You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Mac comments on LINK: Diseases not sufficiently researched - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: polymathwannabe 17 January 2015 04:03PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (38)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Mac 17 January 2015 09:14:01PM 4 points [-]

It seems to me that one characteristic of the optimal funding system would be very high funding/burden ratios for contagious diseases with catastrophic worst-case scenarios (e.g. Ebola), holding all other things like P(Breakthrough) equal.

A market-based system might not have this characteristic, especially if a "free rider" problem arises.