Dec 16 2010
Should We Democratize Science Funding?
A recent opinion piece in the New Scientist by Dan Hind continues the debate about democratizing science – changing or adding to the institutions of science to introduce more democratic public participation. This is an interesting debate, with several facets, and I have some mixed feelings about it.
Hind’s article is mainly about science funding, which I will get to shortly. But if you search for articles on “democratizing science” you will see that the issue extends beyond funding. For example, it also includes the notion of making journal articles available for free to the public online. I am completely in favor of this form of democratization – open access, all the way. I understand the need for journals to be viable commercial entities. I would like for journals to find business models that are viable but still allow for open public access to content.
I am spoiled because I have institutional access through my job to most journals, but when I am away from work or want access to a journal that Yale does not subscribe to, it is extremely frustrating not to access to the full articles I need for my research. Sometimes this affects my blogging (and therefore must also affect other bloggers), and therefore it detracts from the public discourse on the topic. Usually the articles are available for pay – at what I think are ridiculous prices, often $50 or more for one time access to a single article. That’s just not in my blogging budget.
This is why I applaud and support journals like the Public Library of Science (PLOS) – which is a series of online journals with open access. But other journals need to explore more accessible options as well. Perhaps, for example, journals or groups of journals (grouped by publisher or topic area) could offer low cost subscriptions to the general public. There are lots of variables to experiment with – access to some articles, delayed access, access to articles but not certain special features, etc. Professionals and institutions may still pay more for premium access of some sort. Or journals may just need to find some other revenue streams to keep subscription costs accessible – keeping in mind the public (unlike professionals) don’t want to read every edition cover to cover – they may just want access to a single article once ever.
So, with regard to access to scientific articles, I am in favor of open access, democratization, and experimentation with business models that allow for reasonable public access.
Funding of scientific research, however, is a different issue, and that is what Hind is specifically writing about. He suggests that part of public funding for scientific research can be allocated by a democratic public vote, rather than panels of experts. Here is the crux of his argument:
While this research has undeniably delivered important public benefits, it has also tended to drive “the whole thrust of the economy” in directions that favour powerful elites. The profits that derive from taxpayer investment in science have overwhelmingly been captured by a handful of investors and senior managers. Furthermore, a system of opaque subsidies gives favoured sectors of the economy access to vast sums of public money, which they use to develop products that the public would not necessarily wish to fund. The pharmaceutical sector, for example, has spent billions on copycat drugs and treatments for depression and anxiety that have few clear benefits.
There are two main points to address – are there really such downsides to the current system of funding, and would a democratic system be any better? Keep in mind, he is advocating allocating just a small part of public funding to a democratic system, not all of it. In any case – I think his characterization of the current system is not entirely fair.
First, I would point out that there already are multiple sources of funding for scientific research. Public funding is by far the largest source, but there is also corporate funding. Corporations fund research with their profits (although sometimes also with government subsidies which the government uses to promote research in desired areas). Commercial research has the specific goal of leading to marketable products and services.
It is difficult to argue that such commercial research is not directed toward products the public wants – that seems to be the whole idea of commercial research, to develop products the public will want to buy. I understanding that marketing is often about getting the public to buy things they don’t really want or need, but there are limits. In general, if you want a killer product, make something the public will find useful.
I also find it interesting that his main example is copy-cat drugs by pharmaceutical companies. I find this to be a lazy example, and perhaps the most often cited one I hear. There is a role for copy-cat drugs. They provide more options for clinicians. Patients may have allergies, or not tolerate the side effects from one drug, but respond well to a “copy cat”. So while they are not as useful as an entirely new class of drugs, they do provide added benefit to treatment.
Further, pharmaceutical companies invest billions in risky research. Many do not survive long enough to see a profitable drug to market. So I have no problem with drug companies putting a tried and true product on the market, even if the benefit is incremental, to fund their research into more risky new drug development. There is downstream benefit to drug companies funding their operations with copy-cat profitable drugs. This is the marketplace in action – which is ironically what Hind is primarily arguing for.
It should also be noted that any researcher who thinks they are on to something can raise venture capital, or create a startup company, and fund their research. All they have to sell is their idea.
In addition to corporate research, there are also private and non-profit advocacy groups that fund research, usually with a specific agenda in mind, such as curing a specific disease. Charities raise billions from the public, who vote, in essence, with their donations, and then fund research the public wants.
With so many options already available, do we need to allocate public funding for scientific research to a democratic process? I don’t think so. The government has the responsibility to spend public money responsibly. We live in a republic, not a true democracy, and this is an area where I think the former model works. The public pays taxes and trusts that their money will be put to good use for the public good.
I have argued before that research resources should be allocated by a non-partisan process of appropriate experts evaluating the potential of research on purely technical grounds. Politicians should resist the temptation to put their fat thumbs on the scale, which inevitably results in ideology trumping good science. Hind argues that this is unavoidable, but I disagree. We just need to keep the pressure on, to let the scientists do the science, and criticize politicians who think they know better than the experts.
I also don’t have much faith in what would emerge from an open process of voting on what should get funded. This may sound elitist, but it is just a concern for quality control and appropriate standards. If we have learned anything from the process of online voting it’s that such open feedback is easily distorted. Special interest groups could have a disproportionate effect on public feedback. The more fanatical or fringe the group, the more likely they are to be highly motivate to advance their agenda.
Think about it – won’t this just result in creationists voting for creation research, anti-vaxers voting for dubious and unethical research on vaccines, every charlatan campaigning for funds to study their quack remedy, and basically everyone with an ideology or fringe belief vying for public funding of their pet project? I have seen enough internet polls to know this is what basically happens. This would not be an efficient or responsible use of limited public research resources.
The underlying assumption of Hind’s position is that the public has a reasonable sense of where research dollars should be spent. But let’s put this assumption into context. By any reasonable measure the public is largely scientifically illiterate. Science education is widely criticized as being inadequate. The press does a good job of sensationalizing science and giving the public a very distorted view of science and research – often emphasizing minority, fringe, and even outright pseudoscientific ideas.
Democratizing science, in the end, may just be another way of politicizing it. If any significant funds were allocated by a democratic vote, then politics will enter the fray. The history of politics kibitzing science is not a good one.
I also challenge the very notion that popularity is a good measure of what should be researched. That is often the justification used for institutions like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The NCCAM, in a way, is an experiment in allowing popularity to set a research agenda. So far they have spent 2.4 billion dollars of taxpayer research money, and have no positive findings to show for it. In fact there is evidence that popularity predicts low reliability in research – it is actually a very bad indicator of which research is promising.
Conclusion
I know that the notion of democratizing the allocation of resources resonates with our cherished sensibilities. This is precisely why movements based upon the notion of “freedom” or condemning “elitism” work – it’s an easy sell to a society that cherishes individual freedom and self-determination. I share those sensibilities.
But some functions of society are too complex to be left to the vagaries of inexpert opinion. For example (this is perhaps a more intuitive example), would you want the fate of those accused of a crime to be determined by a popular vote? Do you think this would lead to greater justice? There are certainly problems with our judicial system, but the system does basically work. At least there are rules of evidence, procedures to protect rights, and ultimately judges, who are experts in the application of the law, to oversee the process. Democratizing the courtroom is akin to mob justice.
What Hind is arguing for, in essence, is mob science. Decisions about what research avenues are promising are at least as complex as applying the law. Both processes are messy and imperfect, and even riddled with biases, but they basically work. The flaws are no reason to favor a wild-west type approach (that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater).
But I also think there may be a kernel of value in Hind’s suggestion, in that I would like to see the public more involved in the process of science. Some have argued, and I largely agree, that non-experts should content themselves to be cheering on the sidelines of science. It takes years of study, and painfully acquired expertise, to make meaningful contributions to a complex and advanced scientific field. That is not elitist – that is reality. It is no more elitist than saying that an out-of-shape amateur has no place playing in the major leagues.
This, however, is a dilemma of modern science. It is really complex, so the public cannot directly participate in it, but we do not want the public to feel isolated or mystified by modern science. So we need to find compromises in the middle. The is the goal of all attempts to popularize science – to make it accessible, fun, and interesting to the general public.
Project like SETI at home are ways for the public to play a little part in a larger research project. Interested individuals can also identify galaxy types, or practice folding proteins online. These are all great project that allow for public participation in science. But at the center of all these projects are scientists who know what they are doing.
Perhaps Hind’s notion can be altered to fit this model. The public can be like the jury in a court case – they get to vote on what they would like to see funded, but they don’t get the final say. Their vote becomes one factor of many that is considered in allocating funding (along with plausibility, practicality, utility, and ethical considerations). Also, make the process interactive, so interested members of the public don’t just do a drive-by vote where they dump their biases or fringe agenda then move one. Perhaps there can be a moderated discussion with input and feedback from scientists.
The public can post their ideas or vote on their recommendations, but then scientist can provide input such as – that idea has already been tried (here’s a reference), or that is not practical for this reason, or perhaps such a study would be unethical. Who knows – good ideas might emerge from such a process. Scientists may learn more about what the public thinks about their specialty, and this could be a good opportunity for scientists to explain why they research what they do (why do scientists, for example, find fruit flies so fascinating).
In short – public participation in science is good, but public determination of science is hugely problematic and counterproductive.
In the end we have to remember – science is not a democracy. It’s a meritocracy.
16 Responses to “Should We Democratize Science Funding?”
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I appreciate a lot of what you said here but I wanted to take on your argument about commercial pharmaceutical research. I think it’s a mistake to argue that the present system is well-designed to meet the needs of consumers.
In general, competitive markets are an excellent way to make stuff that the public wants. In a competitive market, as you said, “If you want a killer product, make something the public will find useful.”
But drug patents are monopolies, and monopolistic markets do not work this way. They are a notoriously bad deal for consumers. Buyers who have to pay artificially high prices, and many potential buyers are priced out. The opportunity to extract monopoly profits gives drug companies an incentive for all sorts of chicanery, such as suborning doctors holding back improved versions of drugs in order to game patent terms, and so on. It makes no sense to praise this system as “the marketplace in action.” “The market” means “the competitive free market,” but that’s not at all what we’re dealing with.
The justification given for this is that drug research needs to be rewarded. Without patents, a company foolish enough to spend billions developing some new drug would watch as other manufacturers quickly reverse-engineered their product for a fraction of the cost. The up-front costs of research would have no down-stream reward.
This is a sensible justification for having some kind of government mechanism to ensure that the research gets done. But there are many such mechanisms, of which the patent system is only one. I would argue that at least in its present form it is an extremely inefficient and inequitable system which causes all sorts of totally unnecessary costs to society.
Why not simply fund pharmaceutical research directly through the NIH, or some similar body, and release the product into the public domain? NIH already spends more on research than Pharma does, and it’s accepted as a good system for basic research. NIH funding could be extended past basic research into drug discovery, development, and clinical trials.
If drugs developed by NIH research came on to the market unencumbered by patents, they’d be available at production cost, which would presumably be pennies per pill. There’d be vastly less incentive to distort doctors’ and patients’ perception of the benefits and risks of these drugs, because there wouldn’t be anyone standing to reap monopoly profits from them.
As you write, “research resources should be allocated by a non-partisan process of appropriate experts evaluating the potential of research on purely technical grounds.” I like that idea, and I think it might apply to more than just basic research.
Evan,
Your point is valid – the patent system has it’s shortcomings. But, as you point out, it is a necessary evil if we have private funding of drug development.
At present we do not have public funding of drug development. That would be a major change in the industry if we went to that model.
Actually, what I found is that the NIH 2011 budget is 32.1 billion dollars. Estimates of pharmaceutical research, however, were $39 billion for 2004 (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/76xx/doc7615/10-02-DrugR-D.pdf), and increasing rapidly.
So this would more than double the NIH budget. Then, essentially Americans would be paying for such research through taxes rather than paying for such research through higher drug costs. I have no problem with this, as long as we recognize that both systems have their downside.
>> But, as you point out, it is a necessary evil if we have private funding of drug development.
False dichotomy, he says there are many systems. You could for example have a compulsory licensing terms, where other companies can produce a licensed versions for a fixed fee. i.e. restrict the patent holders ability to set terms.
The TRIPS agreements, and the Doha agreement, recognise these needs, but how patent rights are exercised in practice sometimes makes it hard on countries trying to side step the normal patent system.
As regards fees for accessing medical papers, this is the worse kind of copyright enforcement. Since sick people trying to access information are unable to, or if able, unable to know how relevant the information is. In climate science almost all the publications are now open, due to the intense political pressure to make the research open, but much medical research is just as critical to those affected. So models exist already. We should ask funders of research (often the tax payer) to sort this.
Simon – Yes – there needs to be some system by which companies can benefit financially from their immense research investment. It does not necessarily have to be the current system.
And I was not necessarily advocating for charging subscription fees for access to journal, but put that forward as an alternative to the current system, which is highly restrictive. I would prefer open access, as I said. But the perfect is the enemy of the good – I would rather see a low and accessible access fee than the ridiculous ones we have in place in many journals today. Current fees are geared towards professionals and institutions, not the public – that’s the point.
“There is a role for copy-cat drugs. They provide more options for clinicians. Patients may have allergies, or not tolerate the side effects from one drug, but respond well to a “copy cat”. So while they are not as useful as an entirely new class of drugs, they do provide added benefit to treatment.”
I found this to be an interesting point, and one I have some experience with. When I was younger, I know that there was one medication I was taking (I forget the exact name, although it was almost certainly an antipsychotic of some type) that was actually less effective if I was given the generic version. My guess is that it was because of the filler, but I have no way to be sure — especially now that I’ve transitioned to a different medication. In any case, it’s a good point to see made.
If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t something very similar to this proposed recently by a Republican congressman? That alone is enough to prove to me that the process would be heavily politicized. Within 5 years the majority of our public research funding would be going towards AGW deniers and creationists. Not even necessarily because those groups are a plurality in this country, but because they are most likely to be herded onto an online poll by Glenn Beck-type pundits and corporate-funded PR campaigns.
Hind’s article doesn’t even make that good of a case for “democratizing” science. His best example is the field of macroeconomics and the financial collapse, the problems in the field of economics hardly apply to the rest of science as a whole.
His other main points are that scientists and science are mainly part of the military-industrial complex, and science make the rich get richer. Yes, the military does fund alot of research, but thats because they see the potential benefits. And private industry does make money from research into science and technology, thats why they do it, anyway most of the technology they develop requires mass production to work.
It seems from the article that Hind is just taking his politics out on science.
The whole point of capitalism is so those with wealth can reap monopoly profits. Those with capital can invest and get economies of scale not available to those with less investment and then with their economies of scale they can prevent others from entering the market. There is no way to prevent this except with regulation. There are some “natural monopolies” that are/were regulated this way, electricity generation and delivery, gas delivery, phone service, water and sewer service, cable TV.
The surest way to make money in a capitalist system is to have a monopoly on an essential link in a value-added chain. Then you can extract all the value out of the value added chain because you control the choke-point. Usually this results in greatly reduced growth because for the rest of the value added chain to develop, it needs profits from the value added chain too, and if the monopoly choke point is taking all of the value added, then there are no other profits.
I don’t have a problem with patents, so long as the patents are legitimate and do actually represent an invention. A lot of the early gene patents didn’t. There is no inventive step in isolating a gene.
The problem with using for profit drug companies as our only source of drugs is that they are set up to make money, and so they can only deliver drugs that are profitable. That is why there are lots of boner pills and very few malaria drugs. There are lots of men in the developed world with ED who will pay more for one pill than a malaria patient can afford for an entire course of treatment.
The problem with developing new antibiotics is that the for profit drug production system sets up perverse incentives. A new antibiotic should be used sparingly so that resistance doesn’t develop, but if the investment in the new antibiotic is only recouped by selling lots of it, then the company wants to (and has to) sell lots of it. That was why putting antibiotics in animal feed was done. The pharmaceutical companies had these production facilities that could produce gigantic amounts of antibiotics, the facilities had to be paid for no matter how much they produced, so long as the incremental quantities produced could be sold for more than the marginal cost to produce them, there was more profit. For profit companies have to act this way or their stock price doesn’t reflect the “value” of their intellectual and other property, someone will take them over, change management, and increase profits by selling antibiotics for animal feed.
The new management has “liquidated” the value that was in the intellectual and other property. Part of the original “value” was in the future value of an antibiotic that bacteria are not resistant to. That value could have been preserved by using the antibiotic sparingly, but because of the time value of money, all that matters is the net present value. Value achieved in the future is worth less. A million today from selling antibiotics in animal feed is worth more than $100,000 per year for 10 years for an antibiotic that is still effective. A for profit company has to act to maximize net present value.
Maximizing net present value is the only goal that capitalism has. Any problem that isn’t solved by maximizing net present value can’t be solved via capitalism and the free market. That is why global warming can’t be dealt with via the free market. It will always be cheaper to push those external costs of emitting CO2 onto other people, in this case future generations.
Humans are poor at correctly weighting the time value of resources. I think that a lot of this has to do with human feelings about the relative value of something depending on the immediate state of stress. With very high stress, the discount rate goes up so things consumed immediately are worth more than delayed consumption. I think this is hard-wired into physiology, so it is very difficult to modify. When you are stressed, it is harder to not eat food that you have because eating something now is more valuable than eating it later. Putting people under stress is a way to get them to value things differently, usually that shortens the time horizon they are able to think about. That is how loan sharks work. They are about the level of stress that the borrower is under. The more stress, the higher their discount rate and so 10% interest per week doesn’t seem that bad.
Steven, Yale does have Interlibrary Loan which means you can gain access to virtually any article (in print) delivered via email (within 1-2 weeks, but from my experience at other Unies, much faster). Did you really not know this? Or was your point really that the general public does not have immediate online access?
I haven’t used a public library in decades but I’d wager that often they have a way to obtain photocopies of articles on a case by case basis for their patrons (maybe for a small fee but not $50).
Steve, if you think getting access to journal articles is a pain (when Yale doesn’t subscribe), try only having access via a third world university… I pretty much rely on my friends at foreign universities to send me articles.
As for funding, you’re making largely a theoretical argument – that is, you don’t (because you can’t) cite direct empirical evidence for how effective a democratized science funding model would be. But you could argue it’s at least plausible that the public would make very good decisions (‘wisdom of crowds’). Consider Kasporov vs the World (this write-up is brilliant), the ‘greatest game [of chess] ever played’. The public voted on which moves to make, and played a brilliant game, even though on at least one occasion 2.4% of people voted not merely for a very bad move, but for one that was actually illegal! Or Consider Wikipedia.
A key feature of any such system is that people self-select into participating, so the average participant is likely to be far more interested in and knowledgeable about science than the average citizen.
I can see this going either way, though. I don’t think there are knock down arguments for either position. We’ll have to try it to see if it works.
P.s. As you’re probably aware, the Republican party IS doing (a badly implemented) version of this democratic funding model. They’re asking people to send in suggestions for money wasted on scientific research: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/re/
Oh… and, of course, as you are well aware current funding models have their fair share of problems. Some (I can’t now find a link) have actually argued a portion of the science funding budget should be allocated randomly (after initial screening of proposals via fairly superficial peer-review).
The projects that are looked seem to be pushed more by external forces such as special interest lobbies than by what we really want or need. I would like to get rid of that whole industry. Also disallow marketing of drugs to the public directly. It creates a demand for people that in most cases isn’t there. They then doctor shop to get the drug they see on tv.
I could see a voting process work but not if the whole country could vote. I would say that you have a group of 100 or 200 top minds vote to where funding should be allocated and avenues in which we should pursue. That should give you 10-20 top minds in each major avenue to work out spending. Cut out the companies altogether. It’s taxpayer money not corporate’s. Let our representatives decide….which in this case would be top researchers and clinicians. I wouldn’t want just researchers on here so that the doctors that actually deal with the public have a strong voice.
I have to go and didn’t even get a chance to read Steve’s entire article, but two quick responses to Michael Meadon:
In regards to Kasparov vs. the World, presumably the majority of people were using computer assistance. The best chess in the world is played by humans with computer assistance; these so-called “centaurs” can achieve a rating well above that achieved by even the best grandmasters or most advanced programs. In a chess match between Kasparov (without assistance) against any grandmaster given computer assistance, Kasparov would be crushed. The fact that “the World” played a decent game (before losing) is not at all a ringing endorsement of democracy
In regards Wikipedia, while I am a staunch advocate of Wikipedia, I do not think the analogy to democracy here is apt. In fact, I don’t know if you’ve spent much time “behind the scenes” at Wikipedia, but I can assure you that it is explicitly not majority-rules. For instance, there is a process by which it is debated whether a particular article ought to be deleted. (For instance, if it is an obvious advertisement, though there are more subtle reasons why articles are sometimes deleted) It very much looks like a vote, with people adding a comment to the page saying either Keep or Delete (or Merge or a few other technical possibilities) in boldface, usually followed by a brief explanation of their position. But it is not a vote, and this has been made explicit. You could have 99 people “vote” to keep the article, and a single person “vote” to delete it, and if the moderator closing the discussion thinks the lone deletion advocates argument is rock solid, the article will be deleted.
And I can tell you that if Wikipedia did work by voting, it would have failed long ago. It would be nothing more than a repository for pseudoscience, quack medicine, conspiracy theories, denialist screeds, racist and uber-nationalist rants, and whatever other crackpot causes managed to get enough adherents in there to rig a vote. In fact, Wikipedia struggles with this problem already — but since it is not, in fact, a democracy, the crackpots tend to eventually lose out.
Just sayin’…
@Jay, yeah, I hear what you’re saying. (And I was a serious Wiki editor for a couple of years, so I know all about those procedures). I meant it when I said that I don’t think either side has a knock down argument. Is not so much that I think Steve is wrong as I think he (and we) don’t know whether such a democratic process would work. My examples were merely to suggest it’s at least plausible to think it might.
And Wikipedia, incidentally, is not analogous here. (I know I brought it up – I probably shouldn’t have). Editors have to make decisions about everything on Wikipedia – so pseudoscience could, in principle, win out. What I think would be an idea worth trying (and then evaluating) is to let people vote on pre-screened research proposals. In other words, a homeopath couldn’t whip up an internet posse to win money from the NSF or NIH because the existing peer-review system would screen out the really dodgy stuff.
Great and thought-provoking article Steven, thank you.
Since Massimo Pigliucci’s recent article ‘The Sorry State of Higher Education’ (http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2010/11/sorry-state-of-higher-education.html), I have been interested in the interplay between science, skepticism, and libertarianism. That is, how does decisions regarding science and other knowledge-based issues relate to the desire to allow citizens freedom of choice and exchange?
I consider that it basically comes down to the use of, and ability to access, information. As you and your other hosts of SGU have stated numerous times, the skeptical movement really comes down to education.
However, as your point out, its just not feasible for everyone to get a medical or science degree. In fact, its beneficial to society for people to specialise. An economist might call this ‘comparative advantage’. Calling voting citizens (and purchasing citizens in a way) the ‘umpires’, and making sure those with expertise do not perhaps abuse their knowledge-power, seems a very reasonable middle-ground.
Dan Carlin, who hosts a podcast called ‘Common Sense’, recently discussed the role of experts in a democratic society. Like you Steven, he noted the difference between a republic and a democracy – noting how classical Athens allowed citizens to vote on every matter regarding the state (as opposed to assigning representatives). Dan noted how the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the US recognised that its better for voters to assign their ‘best man’ and send them to Washington on their behalf, rather than vote on every single issue – with a ‘mob rules’ result.
@daedalus2u
I think you’ve noted that some key issues that promote the desire for state intervention – notably externalities, or ‘neighbourhood effects’. Its beneficial for society for individual citizens to be malaria free – and if citizens choose not to take anti-malaria medicine, then the state should intervene. But that should be the limit.
Overall I do think you’ve misrepresented the role of the consume in all of this – in particular what the long-run effect on consumers are. You state that the role of a capitalist system is to maximise net present value – but a firm can only maximise its NPV with the consent of the consumer (that is, the consumer needs to buy the product). In a competitive market, NPV is lowered to zero, or close to it, over the long-run.
When looking at natural monopolies – the key phrase is ‘enduring monopoly’. Its no good to look at a monopoly firm in the short run. ‘Creative destruction’ (and the profit incentive) is a tool that will deal short-term monopolies. A maximised NPV will not last very long in a creative and competitive market.
This idea of economies of scale – this can limit the number of firms in a market, but it does not necessarily lead to monopolisation as a given. And you need to ask yourself, how does a firm create economies of scale? Through meeting the needs of consumers so that they buy the firm’s product.
Over the long-run, if a firm with economies of scale charges monopoly prices, or provides rubbish products, then another firm has an incentive to enter. Even if the firm doesn’t act like a monopolist, but has market power from economies of scale – whats the harm exactly? Economies of scale mean lower costs per output (as output rises). If the only way to maintain market power is through economies of scale – does this not imply lower prices for consumers?