Ever heard about all the self-centered jerks who don't bother to do even half of what Salk did, at enormous personal sacrifice, but still run around the Internet self-righteously prescribing how other people (never themselves!) should spend their free time and resources?
If everybody acted like Salk, or Mother Theresa, or Albert Schweitzer, big farma would vanish overnight, and most of the world's troubles would vanish as well.
But instead everybody rants about big pharma's profit motive; while callously going about their daily business of self-service; and demanding that the government force somebody else, somewhere else, to give up their lifestyle in the service of a better tomorrow for all mankind.
I mean, let's look at you. You hold up Salk as an example, but tell me, how far have you traveled in his footsteps lately? How much further forward have you carried his work? How much have you treasured his legacy and helped it prosper? How do you live with yourself, when at the end of the day you think of all the things you could have done to better humanity, but didn't do because you were more interested in profiting yourself?
It seems to me that if countries with socialized medicine programs truly cared about helping their people, they'd expend massive amounts of resources on R&D, beat the free market big pharma companies to the punch, secure the patents themselves, and distribute the drugs freely to their people.
It will be interesting to see how well Sweden, Canada, et al do in this scenario, where they don't even have to worry about free market competition.
Ten bucks says in ten year's time, free market big pharma will have figured out a way to profit from this discovery, while socialized medicine still hasn't invested enough resources in it to make a difference one way or the other.
Have you done anything lately, at your own expense, to make a cure for cancer truly accessible to the non-rich?
I'm sure that if you wanted to, you could quit your job today and dedicate all your talent to developing a cheap cure for cancer. You could work for minimum wage, or even work for nothing at all, subsisting off of soup kitchens and the kindness of strangers.
So how do you explain your insistence on putting your own personal preferences ahead of a cure for cancer and a better tomorrow for hundreds of thousands of people? And as long as you insist on being selfish like this, how do you justify judging what other people do with the same freedoms you abuse every day?
Since this breakthrough seems to have come from a university, and most U.S. universities receive government grants, I'm pretty sure that government funding played a part in it.
But given government's track record with responsible use of power, I'd much rather see government in a limited regulatory capacity (like the FAA) or stimulatory capacity (like NASA), putting reasonable bounds on private enterprise or encouraging technological advances in particular areas, than see government in an active manufacturing or commercial capacity.
But yeah, the government should contract this out and give it away... just as soon as they can convince their constituents it's worth the tax increase.
After all, somebody has to get paid to do the work, and that paycheck has to come from somewhere. If the market can't convince people to pay for it, then the government either has to convince people to pay taxes for it, or else conclude that people don't really want it all that much after all.
Who are you to dicate how a free individual uses their resources, or how they spend the wealth their work produces for them?
If it's wrong to spend your time developing Viagra and selling it to misguided middle-aged salarymen, and we should take things away from such people and make them spend their time on cure for cancer instead, then what about you?
You're obviously intelligent and skilled, and yet you're probably not doing anything to help cure cancer, are you? So when can we expect to see you give up your job, quit posting to Slashdot in your leisure time, and join a cancer-cure R&D team at minimum wage? Anything less, and we'll find you guilty of exercising your freedom for your own benefit at the expense of your fellow man, and we'll force you to be a more productive and helpful member of society.
So if this medecine is so wonderful, and developing medecines for profit is so evil, why doesn't this University start mass-producing this medecine and giving it away for free?
This just in: developing medecines takes work, and work costs resources. Anybody who can think of a better way to provide resources to the people interested in developing medecines, besides patent royalties and the like, please come forward.
And anybody who thinks that people should use their own resources to develop medecines, and then not ask for anything in return when they offer those medecines to the public, are kindly invited to drop whatever they're doing right now, that puts food on the table and a roof over their heads, and devote everything they have to developing medecines for free.
Totally. NASA's purpose is basically to stimulate new research and development into certain fields of technology and science. Solving the problems associated with a manned Mars mission, or manned Moon missions of long duration, or long-range solar system survey probes, is exactly what NASA should be focusing its limited resources on.
LEO satellites are not a challenging new technology anymore, thanks in part to many years of NASA participation in mastering the technology.
It's totally appropriate at this time for cutting-edge R&D organizations like NASA to bow out or the LEO satellite field, and keep their focus on the big problems in aerospace.
There's plenty of proven satellite launch vehicles to choose from, and satellite launch services offered by a number of different space agencies around the world. Satellites are getting cheaper to design and build, and the know-how is getting more and more commonplace at universities and aerospace contractors.
Not only that, but we're about to see private satellite lauch service providers arrive on the market.
Putting up more Earth-observation satellites has reached the wonderful point where it's now too pedestrian for NASA to spend much effort on. It's time for universities, private contractors, and other government agencies to embrace the commodification of LEO satellites, buy or build their own, and put them into orbit using the service provider of their choice.
And let us hope that what NASA has done for LEO observation, it will go on to do for manned space stations, moon bases, and Mars science.
That's all very well for the first half of the interview, but what about the second half, where the developer doesn't get spoon-fed a textbook-perfect ideal case, but is expected to carry out due diligence and get the job done right anyway? Kinda hard to test the guy's ability to get the work done when you do all the work for him.
Fair enough. Since lawsuits are an option, we only see the tip of the unregluated iceberg.
It's entirely likely that if lawsuits weren't an option, and the Internet was substantially unregulated, a lot of the **AA's legal fees would instead go to unscrupulous technicians who could bring down the entire (torrent) network.
I'm treating the meatspace lawsuits and the unregulated torrent poisoning as two separate things: torrent-poisoning and other commons-ruining behaviors is exactly what we should expect from an unregulated Internet. Vicious mercenary lawsuits are exactly what we should expect from... well, from the way we've arranged our society.
Not hyperbole at all. Yes, they are breaking laws. All I'm saying is that the manner in which they're breaking the laws happens to be the same manner in which they--and all powerful entities on the Internet--would behave if there happened to be no laws to break. They're playing as if the Internet is unregulated, with predictable results.
This, by the way, is what the unregulated Internet looks like: the rich and powerful perpetrating their own rough justice upon the masses, unencumbered by any law or rule.
I would totally be in favor of an apology-for-show, except for the very real risk that the guy could then hire some lawyers and go to court and claim that the apology shows that PayPal is at fault. No few scraps of good PR are worth the legal costs of even hinting at an admission of guilt.
That's not the incentive the OP refers to. She doesn't say, I don't wish my company to lose money because it's perceived as evil".
She says "I don't wish my company's stockholders to go to hell (for investing in an evil company)".
It's her concern for the destination of her stockholder's souls in the afterlife that motivates her, not her interest in bringing wealth or commercial activity to her company.
Honestly, I can't figure out why people are having so much trouble with the idea that "saving souls in the afterlife" and "making money now today" are two totally differnt and unrelated goals that, at best, may share a certain "two birds with one stone" solution in a given scenario, but are still not actually related.
And interpreting anything that has value as something with economic value is a fairly--I would say overly--broad interpretation.
It seems to me intuitive that moral benefits != economic benefits; they're two different categories of benefits.
It's not like I'm saying that only economic value is real value. I'm saying that a person might give up econimic value in exchange for moral value, because the two things are different.
I normally think of "economic incentives" as things that increase my own material wealth over the short term. Long-term, macroeconomic goods I tend to file under "social incentives". But that's just me. I can think of no logical reason why your definition should be wrong.
The incentive I was referring was the incentive to save shareholders from Hell, by taking steps to ensure they weren't holding stock in an "evil" company.
How about "I don't wish my shareholders to go to hell for owning shares in an evil company".
If you don't think my description of this incentive (faith-based, moral) is accurate, I'd be happy to discuss it politely with you. But if all you're going to to is say "fuck" and rant about how evil religion is and whatnot, please go grief the OP, and leave me out of it.
What do you mean? I don't understand what your comment has to do with the topic of this thread, even though it seems like you might have some very interesting thoughts to share.
Doesn't change much, as far as I can tell. Makes it easier to figure out where to put the blame, but probably doesn't mean that PayPal can simply pretend that they don't currently have the account listed as an undocumented nonprofit account, with all the hassle that involves. I mean, regardless of where the blame actually lies (and really, in this kind of "he said, she said" scenario, playing the blame game doesn't much interest me), PayPal probably can't fix the situation quickly and easily.
I'm simply playing a semantic game: Find things that fit the description: rational, economic, incentive.
Faith-based incentives aren't rational.
Incentives to save your soul from Hell in the afterlife aren't economic, because they don't offer an economic reward. Rather, they're spiritual, because they offer a spiritual reward.
You seem to think that an incentive is "economic" if it has anything to do with econonmics, but that's not the defining characteristic of an incentive. The defining characteristic of an incentive is what kind of reward it offers: in this case, a spiritual reward, making it a spiritual incentive.
All I'm saying is that the incentive to save someone's soul from the after life doesn't fit the OP's criteria of "rational economic incentive". It doesn't fit the first criteria because faith isn't rational. And it doesn't fit the second criteria because spiritual rewards in the afterlife are not economic rewards in this life.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard about all the self-centered jerks who don't bother to do even half of what Salk did, at enormous personal sacrifice, but still run around the Internet self-righteously prescribing how other people (never themselves!) should spend their free time and resources?
If everybody acted like Salk, or Mother Theresa, or Albert Schweitzer, big farma would vanish overnight, and most of the world's troubles would vanish as well.
But instead everybody rants about big pharma's profit motive; while callously going about their daily business of self-service; and demanding that the government force somebody else, somewhere else, to give up their lifestyle in the service of a better tomorrow for all mankind.
I mean, let's look at you. You hold up Salk as an example, but tell me, how far have you traveled in his footsteps lately? How much further forward have you carried his work? How much have you treasured his legacy and helped it prosper? How do you live with yourself, when at the end of the day you think of all the things you could have done to better humanity, but didn't do because you were more interested in profiting yourself?
Oops!
In that case, I'd still wager that government funding has played a part in this breakthrough.
And I stand by the rest of the post to which you replied.
Thanks for the correction, though!
It seems to me that if countries with socialized medicine programs truly cared about helping their people, they'd expend massive amounts of resources on R&D, beat the free market big pharma companies to the punch, secure the patents themselves, and distribute the drugs freely to their people.
It will be interesting to see how well Sweden, Canada, et al do in this scenario, where they don't even have to worry about free market competition.
Ten bucks says in ten year's time, free market big pharma will have figured out a way to profit from this discovery, while socialized medicine still hasn't invested enough resources in it to make a difference one way or the other.
Have you done anything lately, at your own expense, to make a cure for cancer truly accessible to the non-rich?
I'm sure that if you wanted to, you could quit your job today and dedicate all your talent to developing a cheap cure for cancer. You could work for minimum wage, or even work for nothing at all, subsisting off of soup kitchens and the kindness of strangers.
So how do you explain your insistence on putting your own personal preferences ahead of a cure for cancer and a better tomorrow for hundreds of thousands of people? And as long as you insist on being selfish like this, how do you justify judging what other people do with the same freedoms you abuse every day?
Yeah, but "recoup their investment" is evil for-profit big pharma thinking.
Surely the cure for cancer is worth more than the fiscal stability of a university, right?
Since this breakthrough seems to have come from a university, and most U.S. universities receive government grants, I'm pretty sure that government funding played a part in it.
But given government's track record with responsible use of power, I'd much rather see government in a limited regulatory capacity (like the FAA) or stimulatory capacity (like NASA), putting reasonable bounds on private enterprise or encouraging technological advances in particular areas, than see government in an active manufacturing or commercial capacity.
But yeah, the government should contract this out and give it away... just as soon as they can convince their constituents it's worth the tax increase.
After all, somebody has to get paid to do the work, and that paycheck has to come from somewhere. If the market can't convince people to pay for it, then the government either has to convince people to pay taxes for it, or else conclude that people don't really want it all that much after all.
Who are you to dicate how a free individual uses their resources, or how they spend the wealth their work produces for them?
If it's wrong to spend your time developing Viagra and selling it to misguided middle-aged salarymen, and we should take things away from such people and make them spend their time on cure for cancer instead, then what about you?
You're obviously intelligent and skilled, and yet you're probably not doing anything to help cure cancer, are you? So when can we expect to see you give up your job, quit posting to Slashdot in your leisure time, and join a cancer-cure R&D team at minimum wage? Anything less, and we'll find you guilty of exercising your freedom for your own benefit at the expense of your fellow man, and we'll force you to be a more productive and helpful member of society.
So if this medecine is so wonderful, and developing medecines for profit is so evil, why doesn't this University start mass-producing this medecine and giving it away for free?
This just in: developing medecines takes work, and work costs resources. Anybody who can think of a better way to provide resources to the people interested in developing medecines, besides patent royalties and the like, please come forward.
And anybody who thinks that people should use their own resources to develop medecines, and then not ask for anything in return when they offer those medecines to the public, are kindly invited to drop whatever they're doing right now, that puts food on the table and a roof over their heads, and devote everything they have to developing medecines for free.
Totally. NASA's purpose is basically to stimulate new research and development into certain fields of technology and science. Solving the problems associated with a manned Mars mission, or manned Moon missions of long duration, or long-range solar system survey probes, is exactly what NASA should be focusing its limited resources on.
LEO satellites are not a challenging new technology anymore, thanks in part to many years of NASA participation in mastering the technology.
It's totally appropriate at this time for cutting-edge R&D organizations like NASA to bow out or the LEO satellite field, and keep their focus on the big problems in aerospace.
There's plenty of proven satellite launch vehicles to choose from, and satellite launch services offered by a number of different space agencies around the world. Satellites are getting cheaper to design and build, and the know-how is getting more and more commonplace at universities and aerospace contractors.
Not only that, but we're about to see private satellite lauch service providers arrive on the market.
Putting up more Earth-observation satellites has reached the wonderful point where it's now too pedestrian for NASA to spend much effort on. It's time for universities, private contractors, and other government agencies to embrace the commodification of LEO satellites, buy or build their own, and put them into orbit using the service provider of their choice.
And let us hope that what NASA has done for LEO observation, it will go on to do for manned space stations, moon bases, and Mars science.
That's all very well for the first half of the interview, but what about the second half, where the developer doesn't get spoon-fed a textbook-perfect ideal case, but is expected to carry out due diligence and get the job done right anyway? Kinda hard to test the guy's ability to get the work done when you do all the work for him.
Farenheit made the scale first, then marked where on the scale water froze: at 32 degrees on the Farenheit scale.
Celsius made the marks first, and then made the scale, starting with the freezing point of water as zero on the Celsius scale.
It's not really THAT nonsensical.
Fair enough. Since lawsuits are an option, we only see the tip of the unregluated iceberg.
It's entirely likely that if lawsuits weren't an option, and the Internet was substantially unregulated, a lot of the **AA's legal fees would instead go to unscrupulous technicians who could bring down the entire (torrent) network.
I'm treating the meatspace lawsuits and the unregulated torrent poisoning as two separate things: torrent-poisoning and other commons-ruining behaviors is exactly what we should expect from an unregulated Internet. Vicious mercenary lawsuits are exactly what we should expect from... well, from the way we've arranged our society.
Not hyperbole at all. Yes, they are breaking laws. All I'm saying is that the manner in which they're breaking the laws happens to be the same manner in which they--and all powerful entities on the Internet--would behave if there happened to be no laws to break. They're playing as if the Internet is unregulated, with predictable results.
This, by the way, is what the unregulated Internet looks like: the rich and powerful perpetrating their own rough justice upon the masses, unencumbered by any law or rule.
I would totally be in favor of an apology-for-show, except for the very real risk that the guy could then hire some lawyers and go to court and claim that the apology shows that PayPal is at fault. No few scraps of good PR are worth the legal costs of even hinting at an admission of guilt.
That's not the incentive the OP refers to. She doesn't say, I don't wish my company to lose money because it's perceived as evil".
She says "I don't wish my company's stockholders to go to hell (for investing in an evil company)".
It's her concern for the destination of her stockholder's souls in the afterlife that motivates her, not her interest in bringing wealth or commercial activity to her company.
Honestly, I can't figure out why people are having so much trouble with the idea that "saving souls in the afterlife" and "making money now today" are two totally differnt and unrelated goals that, at best, may share a certain "two birds with one stone" solution in a given scenario, but are still not actually related.
And interpreting anything that has value as something with economic value is a fairly--I would say overly--broad interpretation.
It seems to me intuitive that moral benefits != economic benefits; they're two different categories of benefits.
It's not like I'm saying that only economic value is real value. I'm saying that a person might give up econimic value in exchange for moral value, because the two things are different.
Beats me. I guess you're right.
I normally think of "economic incentives" as things that increase my own material wealth over the short term. Long-term, macroeconomic goods I tend to file under "social incentives". But that's just me. I can think of no logical reason why your definition should be wrong.
You can find the original incentive here:
If you don't think my description of this incentive (faith-based, moral) is accurate, I'd be happy to discuss it politely with you. But if all you're going to to is say "fuck" and rant about how evil religion is and whatnot, please go grief the OP, and leave me out of it.
Thanks!
What do you mean? I don't understand what your comment has to do with the topic of this thread, even though it seems like you might have some very interesting thoughts to share.
Doesn't change much, as far as I can tell. Makes it easier to figure out where to put the blame, but probably doesn't mean that PayPal can simply pretend that they don't currently have the account listed as an undocumented nonprofit account, with all the hassle that involves. I mean, regardless of where the blame actually lies (and really, in this kind of "he said, she said" scenario, playing the blame game doesn't much interest me), PayPal probably can't fix the situation quickly and easily.
I'm simply playing a semantic game: Find things that fit the description: rational, economic, incentive.
Faith-based incentives aren't rational.
Incentives to save your soul from Hell in the afterlife aren't economic, because they don't offer an economic reward. Rather, they're spiritual, because they offer a spiritual reward.
You seem to think that an incentive is "economic" if it has anything to do with econonmics, but that's not the defining characteristic of an incentive. The defining characteristic of an incentive is what kind of reward it offers: in this case, a spiritual reward, making it a spiritual incentive.
All I'm saying is that the incentive to save someone's soul from the after life doesn't fit the OP's criteria of "rational economic incentive". It doesn't fit the first criteria because faith isn't rational. And it doesn't fit the second criteria because spiritual rewards in the afterlife are not economic rewards in this life.
And now I know the rest of the story. Thanks!