Looking Beyond the Bottom Line

Looking Beyond the Bottom Line

Production of "low value products" is difficult to motivate in capitalist economies, but the task can be accomplished when viewed from a broadly-defined economic perspective. The key negative aspect at issue is the fact that "low value products" detract from a company's "bottom line" profits. A company's economic value is diluted both directly and indirectly when "low value products" are under consideration. Genetic engineering is seriously confronted with these conflicts of interest. The technical aspects of genetic engineering are forced to a secondary level as economic considerations force themselves to the forefront of this debate.

The direct impact of "low value products" is by definition limited profitability without exponentially large sales figures. The indirect impact is that the low value products divert resources away from investment in high value products at all stages of research, development, production and marketing. Economically, the problem facing low value products is production costs rising above the product's selling price. In some manufacturing contexts, the largest component of the production cost structure is expenditure on labor. This situation may not consistently exist in terms of genetically engineered products, but does illuminate an interesting angle of the situation. The low selling price of the product is not necessarily the most problematic as the situation can also be considered one of high labor costs. In other words, supply side characteristics are perhaps the more viable sources of a solution than demand side manipulation. Altering individual consumer behavior is much more daunting than changing market supply motivation.

The highest hurdle in this situat...

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... of society and technology.

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