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Comment by tschellenbach | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible piece of writing. It claims here that Gates is evil since he recommended Oxford partner up with AstraZeneca. There is no analysis whatsoever about that why that might have been a good idea. Here's one, the companies with the production capacity might not want to produce something they don't own... (actually the article says as much if you scroll all the way to the bottom)

Also just assuming that someone who donates billions is evil without any research whatsoever is just lazy clickbait journalism.

Next it talks about how businesses profit from this. While true it's also totally misses the point. The economist wrote an article on how the world is vastly underspending on solving this problem.

Another one: "this should have expected better negotiation on the part of the U.S. government". If I'm negotiating with a freelance developer and need help tomorrow, do you think it makes sense to haggle on price? I definitely wouldn't.

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> Next it talks about how businesses profit from this. While true it's also totally misses the point. The economist wrote an article on how the world is vastly underspending on solving this problem.

Is it supposed to make me feel better that not only are we not spending enough on the problem, but what little we are spending is going to line the pockets of Big Pharma instead?

They're the ones actually making the vaccines to solve the problem?? What better use of our money is it than funding and buying the vaccine? How is that "lining their pockets"? If anything they're selling doses for much much more cheaply than people would be willing to pay for them.

But this is about profit. Profit is by definition money that wasn't required to create the vaccine.

It’s necessary to incentivize people to invent and manufacture the vaccine.

It’s amazing to me that we now have a generation coming up that doesn’t know that we—-that is the human race—-tried socialism, really gave it the old college try, and it. did. not. work. For a significant period of time most of the educated people in the world thought it would work. This was not some fringe idea that was never given a fair shot.

(I’m talking here about actual socialism, not welfare capitalism that many on the contemporary left and right call socialism for their own propagandist reasons.)

Please do not spout these things while utterly neglecting NIH and NSF funding the basic research.

If you want I'll critique the rest.

The current approach used by the NIH is a response to the failures of socialism. The Bayh–Dole Act was passed in 1980 and signed by noted right winger Jimmy Carter.

Advocating for central planning in 2021 is like advocating for NoSQL—-lots of pretty arguments vs the overwhelming weight of real world evidence.

We've never remotely had anything akin to socialism in the US. The USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, yes, absolutely. But neither socialism nor communism were ever used here in the US.

Oxford, the inventors, were originally willing to give the invention away for free. It's the central contention of the article we're discussing. How can you omit that from your argument?

What on Earth does that have to do with anything?

The companies presumably diverted resources from profitable activities to work on this.

They are only making the vaccine because IP law and a culture that separates research and development allowed them to hoard the utility of publicly funded research.

We are paying off the ransomers we outfitted.

Maybe it's unavoidable this time, but I would sure like to see the system reformed to not get in the bind again.

Finally, taking a step back, US/EU complete reliance on a vaccine is also preventable. See East Asia, where the non-abysmal quarantine would allow a less desperate negotiation with the drug lords.

There is no analysis whatsoever about that why [...] (actually the article says as much if you scroll all the way to the bottom)

I'm confused about why you left your first assertion in place since you went on to acknowledge it wasn't factual.

This is an old article. It's resurfacing now because the supposed benefit of selling this vaccine to AZ was their ability to produce it and distribute it rapidly, but on Friday they announced a 60% reduction in their q1 supply to the EU.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-ast...

It's important to hold "free market" solutions accountable when they fail to deliver. Maybe all these decisions were really made in a good faith belief that selling to AZ was for the best. But the proof is in the tasting; intentions are important but they don't change reality.

Just assuming that someone who donates billions is good without any research whatsoever is just as lazy.

Because donating billions is a morally neutral act, or what?

Yeah, basically.

That would make you, someone who hasn't donated billions, evil, correct?

Your statement is illogical on several levels.

This is not a tertium non datur situation.

If donating money is ‘neutral’ then not donating money is ‘neutral’.

I’m not joining the discussion on whether or not this is a charitable act, just pointing out (since this is HN) inconsistencies.

> Also just assuming that someone who donates billions is evil without any research whatsoever is just lazy clickbait journalism.

Assuming someone who donates billions is not evil is also lazy thinking...

To me the article doesn't say Gates is "evil". They say Gates uses his immense influence to make the world how he sees fit.

Do you have any evidence against Gate's being in strong favor of IP over open access?

And let's roll with it... Do you think Gates should have the power to influence the lives of billions like that? I don't mean "access to vaccines" and other superficial no-brainers, I mean setting up the world way beyond the good bits. It's not like the "patents: good, corporate power: good" weltanschauung is general consensus, especially in research where he plays his cards[+].

[+] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg

>And let's roll with it... Do you think Gates should have the power to influence the lives of billions like that?

Yes, I think the world will be worse-off if he couldn't. I definitely wouldn't put all my hope in governments and is overall good that there are other actors, too.

I can recommend this Scott Alexander piece on the topic[0].

0. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...

I had never read the supposed rationalist bastion that is Slate Star Codex. But this is total first-order thinking rubbish.

Shall we talk incentives? If billionaries cannot launder their reputations through philanthropy, maybe that would be more careful of their reputation during the wealth-accumulation phase.

This reasoning is the equivalent of "well, the sharecropper better keep on paying the man, because no field means starvation which is worse".

>Shall we talk incentives? If billionaries cannot launder their reputations through philanthropy, maybe that would be more careful of their reputation during the wealth-accumulation phase.

I think you are exaggerating the effect of it. Do you really those who do shady deals think about 'laundering their reputation' when they are older - especially with the majority of their assets - as a big reason to do what they do, to the point where they wouldn't do those deals if they cant do philanthropy later? Perhaps to a small extent but I seriously doubt it's a big part of the picture. Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.

Was Carnegie or Rockefeller a roll model for Bill Gates? Would they have been without philanthropy to launder their reputations?

Don't assume society is ergodic in what has been a period of rapid technological change.

> Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.

What are the greatest hits beyond mosquito nets?

At least in the current era, the "undeveloped" country is a bit of a rarity, and the main malaise is rampant Anocracy where institutions are weak, and social coordination of any sort is weak outside that which stems from the private fortunes of the elite.

How could private fortunes in developed countries tackle a problem like that?

And frankly, even before that, the absolute material standard of living is not necessary the best utility function. Hierarchy of needs means yes got to do the basics first, but it also means that people don't know what they aren't missing and relative distribution and other less obvious things may be more important for happiness and societal function.

If I were billionaire, I would throw all my money into improving democracy (and creatively, if it's easier to allow people to emigrate from US to better democracy than fix US, work on the former.) That the US government is exceptionally shitty makes for a too-easy straw-man when defending philanthropy against democracy.

You are assuming Gates had a bad reputation to launder. He certainly had a bad reputation in some parts of the tech world, but I don't recall the average person feeling that way.

Heck, he has probably got many more people who dislike him now because of the global health work, due to the antivax people and the conspiracy theorists. See this petition last year at whitehouse.gov that wants the Gates Foundation investigated for crimes against humanity, and got almost 700k signatures.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201223180912/https://petitions...

So, you are fine with another billionaire exerting that power to another end?

Don't you think these changes to the structure of society and culture should be subject to democratic oversight?

Did people vote with their wallets and agreed to this, when they bought a PC in the 90s?

>Don't you think these changes to the structure of society and culture should be subject to democratic oversight?

There's still some oversight, he can't literally do quite anything he wishes. At any rate, from looking at the performance of those with democratic oversight (governments), I think having both is overall better than just one. Sometimes governments are much too slow and waste hundreds of times more to achieve less, while in practice being plagued by similar concerns (what if the wrong government official uses the money in a bad way?).

> There's still some oversight, he can't literally do quite anything he wishes.

He can. Just not directly. That's why I linked the million vs billion illustration. He has such a huge amount of life changing money, he simply can buy his influence and manifest his will. Here an American billionaire influences a British research institution to make a decision according to his worldview, a decision in existential crisis to humanity.

If you align with his worldview, you may like the result, but I really can't understand how you can be willingly ignorant about the dynamics at hand and how much power these billionaires have over everyone's life. Much more, Gates didn't become rich for making the better product, but for clever business strategies and ruthless monopolizing a market for the longest time. His success is exactly failure of the free market naiveté.

Nobody should be that rich. (And yes, no single government official should be trusted with deciding how to spend tax money either. Everything needs to be transparent and actionable to the voted policies.)

> Here an American billionaire influences a British research institution to make a decision according to his worldview, a decision in existential crisis to humanity.

I doubt that Oxford would have changed their position if Larry Ellison had called to suggest it.

Gates suggesting it gets taken seriously not because he has a lot of money, but because he's spent the last couple of decades heavily involved in global health, much of that concentrating on less developed countries and on vaccination (which fits right in with what Oxford wants for their vaccine), and has developed a good reputation for knowing the field.

> Gates suggesting it gets taken seriously not because he has a lot of money, but because he's spent the last couple of decades heavily involved in global health

Which is only possible, because he has a lot of money. That's fallacious reasoning.

> “[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”

Ideological belief.

Many people have a different take on this, but they tend to not get the power in a capitalistic system, so you won't get the possible alternative story told. Gate's success is a self-fulfilling prophecy and hardly evidence to justify the means.

My point is he is shaping the world to his liking, his ideology. No single human should have that power.

The Gates Foundation requires research they fund to be open access [1].

[1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Informat...

Non-native speaker. I meant "open-access" in terms of "against IP and patents".

Thanks, tho. Kinda ironic.

In a global pandemic with lots of people dying a company doesn't want to produce a vaccine they don't own, sounds pretty evil to me and to urge Oxford to sell their research instead of donating it isn't any better. So it remains, the wealthy can afford their healthcare, the poor dependent on "kind" donors and the rest is fucked. Seems to me like Gates didn't want to lose his leverage.

That's not entirely fair. The other view: Oxford University pairs with a company with the global logistics and manufacturing capability to create billions of vaccine in record time. I much prefer the idea of a royalty-free vaccine open to all, but I also understand the more practical route of working with a company if it means faster delivery where time is of the essence.

The article posted here purposefully omits the cost price of the Oxford vaccine which is approximately £3 ($5). Even if AstraZeneca were to add a profit margin of a few dollars to the cost price (e.g. bring the cost to $10) that would still be cheaper than the vaccines from Biotech/Pfizer and Moderna.

Also, Oxford has always insited that they wanted to create a vaccine that would be as cheap as possible to manufacture so it would be affordable to treat people around the world.

Wouldn't you think there are multiple local companies that could handle the production? We need lots of vaccine in a short time. A few companies can't to that. And AstraZenecas current price for the vaccine doesn't need to be the price after the pandemic when corona shots are maybe as common as flu shots. The took the results of public funded research, can produce a vaccine without risk of loss and and chance of high profit in the future. And Oxfords insistence on low manufacturing costs, doesn't make it affordable if the IP is hold by a single company. It just raises the profit margin. Oxford should have insisted on a maximum markup to the manufacturing price.

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