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Comment by mempko | Hacker News Reader

Ok, but ...

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3609955-moderna-failed-to-disc...

And Derrick Rossi's research was publicly funded which led to creation of Moderna...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Rossi

> Rossi based his developments on the results of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman on mRNA. He succeeded in finding investors for his plans to transfer these findings into new medications and vaccinations by founding Moderna

This is a tale as old as time. Government funds labs which invent and discover. VCs then fund companies to exploit and make money off publicly discovered work.

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That's how it's set up to work, government does the early work because it's not profitable for a company, we all pay into that work so we have the new technology sooner.

See: the internet, railways, computers, everything.

In the real world, both government grants and VC funding create great things.

If your political views make you want to diminish the importance of either, then perhaps it's time to update those views.

I'm trying to create a more balanced view. Andreessen made a claim that is completely false.

> Moderna, a product of the American venture capital system -- Andreessen

Where is he talking about the importance of government grants?

Yep this. The actual nose to the grindstone basic research work is often publicly funded but the VC fundraising bragging is often things like jets and swanky offices. The un-sexy work of doing basic research is not something capitalism handles well at all and we expect the government to subsidize it so the VCs can walk in, claim the work of their own, claim it was done via capitalism and the VC process, and then sell themselves as our saviors by creating media outlets that serve them. This is very dystopian and anti-government.

You're taking a pretty pessimistic view of the funding and R&D process. A good idea with initial funding by the government is useless if the VC funding doesn't bring the idea to the finish line. The government can't afford to (and shouldn't) fund every good idea to their finish line.

It's not pessimistic, just a fact of the R&D process. Public takes the risk, reward is privatized. Otherwise the VC model wouldn't work since most research doesn't fall within the horizon of a VC fund's lifetime.

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