Id hope under communism there would be independent researchers approaching the same problem, even if there was more knowledge sharing where appropriate.
Quite a bit of our R&D happens within the context of University research grants and NIH spending/coordination already. What comes out of the publicly-funded system is technology that private contributors then claim as patented technology for the next twenty years.
We already have a mechanism by which independent researchers can receive funding for and pursue the development of medical treatment for a host of ailments. The bottleneck is inevitably in the transition to mass production and distribution. We saw this shit back when Martin Shkreli became a household name, after buying up the patent for and ratcheting the price of Daraprim 13x.
You might also look at our continuous shortage of KN95 masks. This isn't cutting edge technology, and we've had an ongoing pandemic for over a year now, but we're still not generating masks fast enough to meet demand.
Quite a bit of our R&D happens within the context of University research grants and NIH spending/coordination already. What comes out of the publicly-funded system is technology that private contributors then claim as patented technology for the next twenty years.
We already have a mechanism by which independent researchers can receive funding for and pursue the development of medical treatment for a host of ailments. The bottleneck is inevitably in the transition to mass production and distribution. We saw this shit back when Martin Shkreli became a household name, after buying up the patent for and ratcheting the price of Daraprim 13x.
You might also look at our continuous shortage of KN95 masks. This isn't cutting edge technology, and we've had an ongoing pandemic for over a year now, but we're still not generating masks fast enough to meet demand.