Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifebeyondfife | Hacker News Reader

Doing research for a company has the end goal of benefitting that companies' shareholders. Doing research for a publicly funded institution has the end goal of benefitting society.

Look at the decoding of the human genome. No company has a patent on that because public institutions did it first.

View on HN

While patents on genetic sequences have some tricky specifications (you have to patent "non-standard" biological uses), I know Celera holds a number of patents related to the Human Genome Project. From what I recall in general biology, Celera actually used automation to outpace the public institutions even though they started later.

If you're curious, here's a patent list and some background on the company:

https://www.celera.com/celera/intellectual_property

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter

Arguably, though, goals and results are two different things. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", and all that. What does the evidence say about which benefits society more?

A company works for its shareholders, which are a very restricted group, and public funds work for society. Intuitively, the outcome is clear. It's also supported by actual data: wages stopped rising in the US in the 1970s, while productivity kept going up; this is correlated with the introduction of concepts like "shareholder value".

Google is a company that has produced tremendous benefit to society, in spite of having shareholders.

To add to the above: Pretty much all companies benefit society; it's hard to think of counter-examples.

Sure, oil companies spill oil sometimes; but they (should) have to pay for that.

Big telcos tend to have monopoly status, and exploit consumers, but they do that not because they are companies, but because they are in a patron-client relationship with the government.

Some companies produce tremendous benefit to society; others produce small benefits, which matter a lot in the aggregate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com