justice

In class today, my professor gave an offhand example of the power of the size of the market, that still has me thinking.

Imagine that your significant other has just been diagnosed with an extremely rare debilitating disease that only affects about a 1000 people a year around the world. For you and yours, finding the cure for this affliction is paramount. Even a drug to treat the symptoms would be preferable to nothing. Fortunately, a compound X has been discovered that will dramatically improve the patient's condition.

But what incentive does the pharmaceutical company have to create this medicine? The amount of time and money that goes into researching and developming a new drug is non-trivial. Add in the costs of patents, and you begin to see why the pharmas make sure to fully research the potential of the market before launching a new product.

If the disease that your loved one has is only shared by 999 other people, how is the pharma company going to recoup their costs? There's simply not enough sales volume, and therefore, drug X will never get produced. Not until, that is, this disease suddenly goes from affecting 1000 people to 1,000,000. Or perhaps even that isn't high enough.

How many people have to suffer before drug X will prove profitable enough to produce? Will it ever happen? Sad to say, not necessarily.

PCLoadLetter

In business school, there's a lot of reading. I don't mean law school amounts, but its pretty substantial. As much as I love the peecee, I'm not one for reading 30 page pdfs on a laptop screen. So I print. This, as you may imagine, turns into a lot of printing and in turn, time, paper, and ink. So much so, that when I recently found a really good deal on a laser printer, I told myself it was worth it. And it definitely has been - I haven't bought ink in months.

So why am I writing a post about this? It's because of the nightly techno club that I host in my living room. You see, the mighty printer that it is, it seems to tax the circuit pretty heavily. So, in addition to the charming sounds of the printer gurgling up my professors' manuscripts, my lamps like to play backup by flickering to its beat. Since I can't do anything about it, I like to add to this joyous experience by punctuating the symphony with my beloved Tivo noises. My neighbors must think I have some sort of tribal ritual every night involving unmentionable sacrifices.

It finally occurred to me tonight that I could try plugging the lamp into a different socket. But that would just ruin all the fun, wouldn't it?