so billions for FB/Instagram/CocaCola/Tesla - all justified.
same for something that is a product that takes billions to develop and get approved, plus saves actual lives? how DARE I!?
resources in a capitalist society get allocated by rewards on efforts. i want the best resources working this, hence the incentives need to be spectacular. competing against HFT and other hot areas here.
For someone to see a human being tortured by cancer, and for that person to turn around and say "one day I'm gonna make billions by inventing and patenting a cure" is evil to his core.
If I am so blessed to be in a position that I have invented a cure for cancer, I am giving it away. At the most I want to break even. If I make a single penny from the invention I'm donating it to charity.
If you're motivated by profit, you should not be in the business of saving lives.
I'm not anti free-market capitalism by any stretch. But I would argue that when it comes to life-saving medicine there's no real "market".
If I'm diagnosed with a fatal disease, and I'm told someone has the cure, I don't say "hmm, I'd love to buy it, but that sounds too expensive". Instead I say "where do I sign, I don't care how much it costs, take everything".
Cures to fatal diseases are not products that can be given a real market value based on supply and demand since everyone who is ever told about the product who needs it is willing to give up all of their earthly possessions to obtain it.
From that perspective for someone to say "Hmm, yeah I'd love to give it to you but I'm gonna need more. You see my stockholders aren't gonna be happy if I only take all you own. It's clearly worth more than that." seems a little out of touch. In my mind profit is not the right motivation for developing cures for fatal diseases.
I would argue that the reason antibiotics is inexpensive is not because of supply and demand. It's because of competition in the market. If a single entity owned the intellectual property for all antibiotics, my hunch is they would be quite a bit more expensive.
> is not because of supply and demand. It's because of competition in the market
Competition is a form of supply and demand, so your sentence is contradictory.
It's still wrong, there are lots of patented medications on the market every year, many for treating fatal diseases, and they don't charge outrageous amounts.
I posted this earlier, maybe you didn't see, but this drug is a monoclonal antibody. That is by FAR the most expensive type of drug we have ever invented. That's the reason for the cost, not the patent. It will still be expensive even off patent.
I found this excerpt that might be helpful to our discussion:
The law of demand states that, if all other factors
remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less
people will demand that good. In other words, the higher
the price, the lower the quantity demanded.
So let's consider a scenario. The drug is available on the market for $100. Will I buy it? Yes. For $1000? Yes. For $10000? Yes. For $100000? Yes. For $1000000? Yes. etc.. For $10000000000? Yes, but I can't afford it. Notice I never said no. The pharmaceutical company, the hospital, and the insurance company said no. I don't see where the "law of demand" enters into the equation.
I can't see how it is possible to shim "supply and demand" into a market where the only decision you make when purchasing is "If I don't purchase it, I will die".
On the other hand, simply through adding a competitor into the mix suddenly both parties need to figure out how to keep costs low so the consumer will pick them over their competitor. The fact that there's competition in the market place is orthogonal to the "law of demand".
In other words, no matter how many competitors exist in the marketplace there will always be the same number of people saying "yes" to the purchase. Exactly the same number of potential customers no matter how many competitors exist in the market. All of whom will purchase it if they can afford it.
you're completely clueless about what it takes to bring modern medicine to market. you argue from a moral high horse that has no bearing in reality.
developing a cure for cancer costs real fucking money, gobs and gobs of it. you think clinical trials and FDA approvals come for free? ramping up a supply chain around it?
I'm not saying it's free to manufacture and distribute a product. So of course money has to be charged for a product on some level. I'm not saying "go bankrupt in order to manufacture and distribute the cure for cancer to the world".
But the place where I draw the line is when mega corp decides to hold the cure for cancer hostage until their profit demands are met.
As far as I'm concerned, this whole back and forth is not about actual events happening in the world. This is a moral / ethical argument.
My point is that: for anyone, either implicitly or explicitly, to say it's ok to look another human being, with terminal cancer, in the eyes and say "I have a cure for you, but you can't have it unless you help me fulfill the wishes of my stockholders (aka profits)" is evil.
same for something that is a product that takes billions to develop and get approved, plus saves actual lives? how DARE I!?
resources in a capitalist society get allocated by rewards on efforts. i want the best resources working this, hence the incentives need to be spectacular. competing against HFT and other hot areas here.