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Patent waiving is a dick move.

If we want to help Cuba then we should buy those doses for Cuba, not sabotage a company to maybe help but then not actually follow through and make sure people benefit. By negotiating a sale for all 7b of us at once we could get the best deal without any games.




We already know where "no you can't do that but we'll take care of you" leads.

An example is AIDS and other medication in South Africa. There is just no way South Africa could pay the prices dreamed up by pharma companies. But any plan by South Africa to manufacture drugs or import generics and provide them at cost domestically was fought tooth and nail by pharma companies and by the highest instances of the US government on behalf pharma companies.

Millions died preventable deaths but at least nobody was a dick by waiving a patent.


FWIW We also know where "you did the work but it belongs to everyone" leads.

There was no real will to pay for AIDS drugs for the world regardless of how it was done, save your sarcasm for the lawyers who fought saving people no matter the excuse they used.

We don't have the will this time either, that's why we opened the patent rather than actually helping. It'd be like if your house was on fire and I threw a box of smoke detectors through the window, to help. Like Robin Hood stealing from the rich and forgetting about the second step.

If we want to save lives we'd have the factories that are already producing keep going rather than expecting new factories to tool up. We did this patent grant because we didn't want to help.

If we do decide this is how patents should work then we should set the rule now, for next time.


sabotage a company that used a ton of public money to develop a vaccine and is then selling it back to us… Such sabotage.


Yes, anything that interferes with their ability to do business is sabotage. We should have given them the money with some strings attached.


So minimum wage legislation is sabotage? Corporate taxes are sabotage? A prohibition on slavery is sabotage?


If you did any of that for one company only, yes.




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