Meaningful vs. meaningless support from businesses

The thing I said about "state-run research" didn't relate to a certain amount of government-funded research, which obviously takes place everywhere in the capitalist world, but to replacing the entire private research sector with state-run research.

In terms of your argument that I haven't heard, I was cautious enough to say "[i]n the event" up front. I still don't see an argument that pharma doesn't need patents, and if I saw one some other time, we might slip off topic at some point.

I used generic drugs as an example. The companies providing them do very limited R&D. It's nice for consumers if their perspective is shortsighted; but they also want the next generation of drugs to be researched and those investing in that research (plus those taking the risk of original market introduction) must be incentivized and protected. That was the perspective. I'd be very interested in analogies from other industries. That would be more useful than a debate on the validity of pharma patents (I don't see any parliament in the industrialized world even talking about the possibility of abolishing those patents).