Readit NewsIf transparent enough (and not from an abhorrent source), I'd be ok with his product. He's even allowed to make the occasional mistake as long as he properly owns up to it.
Theres been a lot of valuable learning from him and it would be a pity to dismiss it all over a single fumble.
Outside software technology: there is a series of papers from Grossman (going back to the 80s!) that analyzes basic versus applied research in a macroeconomic framework. Basic research _can_ be a public good, applied research can be crowded out. Combined with microeconomic research that monopolies can be dynamically efficient (investing in applied and basic R&D, like Bell Labs) and you get several examples and theories that contradict your statement that "there is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public."
Another real world example in hardware that contradicts this claim is the evolution of building control systems. Before the advent of IOT, so, circa 1980s - 2010s, you saw increasing sharing and harmonization of competing electronics standards because it turned out to be more efficient to be modular, not have to re-hire subcontractors at exorbitant rates to maintain or replace components that go haywire, etc.
Economic analysis? Another intelligence product that requires essentially no staff, no actual R&D, no equipment besides computers? Brother, you have to be kidding me.
The hardware thing is just companies evolving to a shared standard.
Do you have even a little bit of a clue how hard it is to do good pharmacological research? Toxicological? Biological? Chemical? Physical? You have mentioned intelligence products with 0 investment cost and 0 risk of failure.
This is perhaps one of the most fart-sniffing tech-centric perspectives I have ever been exposed to. Go read some actual research by actual scientists and come back when you can tell me why, for instance, Eli Lilley would ever make their data or internal R&D public.
Jonas Salk did it. He is an extremely rare exception, and his incentive was public health. Notice that his incentive was markedly not financial.
Market entities with a financial incentive, whose entire business model and success is predicated on their unique R&D results, have 0 incentive to release research to the public.
In the end, incentives matter.
I don't want my son, who has narcolepsy, to be tired all the time.
But the medicine that helps him, Xyrem (GHB), is $20K a month.
Pay it, don't pay it, neither option truly reflects my priorities. It only reflects the hand I've been dealt by other people's priorities.
Again, however, if he is genuine: I genuinely wish him the best luck taking on his matched opponents.
Is there any way to get a better outcome for the public here, or is “do good stuff then sell out” the way it’s always going to be?
Have you noticed how a huge variety of things can be "real"? And the only unifying factor is the suffering? I think it's because it's all about the suffering, not the narrations and the details.