TheGrandNagus @ TheGrandNagus @lemmy.world

Posts

1

Comments

4,018

Joined

2 yr. ago

More companies will develop that drug.

But think of it this way. You're the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that makes drugs, vaccines, etc that saves lives. You do this for a profit.

You're presented with a plan to make a drug that, idk, lessens the symptoms of Crohn's Disease. It'll cost $2 billion to create and bring to market.

After it's done being created, and the drug spends 10+ years in clinical testing, it's on shelves. You have to price each box at $10 in order to break even after 5 years, so you do so.

But the law has changed, now anybody can manufacture the drug. A competitor who didn't foot any of the development costs or do any of the hard work is selling each box at $0.80. you can't compete with that, you make an enormous loss and your company edges closer to bankruptcy.

One of your workers comes to you with plans for a $2bn project that will hopefully reduce migraines. Given lessons learned from the previous example, do you go ahead with the plan? Will the board even let you?

I agree that IP laws in the sector need to be pared down, but scrapping them entirely would prevent any company from creating new drugs, as they'd be absolutely certain they wouldn't be able to recoup development and regulatory hurdle costs.

In an ideal world, all drugs would be made by governments, for a loss, and open sourced, so the market could compete on price. But that's not the world we live in.

Hence why I said "as old as." Someone who is 15.5 is basically 16, yet they fall under the rule.

There has to be a cutoff somewhere, otherwise you fall into the trap of "well 15.5 is basically 16, so 15.5 is fine. And 15 is basically 15.5 so that must be fine too. And I guess 14.5 is basically 15 so..."

We have age cutoffs for other things. Buying alcohol, cigarettes, driving, voting, etc.

Because they're not protecting their safety,

Kids would be safer and mentally better off with less access to social media. You even agreed to this yourself in your first comment.

All those bullet points you listed are wrong. The state has laws surrounding what you can and can't do. So laws do have a say.

You say disciplining children is up to the parents, but the reality is you can't just do what you want. If your idea of disciplinary action to your child is starving them, the state will rightly intervene. Because the state has laws to protect children.

Privacy concerns are legitimate, that's my biggest worry with this proposal, and certainly worth discussing. "We shouldn't have laws to protect kids in this way, for some arbitrary reason I haven't explained" is not.

Children should have safeguards. Parents are not always aware, technical enough to prevent, or caring enough to prevent kids from being damaged by social media (and boy does social media mess kids up). It is not my position that children of those parents should have to suffer unnecessarily.

There's frequently a similar argument in the UK when it comes to free school dinners for poorer families. Some say "well the parents, no matter how poor, should pay, even if they have to make other cutbacks". And while that makes sense, some don't, so what do the "no state involvement" crowd want? The kids to be malnourished? I'd rather we accept that not all parents are good and build a baseline level of protection for all kids.

If it's state funded then that's obviously a different matter.

But usually it's a company making drugs, and they'd go bust if they spent billions developing a drug and got zero money back. Then there would be far fewer drugs made.

Be practical. Letting people die for ideological reasons is not a good thing.

Companies will not — ever — dump hundreds of millions/billions into developing a drug only to have it be sold at cost or even worse, completely losing out on it when a competitor sells a copy of it at a price you can't match.

And even if they did suddenly turn to altruism like that, they'd very quickly go bankrupt.

Why would anybody spend billions making new drugs if they knew with 100% certainty that they'd never make the money back?

We may not like it, but that's the system that we have. Some form of IP law should exist to encourage these companies to continue putting out medicines that better our lives, it's just that our current ones go way too far.

I still am against the government making these decisions, especially for kids as old as 16.

This is for under-16s.

And why specifically be against the government protecting kids' safety in this way? They already do it in countless other ways, from rules about how you're allowed to discipline children, medication standards, age ratings, restrictions on public drinking, preventing driving, preventing gun ownership, etc.

Why shouldn't the government make any decisions for this aspect of children's safety, but all others are ok?

Some kids are mature enough to handle things like social media at 16

This is for under-16s. Under-16s are not 16. They are under 16.

That's true.

I'm not against this. I genuinely believe social media is damaging to young people (well... I believe it's damaging to us all, but if adults want to then it's their choice).

However, I don't see how this could be realistically enforced.

You fuck one candle ghost passed down by your grandmother then you never hear the end of it, smh

Presumably before you buy something as expensive as a new car, I'd assume you'd look at reviews.

You'd be able to see the car's Euro NCAP ratings, which, to be frank, were always much more comprehensive in testing than NHTSA anyway.

Well yeah, but if you go by that, literally everything is from public investment and subsidy.

Just checked (UK, like the article says)

They are not in stock.

Starmer leans hard into anti-Trumpism...

Pros:

• it's the moral thing to do
• he gets to look based on TwitterX for a day before the news cycle forgets

Cons:

• The UK gets thrown into economic turmoil and goes into a recession, possibly a long one, depending on how petty Trump ends up being (probably very)
• Labour is likely forced to further reduce spending and increase taxation
• Reform, already ahead in some polls, becomes the likely next government

I know it would be nice to see the government come out guns blazing, but whether we like it or not, the US is the most powerful economy in the world and they can do a tremendous amount of harm if they want to. Trump is a cunt and absolutely will use that power as a weapon.

The government probably should continue to be pragmatic in regards to the US - give them platitudes while building stronger relationships with other in the meantime, gradually lessening our reliance on the US-UK not-so-special relationship.

Good. A massive investment, and not requiring a load of public subsidy like seemingly everything else.

Nice to see stuff slowly start actually being built.

Please don't make stuff up.

Other stuff isn't banned and the law already has allowances for emerging standards.

I mean, custom steam deck resin buttons containing insects is probably niche enough not to have to source many of them.

They had already agreed to share information with the Kremlin years ago. Have people been living under a rock?

Phones would be far less socially damaging if social media didn't exist in the way it does now.

Please read my comments before you respond to them.

Human vision is very, very, very good. If you think a camera installed to a car is even close to human eyesight, then you are extremely mistaken.

Human eyes are so far beyond it's hard to even quantify.

And bullshit on you not being able to see the lights. They're specifically designed so that's not an issue for colourblind people.

Seems like a very good change.

I've worked in a number of companies that handle a lot of data, some of it even defence manufacturing related, and it's depressing how bad the security procedures are sometimes.

Timely patches of known vulnerabilities? That was a rarity.