certainly performs applied research and does development, but that's not the same as basic research. There are of course exceptions (e.g. Microsoft Research, Bell Labs, IBM Research etc), but those are the exceptions that prove the rule: such research labs are more like a "status symbol" or a vehicle for PR than an actual core part of the business model of the company.

In general, industry performs only research that has direct industrial applications and that is relatively risk-free and predictable. If they do anything more risky, it tends to be funded directly or indirectly through public funding, e.g. in a collaboration with a university. Of course you can't blame companies for having this attitude: they have their shareholders to report to, they would be foolish to spend significant resources on something with an uncertain outcome.

Industry is quite slow to even apply results from academic research. They are typically using programming languages and algorithms from decades ago, even when better alternatives have already been invented. Innovation is risky, changing things is expensive. Companies don't like to do that.

How did the Internet come into existence? Where were the first computers created? Who made the core contributions to theoretical computer science? Wherever I look, I see mostly research funded by public money: either military or academic.

 

[Exophase]

Apparently you have no idea what SpaceX is about. SpaceX is about making re-usable rockets, which would drive down the cost of launching anything in space dramatically. This is MAJOR disruption to the existing way to make business with launching stuff in space, and this is basically coming from private research, not government one. And when it is fully capable, it will change the space business completely.

It's not like SpaceX came from nowhere, most of the people have had decades of experience working either directly for or under contract with NASA or other established space agencies. Of course you know how much NASA work is done in the private sector by contractors right? It's really unfair to give no credit to the established aerospace industry.

Not to diminish SpaceX's accomplishments or anything, but you can really spin that argument both ways - like for decades various private firms have been promising tourist trips to earth orbit and even the moon and have not yet delivered.

 

[ekianjo]

I think very little basic research (as in fundamental) is performed by industry. Industry certainly performs applied research and does development, but that's not the same as basic research.

Well the line is not always very clear. When is basic not basic anymore and when is applied development not considered basic either ? I have been in several industries and there's always a branch of research dedicated to "upstream research", which is typically high risk and very low chance or return.

There's one very good example of that kind of "basic" research : the pharma industry. There's a lot of very basic research led by public companies (in partnership with academics, I'll grant you that) that would not occur if they did not fund them - and it's very risky, so they fund tons of different projects knowing very well that 1 out 100 may make it later on. Google does a lot of basic research as well (Google cars, Google Glass (they hired academics to do more research internally on this)), I consider that what SpaceX does is certainly basic research as well, since NASA never really worked on re-usable rockets. 

In chemical specialties companies, there's a ton of research where you try to find new ways to build up molecules, developing new mechanisms and reactions. Nothing to do with "tweaking" existing formula, i'm talking about creating new pathways. There's a lot more happening there in private companies than in academia as well (I know that field well, I used to do research in lab), while I agree they are usually partnerships between them. 

I'm just pointing out the most well known ones, but there's a lot of private research you don't know about and that you never see because it's Company Confidential, and never published compared to academics who have an incentive to do publications of their works. 

That's certainly a special industry, but In the video games and related industries, most of the basic research is done by private companies too - when it comes to developing new engines, new IA systems, new middleware, etc. There's almost nothing done by academics in that field. Same goes for special effects around Hollywood. 

I'll concede there are certain parts of research where there's probably more happening in Academia than in private industries (nuclear physics maybe, military applications (while I'm not sure anymore, even a ton of military actors are private nowadays), energy in general) but as a whole, there's probably more occurring in corporations, while their work does not make the headlines until anything actually comes out. 

 

[ekianjo]

It's not like SpaceX came from nowhere, most of the people have had decades of experience working either directly for or under contract with NASA or other established space agencies. Of course you know how much NASA work is done in the private sector by contractors right? It's really unfair to give no credit to the established aerospace industry.

Well it's due to the nature of the business. NASA was the only body to actually develop rockets to launch stuff in space until fairly recently - it's a byproduct of the Cold War. NASA was never made to be efficient nor economical, it was the arm of a political purpose. 

Because NASA was a national body with a huge budget at the time, it prevented the rise of private corporations in the space business. Basically it was killing off any other competition which could expect to arise. So it's very natural that all people interested in space science HAD to work in NASA because there was almost no other companies out there, until very recently. 

Since the end of the Cold War, NASA's ambitions have been close to zero, trying to create a purpose for themselves with non-innovative programs to keep their budget from shrinking. It's about time another organization like SpaceX was created to challenge the statu-quo. And it's no surprise to see disruption coming from a private actor, not from NASA themselves (they could have done it with their people and their budget, but they didn't).  

 

[_wb_]

Actually, no. Most basic research is done by the Industry. What the industry publishes and develops every single year dwarfs whatever the universities are discovering and developing, by far. Unless you are talking about stuff like the CERN which has no direct industrial application for the coming 20 years, but that's a very small piece of the research going on worldwide.

I'm just pointing out the most well known ones, but there's a lot of private research you don't know about and that you never see because it's Company Confidential, and never published compared to academics who have an incentive to do publications of their works.

Of course there may or may not be heaps of never published, never revealed, completely secret, "dark research" that nobody knows about. I was talking about observable research: published or patented, or at least used in some way that has some kind of impact on society -- hidden research that never leaves the secret lab can just as well not exist at all.

It's interesting that you mention the pharmaceutical industry as a "very good example" of industry performing basic research. Did you know that big pharma spends 19 times more money on advertising than on basic research? (see e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-companies-marketing_n_1760380.html)

In my opinion, the net contribution of the commercial pharmaceutical industry to society is negative. Sure, they do research. Mostly on drugs for which a market exists or can be created (e.g. diet pills, beauty products), not so much on drugs that are needed (e.g. against tropical diseases that only occur in extremely poor countries). And lots of their research is actually paid for by public funding -- at least in my country, quite a significant portion of the government budget for R&D goes to research projects of private pharmaceutical companies. But they also do a lot of harm: they constantly lobby for less strict health regulations and drug testing procedures, attempt to falsify studies in order to be able to keep selling potentially dangerous drugs, through patents and all kinds of legal bullying they try to maintain a market oligopoly where newcomers are not welcome, and so on. In many countries there is a public health care to some extent, meaning that most of the actual income of the pharmaceutical industry is in fact public money; like leeches they convert this public money to private profits. It's one of the most profitable sectors of the economy, mostly because they can sustain semi-monopolies, demand is inelastic, and public health care systems allow them to inflate prices.

So in my opinion, big pharma is a prime example of capitalism messing up. We would be much better off with a public pharmaceutical industry, paid for by the tax payer -- who is paying anyway, only now most of it goes to huge profits. Its research priorities would be determined by doctors and by society as a whole, depending on the actual needs, not by marketeers whose only aim is to maximize profits. Its profits would be re-invested or benefit society as a whole, not go to the pockets of a handful of shareholders. Its research results would be made public; research would be done in a collaborative way on a global scale, instead of the current model of isolated secret research, where successful results are patented and negative results are hidden to make sure that competitors cannot use them, causing lots of redundant and wasteful effort because different private research groups cannot learn from one another.

 

[ekianjo]

It's interesting that you mention the pharmaceutical industry as a "very good example" of industry performing basic research. Did you know that big pharma spends 19 times more money on advertising than on basic research? (see e.g. http://www.huffingto...n_1760380.html)

So what? It still spends more money on science research than all academia combined across the world. And there are way more drugs making it on the market through corporations than without. Actually is there even any drug that was developed by pure government research ? I can't remember any.

And the fact that companies spend more on commercialization than research is nothing specific to Pharma. It's the case for all big industries. When you want to reach millions, billions of people worldwide, you'll need tons of money. Especially in most countries pharma companies can't advertise directly on TV or the press, so they need to hire large sales forces to visit doctors - and that costs a lot.

My point was certainly not to say the Pharma was a good example of an ethical industry, I certainly agree with some of your criticism (and I am against patents being granted for 20 years+ myself, they should be much much shorter even if we keep them), but saying that Pharma is a net negative for society is debatable. There have been a ton of new medicines brought on the market in the last 10 years that have improved the lives of millions of people around the world. Major advances in the treatment of depression and certain cancers (where you would just die in a matter of months before). It sounds very ignorant to say that it did not benefit the public in some way. My problems with the pharma industry lie with the fact that trials do not get reproduced, that not all data is published, that doctors are not supervised by any kind of authority and can easily be corrupted for their own interest, that lots of politicians sleep with pharma companies (or vice versa), and that the pricing model is completely opaque (in most countries, go try and figure how the government decides the pricing for X and Y drug : good luck with that!) - and the amount of insurance reimbusement, same thing, the rules are not very clear... so, all this is very much true, but this does not make it valid to say that the fundamental research conducted to treat people is STILL working despite all that.

 

[ekianjo]

So in my opinion, big pharma is a prime example of capitalism messing up.

Big Pharma is a fairly bad example if you want to make a case against capitalism. It's heavy controlled and regulated (it takes years to get to know most of the regulations in a single area of the industry, let alone all of them), there's heavy government implication at all levels (monitoring, insurance, pricing as I mentioned before) so its certainly not a good case when you can say "the free market has gone mad!".

 

[ekianjo]

But they also do a lot of harm: they constantly lobby for less strict health regulations and drug testing procedures,

Just wanted to say that this part of your statement is completely wrong. Regulations never get relaxed in the pharma, especially in terms of safety evaluation, they get stricter and stricter as we go. There are more and more requirements to show that the drug is safe before it reaches the market, and multiple requirements post marketing as well. Look, if you don't know the subject, you should avoid making fake claims. There's sufficient patients group pressure to ensure there are more testing done than less, and the different regulatory bodies in Europe and the US (and Japan) and work together to enforce stricter safety oversight at a worldwide level.

 

[ekianjo]

research would be done in a collaborative way on a global scale, instead of the current model of isolated secret research,

Actually most big pharma companies publish the results of their research well before the drugs come out, usually not too long after they finish a clinical trial. Some companies EVEN publish the results of negative studies so that it prevents other companies from following the same path by mistake. Of course you can always ask for more collaboration, but trying to say it's all secret and there's no sharing is again, completely false. Subscribe to Science or several other journals and you'll the see the extend of publications by companies working on existing drugs in development, confirming or invalidating pathways considered in several medical conditions.

 

[Exophase]

Since the end of the Cold War, NASA's ambitions have been close to zero, trying to create a purpose for themselves with non-innovative programs to keep their budget from shrinking. It's about time another organization like SpaceX was created to challenge the statu-quo. And it's no surprise to see disruption coming from a private actor, not from NASA themselves (they could have done it with their people and their budget, but they didn't).

Since the end of the cold war NASA's ambitions to spend a ton of money on what essentially boiled down to little more than a publicity campaign have been close to zero. People who equate NASA's ambitions with no more than what they offer for manned space travel don't have a good understanding of the sort of science they facilitate. What they've done since the 70s has been far more practical and produced far more in the way of usable science than putting more people on the moon would have. It's actually kind of funny that you go from lambasting them for a lack of efficiency to basically lambasting them for sending probes to Mars instead of people.

And I don't think you should use NASA's standards on manned space travel as good benchmark for government efficiency since it heavily involves human safety and that puts it in a very particular class.

SpaceX didn't come about now because NASA always out-competed any kind of private effort towards space travel. SpaceX is only able to do so because they replaced the shuttle for - lo and behold - the needs of space agencies, not the private sector. They may be innovative and efficient in that approach, but without these space agencies you criticize they don't actually have funding. Right now they're basically just a somewhat more fully independent contractor, and they are very far from the first contractor; I think a lot of people don't realize how much NASA work is done by contractors. And while they may not be exposed to exactly the same rigorous standards internally they absolutely are exposed to them sooner or later, flying space agency trained astronauts and all.

Actually generating money solely from commercialization of space flight is hard because effective commercialization of space flight is hard, not because the space agencies have out-competed this.

 

[_wb_]

It's interesting that you mention the pharmaceutical industry as a "very good example" of industry performing basic research. Did you know that big pharma spends 19 times more money on advertising than on basic research? (see e.g. http://www.huffingto...n_1760380.html)

So what? It still spends more money on science research than all academia combined across the world. And there are way more drugs making it on the market through corporations than without. Actually is there even any drug that was developed by pure government research ? I can't remember any.

[citation needed]

So in my opinion, big pharma is a prime example of capitalism messing up.

Big Pharma is a fairly bad example if you want to make a case against capitalism. It's heavy controlled and regulated (it takes years to get to know most of the regulations in a single area of the industry, let alone all of them), there's heavy government implication at all levels (monitoring, insurance, pricing as I mentioned before) so its certainly not a good case when you can say "the free market has gone mad!".

But that is exactly how capitalism works. Sure, it's ideologists are talking a lot about some kind of fictional universe ruled by the invisible hand of the ideal free market. But that's just a fiction, it's not how it works in practice. In practice, capitalism always lets the public carry the bulk of the risk and costs. Public debts for private profit. If there is regulation, it's mostly to protect them against themselves, because they realize that if they go too far, the very survival of their system is at risk.

But they also do a lot of harm: they constantly lobby for less strict health regulations and drug testing procedures,

Just wanted to say that this part of your statement is completely wrong. Regulations never get relaxed in the pharma, especially in terms of safety evaluation, they get stricter and stricter as we go. There are more and more requirements to show that the drug is safe before it reaches the market, and multiple requirements post marketing as well. Look, if you don't know the subject, you should avoid making fake claims. There's sufficient patients group pressure to ensure there are more testing done than less, and the different regulatory bodies in Europe and the US (and Japan) and work together to enforce stricter safety oversight at a worldwide level.

I didn't say that regulations actually get relaxed. I just said that the pharma industry is actively trying to postpone or avoid stricter regulations. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't.

 

[elwing]

Actually, no. Most basic research is done by the Industry. What the industry publishes and develops every single year dwarfs whatever the universities are discovering and developing, by far. Unless you are talking about stuff like the CERN which has no direct industrial application for the coming 20 years, but that's a very small piece of the research going on worldwide. 

Do you realize there's ten time more engineer and technician at CERN than scientific researcher? The technology needed for these new discoveries is huge. The CERN even got a special "transfer technology office" just to transfer all theses knowledge to the rest of the world, with application that are useable now and not in 20years...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/05/04/knowledge-transfer-part-of-cern%E2%80%99s-mission/