Over a decade ago I finally gave in and had an orthodontist straighten my teeth. I'd always say no way was I was going to have my teeth wired up for the two years of misery just for relative straight teeth, if they came up with braces that can come on and off, then I'd do it.
They came up with braces that can come on and off. It's called Invisilign, and it was more expensive than the wired up thing, but, they can come on and off. I did the treatment, I am not getting paid to say this, I was very happy with them.
The idea is simple. The dentist takes impressions of your teeth, looks at the layout of your choppers, decides if anything has to go, and then they lay out a course of action by some sort of computer program. The course of action is a series of plastic covers for your teeth that push and pull your teeth into a straight line. The first ones are pretty tough, but it gets easier over time. If I recall you wear a pair for two weeks, toss those, and then wear the next pair, and check in with the dentist every six weeks to assure good progress, and adjust if necessary. You take them off for meals, or for an evening out, but otherwise they are on your teeth doing the trick.
You do need a dentist to plot out the course of action, but otherwise it is so simple. The plastic teeth covers probably cost a buck each to make. As opposed to adjusting wires and getting in our mouth and dealing with keep wired up teeth clean, with invisilign there is none of that. They come off anytime you want, and people cannot see them, even though they cover your teeth.
Now, of course, this is heavily patented. With about $100 in material costs, the fee is something like $6000, out of the reach of most people. No doubt some good doctors are fitting out deserving poor with this innovation, but what is not happening is tw fold:
1. No competition to drive prices down and introduce better design (material, sequence, algorithm?).
2. The very competent team that brought this forth is now captured by the monopoly provided by the patent and no longer creating new, they are milking the status quo, a status quo enforced by violence against anyone who would compete. What else might these people have brought forth if they did not have this state-sponsored cash cow?
The idea here is success is wealth defined as the personal accumulation of tallies, property, etc, as opposed to wealth defined as the number of people who have access to the widest possible range of goods and services with their own money.
People will argue that there would not be Invisilign to begin with without patent protection to recover the investment cost and reward the inventors. I disagree: the investment cost is high because as a medical device there are violence-backed regulators who are captured by the regulated, and it takes massive amounts of money to buy enough people off to allow innovation to proceed. If I thought up Invisilign with no background in dentistry, then countless dentists thought of the same thing long before I did. But they knew better than to try in USA, for the constraints on innovation are overwhelming, especially on medical devices.
We can no longer afford "intellectual" "property" "rights" in USA.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
They came up with braces that can come on and off. It's called Invisilign, and it was more expensive than the wired up thing, but, they can come on and off. I did the treatment, I am not getting paid to say this, I was very happy with them.
The idea is simple. The dentist takes impressions of your teeth, looks at the layout of your choppers, decides if anything has to go, and then they lay out a course of action by some sort of computer program. The course of action is a series of plastic covers for your teeth that push and pull your teeth into a straight line. The first ones are pretty tough, but it gets easier over time. If I recall you wear a pair for two weeks, toss those, and then wear the next pair, and check in with the dentist every six weeks to assure good progress, and adjust if necessary. You take them off for meals, or for an evening out, but otherwise they are on your teeth doing the trick.
You do need a dentist to plot out the course of action, but otherwise it is so simple. The plastic teeth covers probably cost a buck each to make. As opposed to adjusting wires and getting in our mouth and dealing with keep wired up teeth clean, with invisilign there is none of that. They come off anytime you want, and people cannot see them, even though they cover your teeth.
Now, of course, this is heavily patented. With about $100 in material costs, the fee is something like $6000, out of the reach of most people. No doubt some good doctors are fitting out deserving poor with this innovation, but what is not happening is tw fold:
1. No competition to drive prices down and introduce better design (material, sequence, algorithm?).
2. The very competent team that brought this forth is now captured by the monopoly provided by the patent and no longer creating new, they are milking the status quo, a status quo enforced by violence against anyone who would compete. What else might these people have brought forth if they did not have this state-sponsored cash cow?
The idea here is success is wealth defined as the personal accumulation of tallies, property, etc, as opposed to wealth defined as the number of people who have access to the widest possible range of goods and services with their own money.
People will argue that there would not be Invisilign to begin with without patent protection to recover the investment cost and reward the inventors. I disagree: the investment cost is high because as a medical device there are violence-backed regulators who are captured by the regulated, and it takes massive amounts of money to buy enough people off to allow innovation to proceed. If I thought up Invisilign with no background in dentistry, then countless dentists thought of the same thing long before I did. But they knew better than to try in USA, for the constraints on innovation are overwhelming, especially on medical devices.
We can no longer afford "intellectual" "property" "rights" in USA.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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