Hacker News Reader

Comment by deadlyllama | Hacker News Reader

A lot, as long as it respects Western intellectual property "rights."

Like persuading Oxford University to NOT give away the rights to its COVID-19 vaccine: https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine...

View on HN

I've heard that argument, but IP rights are really a red herring - the bottlenecks on production are in material inputs and manufacturing. Waivers on IP rights could actually have the opposite effect we want by creating pointless competition when what is needed is centralization and economies of scale to maximize output.

This is what I really don't understand and must assume ulterior motives. His altruistic intentions of trying to eradicate horrible diseases in 3rd world countries is highly commendable, yet this type of move will only allow new Covid-* variants to gain traction, therefore requiring new vaccines sooner than later. I definitely am not looking forward to a never-ending pandemic.

Does anyone know if he holds shares in vaccine producing companies?

> Does anyone know if he holds shares in vaccine producing companies?

What would the angle be here? Gates is in the process of trying to give away all least half of his money to charity. His net worth is ~125 billion, is making another billion or two really going to motivate him at this stage in his life?

That's a good question, hence my confusion. Perhaps it's merely a political move and he's doesn't want to upset the wrong people?

On the other hand, I've heard that anyone with that much wealth is operating on a completely different mental model than the rest of us. I can only assume he has a very high-level overview of any global aspects that he is interested in and therefore has completely different goals. I suppose that I can't even begin to fathom his thought process and perhaps my confusion is completely unfounded, I just wish I knew the reasoning for his recent Covid-vaccine decisions, which seemingly are detrimental to all human beings on a global scale.

I honestly think that centralizing the production is the best way to produce the most vaccine in the shortest amount of time. Giving out the IP around the vaccine wouldn't just immediately bring more production online, and the IP alone isn't a sufficient recipe for producing more vaccines in bulk. What could instead happen is a bunch of players across the globe try to jump-start production and start bidding up the prices of the inputs, making production more costly and thus reducing production. Beyond that, quality control could suffer in the hands of inexperienced producers, and so more vaccine could be wasted.

It's been a weird thing for people to turn on Gates and assume he has some diabolical angle. He was an absolute savage in business, and people rightfully feared/hated him when he was at the helm of Microsoft (I was in college during the MS antitrust trial, and a lot of the CS department was rooting for them to be taken down). What I think motivates him now is straightforward self-actualization, trying to undo some of the fairly justified animosity he earned in business for the sake of his legacy. All the money in the world can't buy you a legacy, only accomplishments can do that, and that's what I think he's chasing now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com