I'm no fan of the telecoms, or the way they are regulated, or the way they buy politicians. It sucks. But you can't honestly be suggesting that telecommunications hasn't become both cheaper and better in the last decade can you?
Please enumerate the market preconditions you feel are missing in education and health care. Bonus points if those preconditions aren't missing due to government policies;)
Looking objectively at coffee prices historically we see the 1975 coffee price in the US was $1.2940 ($4.7194 in 2004 dollars) per pound, in 2004 if was $2.8920 per pound. So the real price of coffee has declined.
I remeber paying $50 for my nintendo games in the 1980s... and today video games are about... $50. Please note though, $50 1985 is about $88.73 in 2005 dollars. So yes, video games have gotten cheaper in real dollars.
Books... hmm... pulling a pocketbook with a printing date of 1996 off my shelf... it was selling for $6.99 ($8.48 in 2005 dollars). Today I pay about $7.50 for a pocketbook. So I'd say books are declining in price as well.
As I noted: finite supply of land + increasing population = higher housing costs. But even there, those areas with strong government restrictions on development (supply) experience much greater housing costs than those that don't.
b. groceries (the healthy variant, not cheap frankenfoods you are so fond of).
Sure, I an buy (and do buy) much better food than I could 10 years ago. And yes it's more expensive. But the same groceries I bought ten years ago are cheaper.
c. energy Funny, I seem to remember oil prices going through the floor in 1997 when demand fell. Energy goes up and down, people just only notice on the upswing. Even now, gas prices aren't at a record high in the US in real dollars, only nominal dollars. Commodities do that, as I noted in my post.
That must be why our groceries are so expensive and inaccessible. Or the total lack of improvement over time in our electronics. Or the constant increase in price in our clothing.
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action. Every other market you care to point to either
a) Has seen declining prices and increasing quality. b) Involves trade in a finite commodity (think land, even gas goes up and down with the commodity price, which goes up and down with supply and demand).
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.
I doubt you will see much uptake from a PHP running on the JVM. When you port a langauge to the JVM, you typically leave behind the C bound modules, because they just DON'T play well with the JVM (frequently non-thread safe, etc). For this reason languages that have nothing to offer but their c bound modules (Perl, PHP) don't fair well. Languages like Python and Ruby that have significant things to recommend them as languages do much better.
Bad working conditions and low status
on
Do Kids Still Program?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Even more than the pay (which isn't actually all that bad if you annualize it) the working conditions and the low status just kill being a teacher. The conditions teachers have to work under are horrible. Not only do you have poorly disciplined children to deal with, but you can't establish order or the psycho parents will get you. Your principle will in the best of circumstances provide no help, and in the worst be a petty tyrant. No matter how well you do your job, it will garner no added respect over the folks who are just phoning it in.
Then look at the status issue. In the US, status comes from two places: economics and education. Congratulations, a grad student making $10k a year or less has more status than you do, because teachers generally come from the bottom 30% of college graduates. All the bright people you might want to socialize with have vivid memories of both the REALLY dumb teachers they had coming up through school, and of the education majors they knew in college for whom Tuesday was the start of weekend because they had so little work to do. The automatic presumption when you tell people you are a teacher is that you aren't very bright, and that you are pretty lazy.
Then look at the unionization issue. You pay dues every week to be represented by group of folks who are actively trying to protect the most knuckle dragging segments of your profession. They actively oppose trying to pay you decently for teaching well. They have driven the system in which you work into one that is based solely on seniority. Seniority systems are HORRIBLE for everyone but the dead weight. Change job, loose your seniority and see your pay plummet. So after a few years you are TRAPPED in your job. A huge percentage of your compensation is backended onto your union pension, so to get most of your compensation you have to stick out the 30 years to retirement. How do you think your principle and superintendent treat you when they know going anywhere else to work means a 30-50% drop in pay for you? Do they treat you as a valued contributor, or a serf? If you really want to see the degree to which you are treated like livestock look at the 403b offerings your union recommends. In many case they are the most amazingly bad, high fee, low return things imaginable. You frequently would be better off in a money market account. But the plans basically bribe the unions and union officials, and you get sold like a sucker.
Contrast that with being a bright young programmer. Pay is relatively good. As you prove yourself to be better, your pay rises quickly. If you decide to change jobs, you are likely to see a pay increase. Programming is still somewhat of a prestige career, not top of the status ladder, but fairly up there. It is likely if you are any good you have management who is interested in keeping you happy and productive, because they are afraid you will leave for somewhere else. Typically as a programmer you have radical flex time. You can telecommute at least part time. You are constantly learning and things are constantly changing (the latter is not for everyone, but I like it a lot). You are capitalized appropriately (in otherwords, your employer provides the equipment you need to get your job done).
Why the hell would anyone who can program want to teach in the public schools?
I don't hold what I would consider to be a current informed opinion on global warming. The last time I looked closely at the science for myself (about 10 years ago) the models being used were garbage (ie, non-falsifiable).
About 13 years ago I remember having a discussion with a professor of atmospheric science, who even then (early 90s) was complaining that it was becoming almost impossible to do real science in the field because you had to take money from one side or the other, and if your research didn't match the results they wanted, forget future funding... I imagine it's even worse now.
Effectively, libel is dead. If you, as a journalist, publish mean, false things about Bill Gates, a public figure, then you can only be found guilty of libel if it can be proved that you acted with 'actual malice'. See Sullivan v New York Times (1964). Historically, malice has been almost impossible to prove, and people have lost libel cases against parties who were proven to have published falsehoods against them, who were proven to have KNOWN those falshoods were false prior to publication, but by whom malice could not be proven. You are worrying for nothing, you can basically make any statements you would like about a public figure with impunity.
I find it ironic that effectively McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance, sold as trying to restrict the influence of money on campaigns, may ultimately dictate that ONLY people with sufficiently large piles of money to set up traditional media outlets get to speak. Effectively it gags everyone but the most wealthy. Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox) will always be able to express his opinion through his media holdings under McCain Feingold, but thousands of citizens of more modest means won't be able to join together and express theirs through forming a PAC to advertise within 60 days of an election. Bill Gates could push his views through MSNBC and MSN (please note, I'm not implying that he does), but Glenn Reynolds, law professor, is facing the risk of being gagged.
Anyone here still think McCain Feingold campaign finance is a good idea? Anyone still dispute that money is speech?
Nope... not homebrew at all. This was a lab set up to emulate a telco CO, complete with the room full of batteries. Have you ever seen a piece of service provider class equipment with a DC power supply? Or even a DC powered server for that matter? They are almost all designed to have wire run right up to their connectors. Seriously. I wouldn't have believed it if I'd not worked with it. The way these things are handled you typically have large risers per row, from which power DC power is distributed to fuse panels in select bays (along really thick wires). You wire your equipment with an adequate gauge wire to one of those fuse panel slots, stick in an appropriate fuse, and away you go.
There are definite advantages to DC power... but it can also be *hugely* annoying.
I've worked in DC powered labs.
There isn't really any concept of 'plug' in the DC powered world. Powering up a device usually entails reading it's current draw off the equipment, selecting the correct gauge of wire, cutting the correct length of wire, strip both ends, hook up to your DC distribution on one end and your equipment on the other, select about the right size fuse, plug it in... etc. It's a royal pain. Oh, and make sure you do it correctly, because it's not that hard to electrecute yourself...
Nearly every engineer I've ever worked with whose been exposed to DC powered labs has begged to return to the AC powered world... it's just MUCH easier to work with.
On the flip side though... telco racks rock! Nothing beats hex head rack screws... you can literally drive them in at a 45 degree angle with a power drill and it's OK. It makes going back to the world of crappy philips head data wrack screws that you occasionally have to drill out because the head has stripped very annoying.
The general tendency of corporate providers of Linux to favor Gnome because of the licensing terms. If you are a writer of commercial software, or any software that isn't GPL compatible, you cannot use the Qt/KDE stack for your app. You can use the LGPL GTK/Gnome stack. Because a big part of the selling point of commerical Linux distros is the fact that other commercial software is certified to run on them, they MUST provide good support for GTK/Gnome. Now you get some bean counter coming through wondering why we are supporting two desktop environments. Well, you can't cut the GTK/Gnome stack, because of the commercial support, because of the licensing. So they cut (or under resource) KDE.
Please note, I'm a GPL proponent for the most part. I understand fully *why* trolltech does what it does with QT, and approve of their business model, but it's the use of the GPL for infrastructure libraries in Qt/KDE that is driving the commercial side towards Gnome/GTK.
As for me... I'd kill for Qt bindings for Eclipse... but the Eclipse Public License is not GPL compatible, and the GPL is intrinsically incompatible with the mixed open source/commercial plugin ecosystem around Eclipse, and so it will never happen. As a result I'm trapped with the Gnome moronicly 'usable' file dialog, which constantly makes my life hard...
It would be nice if a balance could be struck between the ideals of the GPL (which I don't oppose) and some other licenses. For example, it would be nice to see compatibility with the Eclipse Public License (which the FSF doesn't seem to think poorly of, it just happens to be incompatible). Please note, I'm *NOT* seeking an FSF sell out of their ideals here, I ascribe to them myself in my private Open Source contributions, but rather consideration of how not to have the GPL be an impediment to projects that don't violate those ideals, but happen to be using other licenses.
Yes Bill Gates is really that bad. In particular because the extraordinarily shady way he made his billions tars millions of ethical business owners and managers who have played the game above board.
While *Microsoft* tends to only engage in self-serving philanthropy (giving things away to enhance their business interests in the long term), I have to give kudos to Gates for his foundation. Everything I've ever seen the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation give money to has been a very important cause with absolutely no potential to benefit them or MS materially in any way.
In particular, Gates has backed research into treating the maladies that vex the third world. These are diseases that do incredible harm, but frankly aren't commercially worth the spending medical research dollars on because the people they afflict are so poor. This is why a few hundred million here and there from Gates is such a huge thing. He spends the money that no commercial interest could ever justify spending to try to alleviate the suffering of the worlds poorest residents.
Don't get me wrong here, I have nothing positive to say about how Bill made his money, but he does deserver credit for how he disposes of it through his charity.
In the purest sense, I can agree with you. I (unlike many other people) am clearly aware that patents are a government granted monopoly, not a God given right. However, given that there are very high costs for drug development, approval, and introduction (including, quite validly, some marketing, because if no one knows about your wizbang new drug, it doesn't help anyone).
I've always thought an interesting alteration to the patent process would be to grant patents from date of drug approval (which would effectively be an extention currently, as patents for drugs date from *way* before drug approval). Track the cost of development and approval for that drug. Assign the 'drug equity' to be four times that price (to reflect the cost of drugs that failed in the same period). Allow any other organization that would like to manufacture that drug to buy into the 'drug equity' by buying a prorated share of the 'drug equity' from the current stake holders. Finally, when the patent expires, the drug is freely manufacturable by all as normal.
For example, imagine XYZ Corp develops an amazing new anti-hypertension drug, which they market as RelaxRX. Say it cost $750 million to develop and get approval for RelaxRX. So the 'drug equity' is set at $3 billion. ACME Generic Corp sees huge potential in RelaxRX, and wants to bring their super efficient manufacturing expertise to bear manufacturing it, so they pay XYZ Corp $1.5 billion for an equal share of the 'drug equity' (XYZ may not refuse). Time goes on and RelaxRX is even more successfull than people thought. So DrugsRus Corp wants in. They need to buy a third of the 'drug equity' from the existing players, so they pay $500 million to XYZ Corp, and $500 million to ACME Generic ( for a total of $1 billion) to get the rights to be the third manufacturer. And so on. XYZ Corp gets their reimbursement, other players can get in and drive down the cost if it makes market sense.
Agreed. Samples aren't designated for anyone. But I've been up and I've been down in my life finiancially, and had a lot of friends who have to, and on several occasions the only reason I got the meds I needed was because my doctor gave me samples that covered my entire need for that drug. I've had other friends experience the same when they were essentially broke and uninsured. Sample drugs can be a real lifeline when you're broke and uninsured.
It's sort of silly to discuss the 'fair compensation' requirement in the US constitution with regard to a Taiwanese company taking something... however I'll jump in anyway:)
In the US, you are required to provide 'fair' compensation when a government takes something by eminent domain. In the case of real estate (which is where eminent domain is usually used) it's damn hard to *really* pin down a fair market price, because each item of real estate is unique, and the market is relatively illiquid.
For something like a drug that has already been brought to market, the item in question is a commodity being sold in a very liquid market. It's clear what the market price of the drug is in each market effected. My guess is that you then owe the company retail for each dose, possibly minus manufacturing costs.
You did catch that $745 billion of that marketing cost was for voluntary withdrawl of Vioxx from the market right? You are also aware that about half of the marketing budget is usually drug samples, which are given away by physicians to low income patients, right? You are also aware that the drug discount cards that Merck provides to assist various populations from senior citizens to low income people in affording their medicines are also part of that marketing budget, right? I strongly suspect that if you subtracted away all of the things that get lumped into marketing that could rightfully be billed as 'protect public health and improve access to drugs for the poor' you would no longer find marketing trumping R&D in terms of spending.
In a sane world, you would be correct. But welcome to the wonderful world of Wickard v Filburn, brought to use by FDR's packed Supreme Court, where enumerated powers are no longer enumerated, and you might as well ignore the 9th and 10th ammendment to the constitution. Essentially, Wickard says the government can do pretty much anything under the commerce clause and the general welfare clause. In a sane world, one might argue that the only authority for granting pattents at all comes from Article I, Section 8, clause 8, but in FDRs bizaro world were we all live today, you can just as easily derive the authority to grant patents without restriction from the commerce clause under Wickard.
Thank you FDR, nobody really needed liberty anyway!
Please don't take this the wrong way, I intend no implication as to the rightness or wrongness of the EU's desired goals with this post, but how the hell are they going to force the US to relinquish control of the DNS root again?
The best they can possibly hope to acheive is to splinter DNS by erecting an alternate root, and compelling they're ISPs by force of law to use that root. Somehow, that just doesn't seem constructive to me.
Please also don't take this the wrong way, but I expect most American's wouldn't notice such a split. The American root would continue to point to the top level country code servers that are already legitimately in place, the American roots would keep pointing to the same contract holders for the other tlds (com,edu,org,net, etc). If the EU root tried to force a new EU com contract holder, most international businesses would just pay to be in both (the US market being to large to walk away from). It's pretty much an exercise in futility to go the splitting route.
So what exactly does the EU think it is going to accomplish here, other than the emotional satisfaction of railing against the US?
You don't have to be a transhuman. I got through a physics and math degree by derivation. I don't remember things well, but I have a good intuitive grasp of things. So I would generally derive what I needed as I went along. It worked fairly well for many things...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no fan of the telecoms, or the way they are regulated, or the way they buy politicians. It sucks. But you can't honestly be suggesting that telecommunications hasn't become both cheaper and better in the last decade can you?
Please enumerate the market preconditions you feel are missing in education and health care. Bonus points if those preconditions aren't missing due to government policies ;)
Are you really arguing that we are in a health care and education bubble?
Looking objectively at coffee prices historically we see the 1975 coffee price in the US was $1.2940 ($4.7194 in 2004 dollars) per pound, in 2004 if was $2.8920 per pound. So the real price of coffee has declined.
I remeber paying $50 for my nintendo games in the 1980s... and today video games are about... $50. Please note though, $50 1985 is about $88.73 in 2005 dollars. So yes, video games have gotten cheaper in real dollars.
Books... hmm... pulling a pocketbook with a printing date of 1996 off my shelf... it was selling for $6.99 ($8.48 in 2005 dollars). Today I pay about $7.50 for a pocketbook. So I'd say books are declining in price as well.
Please try again
a. housing
As I noted: finite supply of land + increasing population = higher housing costs. But even there, those areas with strong government restrictions on development (supply) experience much greater housing costs than those that don't.
b. groceries (the healthy variant, not cheap frankenfoods you are so fond of).
Sure, I an buy (and do buy) much better food than I could 10 years ago. And yes it's more expensive. But the same groceries I bought ten years ago are cheaper.
c. energy
Funny, I seem to remember oil prices going through the floor in 1997 when demand fell. Energy goes up and down, people just only notice on the upswing. Even now, gas prices aren't at a record high in the US in real dollars, only nominal dollars. Commodities do that, as I noted in my post.
That must be why our groceries are so expensive and inaccessible. Or the total lack of improvement over time in our electronics. Or the constant increase in price in our clothing.
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action. Every other market you care to point to either
a) Has seen declining prices and increasing quality.
b) Involves trade in a finite commodity (think land, even gas goes up and down with the commodity price, which goes up and down with supply and demand).
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.
I doubt you will see much uptake from a PHP running on the JVM. When you port a langauge to the JVM, you typically leave behind the C bound modules, because they just DON'T play well with the JVM (frequently non-thread safe, etc). For this reason languages that have nothing to offer but their c bound modules (Perl, PHP) don't fair well. Languages like Python and Ruby that have significant things to recommend them as languages do much better.
Even more than the pay (which isn't actually all that bad if you annualize it) the working conditions and the low status just kill being a teacher. The conditions teachers have to work under are horrible. Not only do you have poorly disciplined children to deal with, but you can't establish order or the psycho parents will get you. Your principle will in the best of circumstances provide no help, and in the worst be a petty tyrant. No matter how well you do your job, it will garner no added respect over the folks who are just phoning it in.
Then look at the status issue. In the US, status comes from two places: economics and education. Congratulations, a grad student making $10k a year or less has more status than you do, because teachers generally come from the bottom 30% of college graduates. All the bright people you might want to socialize with have vivid memories of both the REALLY dumb teachers they had coming up through school, and of the education majors they knew in college for whom Tuesday was the start of weekend because they had so little work to do. The automatic presumption when you tell people you are a teacher is that you aren't very bright, and that you are pretty lazy.
Then look at the unionization issue. You pay dues every week to be represented by group of folks who are actively trying to protect the most knuckle dragging segments of your profession. They actively oppose trying to pay you decently for teaching well. They have driven the system in which you work into one that is based solely on seniority. Seniority systems are HORRIBLE for everyone but the dead weight. Change job, loose your seniority and see your pay plummet. So after a few years you are TRAPPED in your job. A huge percentage of your compensation is backended onto your union pension, so to get most of your compensation you have to stick out the 30 years to retirement. How do you think your principle and superintendent treat you when they know going anywhere else to work means a 30-50% drop in pay for you? Do they treat you as a valued contributor, or a serf? If you really want to see the degree to which you are treated like livestock look at the 403b offerings your union recommends. In many case they are the most amazingly bad, high fee, low return things imaginable. You frequently would be better off in a money market account. But the plans basically bribe the unions and union officials, and you get sold like a sucker.
Contrast that with being a bright young programmer. Pay is relatively good. As you prove yourself to be better, your pay rises quickly. If you decide to change jobs, you are likely to see a pay increase. Programming is still somewhat of a prestige career, not top of the status ladder, but fairly up there. It is likely if you are any good you have management who is interested in keeping you happy and productive, because they are afraid you will leave for somewhere else. Typically as a programmer you have radical flex time. You can telecommute at least part time. You are constantly learning and things are constantly changing (the latter is not for everyone, but I like it a lot). You are capitalized appropriately (in otherwords, your employer provides the equipment you need to get your job done).
Why the hell would anyone who can program want to teach in the public schools?
I don't hold what I would consider to be a current informed opinion on global warming. The last time I looked closely at the science for myself (about 10 years ago) the models being used were garbage (ie, non-falsifiable).
About 13 years ago I remember having a discussion with a professor of atmospheric science, who even then (early 90s) was complaining that it was becoming almost impossible to do real science in the field because you had to take money from one side or the other, and if your research didn't match the results they wanted, forget future funding... I imagine it's even worse now.
Effectively, libel is dead. If you, as a journalist, publish mean, false things about Bill Gates, a public figure, then you can only be found guilty of libel if it can be proved that you acted with 'actual malice'. See Sullivan v New York Times (1964). Historically, malice has been almost impossible to prove, and people have lost libel cases against parties who were proven to have published falsehoods against them, who were proven to have KNOWN those falshoods were false prior to publication, but by whom malice could not be proven. You are worrying for nothing, you can basically make any statements you would like about a public figure with impunity.
I find it ironic that effectively McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance, sold as trying to restrict the influence of money on campaigns, may ultimately dictate that ONLY people with sufficiently large piles of money to set up traditional media outlets get to speak. Effectively it gags everyone but the most wealthy. Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox) will always be able to express his opinion through his media holdings under McCain Feingold, but thousands of citizens of more modest means won't be able to join together and express theirs through forming a PAC to advertise within 60 days of an election. Bill Gates could push his views through MSNBC and MSN (please note, I'm not implying that he does), but Glenn Reynolds, law professor, is facing the risk of being gagged.
Anyone here still think McCain Feingold campaign finance is a good idea? Anyone still dispute that money is speech?
Since much of HPC today *is* being done on Linux, is he implying that this new version of Windows will be easier to integrate with Linux that Linux?
Nope... not homebrew at all. This was a lab set up to emulate a telco CO, complete with the room full of batteries. Have you ever seen a piece of service provider class equipment with a DC power supply? Or even a DC powered server for that matter? They are almost all designed to have wire run right up to their connectors. Seriously. I wouldn't have believed it if I'd not worked with it. The way these things are handled you typically have large risers per row, from which power DC power is distributed to fuse panels in select bays (along really thick wires). You wire your equipment with an adequate gauge wire to one of those fuse panel slots, stick in an appropriate fuse, and away you go.
There are definite advantages to DC power... but it can also be *hugely* annoying.
I've worked in DC powered labs.
There isn't really any concept of 'plug' in the DC powered world. Powering up a device usually entails reading it's current draw off the equipment, selecting the correct gauge of wire, cutting the correct length of wire, strip both ends, hook up to your DC distribution on one end and your equipment on the other, select about the right size fuse, plug it in... etc. It's a royal pain. Oh, and make sure you do it correctly, because it's not that hard to electrecute yourself...
Nearly every engineer I've ever worked with whose been exposed to DC powered labs has begged to return to the AC powered world... it's just MUCH easier to work with.
On the flip side though... telco racks rock! Nothing beats hex head rack screws... you can literally drive them in at a 45 degree angle with a power drill and it's OK. It makes going back to the world of crappy philips head data wrack screws that you occasionally have to drill out because the head has stripped very annoying.
The general tendency of corporate providers of Linux to favor Gnome because of the licensing terms. If you are a writer of commercial software, or any software that isn't GPL compatible, you cannot use the Qt/KDE stack for your app. You can use the LGPL GTK/Gnome stack. Because a big part of the selling point of commerical Linux distros is the fact that other commercial software is certified to run on them, they MUST provide good support for GTK/Gnome. Now you get some bean counter coming through wondering why we are supporting two desktop environments. Well, you can't cut the GTK/Gnome stack, because of the commercial support, because of the licensing. So they cut (or under resource) KDE.
/commercial plugin ecosystem around Eclipse, and so it will never happen. As a result I'm trapped with the Gnome moronicly 'usable' file dialog, which constantly makes my life hard...
Please note, I'm a GPL proponent for the most part. I understand fully *why* trolltech does what it does with QT, and approve of their business model, but it's the use of the GPL for infrastructure libraries in Qt/KDE that is driving the commercial side towards Gnome/GTK.
As for me... I'd kill for Qt bindings for Eclipse... but the Eclipse Public License is not GPL compatible, and the GPL is intrinsically incompatible with the mixed open source
It would be nice if a balance could be struck between the ideals of the GPL (which I don't oppose) and some other licenses. For example, it would be nice to see compatibility with the Eclipse Public License (which the FSF doesn't seem to think poorly of, it just happens to be incompatible). Please note, I'm *NOT* seeking an FSF sell out of their ideals here, I ascribe to them myself in my private Open Source contributions, but rather consideration of how not to have the GPL be an impediment to projects that don't violate those ideals, but happen to be using other licenses.
Yes Bill Gates is really that bad. In particular because the extraordinarily shady way he made his billions tars millions of ethical business owners and managers who have played the game above board.
While *Microsoft* tends to only engage in self-serving philanthropy (giving things away to enhance their business interests in the long term), I have to give kudos to Gates for his foundation. Everything I've ever seen the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation give money to has been a very important cause with absolutely no potential to benefit them or MS materially in any way.
In particular, Gates has backed research into treating the maladies that vex the third world. These are diseases that do incredible harm, but frankly aren't commercially worth the spending medical research dollars on because the people they afflict are so poor. This is why a few hundred million here and there from Gates is such a huge thing. He spends the money that no commercial interest could ever justify spending to try to alleviate the suffering of the worlds poorest residents.
Don't get me wrong here, I have nothing positive to say about how Bill made his money, but he does deserver credit for how he disposes of it through his charity.
In the purest sense, I can agree with you. I (unlike many other people) am clearly aware that patents are a government granted monopoly, not a God given right. However, given that there are very high costs for drug development, approval, and introduction (including, quite validly, some marketing, because if no one knows about your wizbang new drug, it doesn't help anyone).
I've always thought an interesting alteration to the patent process would be to grant patents from date of drug approval (which would effectively be an extention currently, as patents for drugs date from *way* before drug approval). Track the cost of development and approval for that drug. Assign the 'drug equity' to be four times that price (to reflect the cost of drugs that failed in the same period). Allow any other organization that would like to manufacture that drug to buy into the 'drug equity' by buying a prorated share of the 'drug equity' from the current stake holders. Finally, when the patent expires, the drug is freely manufacturable by all as normal.
For example, imagine XYZ Corp develops an amazing new anti-hypertension drug, which they market as RelaxRX. Say it cost $750 million to develop and get approval for RelaxRX. So the 'drug equity' is set at $3 billion. ACME Generic Corp sees huge potential in RelaxRX, and wants to bring their super efficient manufacturing expertise to bear manufacturing it, so they pay XYZ Corp $1.5 billion for an equal share of the 'drug equity' (XYZ may not refuse). Time goes on and RelaxRX is even more successfull than people thought. So DrugsRus Corp wants in. They need to buy a third of the 'drug equity' from the existing players, so they pay $500 million to XYZ Corp, and $500 million to ACME Generic ( for a total of $1 billion) to get the rights to be the third manufacturer. And so on. XYZ Corp gets their reimbursement, other players can get in and drive down the cost if it makes market sense.
Thoughts?
Agreed. Samples aren't designated for anyone. But I've been up and I've been down in my life finiancially, and had a lot of friends who have to, and on several occasions the only reason I got the meds I needed was because my doctor gave me samples that covered my entire need for that drug. I've had other friends experience the same when they were essentially broke and uninsured. Sample drugs can be a real lifeline when you're broke and uninsured.
It's sort of silly to discuss the 'fair compensation' requirement in the US constitution with regard to a Taiwanese company taking something... however I'll jump in anyway :)
In the US, you are required to provide 'fair' compensation when a government takes something by eminent domain. In the case of real estate (which is where eminent domain is usually used) it's damn hard to *really* pin down a fair market price, because each item of real estate is unique, and the market is relatively illiquid.
For something like a drug that has already been brought to market, the item in question is a commodity being sold in a very liquid market. It's clear what the market price of the drug is in each market effected. My guess is that you then owe the company retail for each dose, possibly minus manufacturing costs.
You did catch that $745 billion of that marketing cost was for voluntary withdrawl of Vioxx from the market right? You are also aware that about half of the marketing budget is usually drug samples, which are given away by physicians to low income patients, right? You are also aware that the drug discount cards that Merck provides to assist various populations from senior citizens to low income people in affording their medicines are also part of that marketing budget, right? I strongly suspect that if you subtracted away all of the things that get lumped into marketing that could rightfully be billed as 'protect public health and improve access to drugs for the poor' you would no longer find marketing trumping R&D in terms of spending.
In a sane world, you would be correct. But welcome to the wonderful world of Wickard v Filburn, brought to use by FDR's packed Supreme Court, where enumerated powers are no longer enumerated, and you might as well ignore the 9th and 10th ammendment to the constitution. Essentially, Wickard says the government can do pretty much anything under the commerce clause and the general welfare clause. In a sane world, one might argue that the only authority for granting pattents at all comes from Article I, Section 8, clause 8, but in FDRs bizaro world were we all live today, you can just as easily derive the authority to grant patents without restriction from the commerce clause under Wickard.
Thank you FDR, nobody really needed liberty anyway!
Please don't take this the wrong way, I intend no implication as to the rightness or wrongness of the EU's desired goals with this post, but how the hell are they going to force the US to relinquish control of the DNS root again?
The best they can possibly hope to acheive is to splinter DNS by erecting an alternate root, and compelling they're ISPs by force of law to use that root. Somehow, that just doesn't seem constructive to me.
Please also don't take this the wrong way, but I expect most American's wouldn't notice such a split. The American root would continue to point to the top level country code servers that are already legitimately in place, the American roots would keep pointing to the same contract holders for the other tlds (com,edu,org,net, etc). If the EU root tried to force a new EU com contract holder, most international businesses would just pay to be in both (the US market being to large to walk away from). It's pretty much an exercise in futility to go the splitting route.
So what exactly does the EU think it is going to accomplish here, other than the emotional satisfaction of railing against the US?
You don't have to be a transhuman. I got through a physics and math degree by derivation. I don't remember things well, but I have a good intuitive grasp of things. So I would generally derive what I needed as I went along. It worked fairly well for many things...