[extropy-chat] Three-quarters of N. American's support stem cellresearch

[Adrian Tymes]

--- "J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew at ceruleansystems.com>
wrote:
> On Jun 19, 2004, at 5:02 PM, Reason wrote:
> > Substantial private
> > funding just doesn't happen under those
> circumstances - the risk is too
> > great.
> 
> What is this hypothetical risk?  This is not a
> realistic analysis.
> 
> The only risk is perhaps the loss of some capital
> expenditure.  That's 
> it.  If some day the government decided to ban
> research outright, all 
> you've lost as a private funder is a little bit of
> upfront capital that 
> wasn't amortized.
> 
> And it isn't like losing that bit of money is a big
> deal to private 
> funding, since they were often never expecting to
> see a dime of return 
> on the money they spent in the first place.

Actually, the risk and the significance are bigger
than you give them credit for.  The significance: it's
all about money, so losing quite a bit of money hurts
a lot whether or not one was expecting it.  The risk:
there's all the usual variables of whether or not any
business will succeed, but in this case, there's the
risk of imminent legislative ban in addition to all
the other risks (which are present no matter where the
money is spent), which increases the risk enough that
many investors would rather play elsewhere.  (More and
less risk are both "some" risk, but the amount of risk
definitely matters to investors!)