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Comment by os2warpman | Hacker News Reader

>How will they manage to cover R&D costs?

Seeing that pharmaceutical companies, on average, spend much more on marketing than R&D I would eliminate marketing.

Most of the rest of the world has banned drug advertisements, and sales reps whose activities more resemble bribery than anything else, and they're doing fine.

Don't even eliminate it. Just halve it. The typical drug "researcher" spends $2 on commercials and sports sponsorships for every $1 spent on R&D.

In addition to marketing, pharmaceutical companies spend, again on average, MUCH MUCH WAAAAAAAAY more on stock buybacks and dividends than they do R&D. Between $2 and $4 for every $1 spent on R&D.

That could also be a source of, oh who the hell am I kidding...

Modern drugmakers aren't biotechnology companies, they are financial instruments that just so happen, by coincidence, to employ chemists.

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> In addition to marketing, pharmaceutical companies spend, again on average, MUCH MUCH WAAAAAAAAY more on stock buybacks and dividends than they do R&D. Between $2 and $4 for every $1 spent on R&D.

Stock buybacks and dividends are basically just a proxy for profits, and the fact that a company has greater profits than R&D spending isn’t a ratio that’s especially meaningful.

(You could, however, make a good argument that if profits are too high, it’s an indicator that the market isn’t adequately competitive, and regulation or anti-trust enforcement is merited to ensure competitiveness.)

It would be kind of interesting to require companies to limit marketing budgets to half of R&D, or whatever.

The obvious objection is that this will result in inflated research budgets and maybe marketing-adjacent research (like benchmarking). But actually, more benchmarking could be good. Or maybe they’ll inflate their research budgets by dropping money into basic research.

To what end? Companies spend $X on marketing to make $X + $Y. If you force them to reduce $X than assuming they don't come up with creative financial workarounds, you've just made them make less money. What has this accomplished for the betterment of anyone?

> To what end? Companies spend $X on marketing to make $X + $Y.

I expect that in many cases this is only true because the advertising market is competitive - you can’t advertise less, or you’ll lose market share to your competitors. But if everyone is prohibited from advertising cars, is the total market for cars really going to shrink? And if it does, is that actually a net negative for society?

I don’t think that is the model they use, it is too over-simplified to say anything.

Anyway, marketing is a useless overhead in our society for the most part. Especially in the case of medical products, where you go talk to a professional, a doctor, who can recommend the ones you actually need.

“To what end,” my goal is to at least pin it to something that might have useful side effects, R&D.

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