Posted on 10/16/2014 10:03:45 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
The Obama administration has failed us.
With that in mind, potential treatments/vaccines for Ebola are being worked on and tested as we speak, and despite the lack of ability to pay for any potential vaccine on the part of almost all western Africans, pharmaceutical companies should develop said vaccine(s) (if at all possible) and distribute them free of cost to those who cannot afford them.
While I do support huge profits to be made by pharmaceutical companies, I believe that there are exceptions to the rule, and I do believe that this is the time and instance for this very exception.
Adam Smith was the founder of Laissez-Faire Capitalism, but he still believed that Capitalism must be balanced out with morality, and thus his two-part set: 1.) Wealth of Nations and 2.) the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
To put it plainly, Smith showed that capitalism is the best system (and it is), but Capitalism must be balanced out with morality.
The Good Samaritan didn’t have stock holders.
Please stop with the religious argument for forcing people to do things that are not in their rational self interest. I have no interest in a company conducting expensive drug development, and then participating in even more expensive testing, to intentionally break even or lose money.
The drug companies are filled with people who are there for reasons that have nothing to do with profit. However, without the profit motive, they will have no work.
Change your screen name. You never learned that technological innovation and progress is driven by the entrepreneurial search for profits. Develop the drug and then demand the UN come up with the money to deliver it to those who need it most.
No it is not. Not at all. A company looking to make profit is not going to do anything for free. Good will is not a motivator on this scale in the business world, money however is. What about all the employees said company has, and their families? Stockholders? They should all sacrifice for people halfway around the world who refuse to learn that wouldn’t lift a finger for us? Nope nope nope nope nope double nope nopers nah no nope.
Did the man who helped the Samaritan (who was waylaid on the road to Jericho) demand that the Samaritan pay him back? No. He told the innkeeper that he had would pay for all costs incurred in helping the Samaritan man.
And thus, why can’t the owners take the costs out of their pocket? There will still be huge profits to be made elsewhere. So why not help the Samaritan Africans?
And this is how it should be.
This is because the FASTEST, CHEAPEST, and best way to get what you want is to pay people to do their job, in the context of a free market system.
Lot of disgusting crypto-commies on this site who want the scientists, doctors, and nurses to work for free, or sacrifice everything for mankind, and I say, bullshit.
The American people, all you Joe Sixpacks out there, you elected this dick*ead President, and you deserve all the plagues, famines, and depressions that we in the health care industry KNEW he would bring.
So, all you people who want the health care people to sacrifice everything for the public can just SHUT UP and ENJOY your epidemic.
You voted for it just as you voted for Obamacare.
Put your money where your mouth is and start making it yourself. I’m sure Jesus will help you finance it. Right?
However, if they have one and keep it off the market, that would be morally wrong.
Certainly it can be recovered from patients (although in practice the drug I'm thinking of would be prohibitively expensive were that the only source). But that is cost recovery; the money has already been spent. Again, where does it come from?
It can come from "the government", of course, meaning the taxpayers, and in practice it does, but "the government" does not have $350 million bags of money to distribute to everyone who thinks he or she has an idea for a drug. And so there has to be some sort of criterion under which money is distributed. Or it can come from venture capitalists who must depend on their own assessment of risk versus reward. Eliminating the reward makes this calculation impossible. With government agencies it is the opinions of hired "experts" and those, alas, tend to be influenced by politics as well as professional assessment, skewing the system and creating waste and inefficiency.
In truth, the laissez-faire approach shifts the risk to the capitalist, who must bear the entire cost of failure. That's what capitalism is all about. Where the government must bear that cost, there is essentially no penalty for losing someone else's money, and governments spend their money accordingly.
We do both. It isn't a perfect system, naturally, and it doesn't take into account such happy accidents such as secondary indications for that new drug - one intended to treat rheumatoid arthritis, for example, that happens to work well on ankylosing spondylitis as well. There the number of RA patients justified the investment where the far lower number of spondylitis patients might have made the drug prohibitively expensive to develop because the cost would have never been recovered.
In that latter case, government investment distributes the cost over all of the taxpayers knowing that only a very small number of them will be beneficiaries. This form of socialism is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself but its principle implies that any disease, however rare, has a claim on unlimited funds from the rest of society. That's fine in principle, one supposes, but there simply isn't enough money to make it work.
That's how the game is played in practice: a combination of venture capitalism and government investment whose interests compete and even under the best of intentions sometimes fall over one another. It's a lousy, inefficient system but it beats all the known alternatives. That's just what I observed over a decade in the game; others may know more and I'll happily listen to correction.
Some of us think the reason for not stopping the travel from infected countries is that the ensuing panic when it does show up here would drive the US to mandate vaccination and thus provide the profit monies to vaccinate Africa.
WE will pay for it. Because we don’t have anything else to do with $30+B.
Jesus never called for Corporations to be a good Samaritan.
Take it out of your pocket if you want and stop mooching off shareholders.
Wouldn’t companies work faster to develop a vaccine, if they knew there was a big payoff in the end?
As to Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments - I’d wager that if you investigated any of the major drug companies, you would discover that they regularly donate millions of dollars worth of drugs to people in the third world.
And I guess I’ve accepted the basic premise of your argument, without even questioning it. Do you believe that companies are slow walking Ebola research, because of costs and/or a desire to make a profit? I have seen no evidence of that, and I assume the reverse is true. Companies are probably ramping up their Ebola research, in light of the current outbreak.
You are all over the road today. Did you take your Ritalin?
First you make a decidedly Socialist argument that Ebola vaccines must be given away. You know that means the government will enforce that.
Then you bring up the teachings of Christ. Liberals love to argue that Christ meant the State should “feed the poor”, etc.
Now you are arguing Adam Smith and Capitalsim. Honestly, I have no clue where you want to go with this.
What’s next? The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s views on Ebola Vaccines?
Why are you even bringing anything about morality into this?
Doing what you propose would put thousands under. Their children would starve, and anyone involved with said company would feel the squeeze. You are advocating for the immoral thing to do. As this would hurt many more Americans than Africans it would save. Nothing is free. This is a socialist delusion. But you should be allowed to learn. But next time you’re going to get a lot of “IBTZ” responses, then you won’t bother us with your socialist banter any more.
Many pharmaceutical companies are working on ebola vaccines and ebola cures….they’re all over the news. For example:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/2-ebola-stocks-to-sell-and-5-to-consider-buying-2014-10-13?page=2
Excerpt:
“Stocks to Buy
“All small Ebola-related stocks are highly speculative and carry extremely high risk of loss. Most promising are companies that are working on vaccines. If a vaccine is successfully developed, it may quickly become a sustainable big business. Two companies of note are NewLink Genetics NLNK, +22.56% and Inovio Pharmaceuticals INO, +5.69%
“A company such as Tekmira Pharmaceuticals TKMR, -3.23% carries a very high risk because its Ebola drug may or may not work and its other programs are in very early stages while the stock price has rocketed on speculation.
“Companies such as BioCryst Pharmaceuticals BCRX, +3.18% Sarepta Therapeutics SRPT, +6.22% and Chimerix CMRX, +9.63% carry less risk than Tekmira because their programs are more advanced.
“In general, buying stocks based on their potential Ebola drugs may be a good trade but likely to be a bad investment because even if there is a successful drug, after the initial stockpiling the market size is limited.”
I wish to heck I’d bought Tekmira two months ago when it was selling at $13. Had a nice run up to $30 but now it’s dropped back.
Further to my post #55. Tekmira’s product is a vaccine. Monsanto has invested in it, which means it’s a promising drug.
Hypothetical. If someone had a cure for ebola and other viruses that was very very cheap, what do you think would happen?
I'd say you should learn proper use of the apostrophe.
Why wouldn’t the shareholders support following capitalism that adheres to both of Adam Smiths works?
Why wouldn’t the shareholders themselves support helping “Samaritans” and support owners who called for this (either at shareholder meetings or whatnot)?
What gives you the right to take our money? Get your hands out of my pockets. My hard work pays for MY family, and MY country. Not an African country half way across the world.
You keep bringing morality into the side of an argument which is in truth the immoral course of action. You want to take millions and millions out of American pockets, starving their children, hurting their loved ones, to give it to African countries that will waste it.
I know I’m not the only one getting tired of your socialist evil banter. I’m starting to get pretty angry, if you won’t listen. Then leave. You are advocating for massive theft and the destruction of American livelihoods. How in the hell is that the moral thing to do?
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