These people on the other hand, think that 50 Cent is the pinnacle of musical brilliance.
No, they merely believe a lot of people would be willing to pay for sounds produced by 50 Cent. If no one wanted it, there wouldn't be a "it should be free" argument - no one would want it, free or not.
To me, since they can push the crap that 50 Cent records, it proves they are excellent business people - I would have no idea how to convince people to buy it.
While they are at it, how about passing a law so that MUSCIANS can get paid when then labels sell their music?
No law needed. All this is covered in the contract between the label and the artist. Both sides agreed to the terms. If the artists should negotiate the best terms the market allows, and be prepared to shop for bids among different labeles.
Someday, all music will be all-free, all-the-time.
Already an option - anyone that wants to can refuse to purchase music and still be perfectly legal by any definition out there. If some artist or label demands payment, simply don't accept their terms and don't listen to their music.
If the market truly demands free music, then exactly what you are saying will happen: no revenue will drive those artists and labels out of business, leaving only the ones that don't charge for their music. Even if there is a market for paid music, you can choose to not be a part of it.
Wherein the rights NOT explicitly given to Congress or the President are reserved to the People themselves.
That is not exactly what the 9th amendment says. To quote:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In other words, just because the right isn't stated, it isn't necessarily denied. Many people confuse privileges and rights, and call their favourite privileges "rights". (Another wide tangent is to point out that what a "right" is is highly dependent on the culture in question anyway - for instance, both Americans and Europeans have a right to free speech, but in America that means you can deny the holocaust ever happened, while a statement such as that is illegal in many European countries.).
The previous poster seems correct: "fair use" is a common-law concept, not grounded in the constitution, that can simply be done away with with an act of Congress. Since the legal concept of "rights" in America is based in the constitution, I think that makes "fair use" a privilege, and its defense must recognize that or be doomed.
If the information has value, why don't they pay me for it?
I think the problem is how little your information is worth. The information on millions of people is worth something, but each individual's information is probably worth a fraction of a cent.
Disclaimer: I am not in the mass-marketing or data collecting industry, so I'm saying this based on what I've seen and read on the amount people sell information for.
Now, what I do know about is transaction costs. If it costs $0.50 to send you the money you are owed for information, but the underlying value was a (generous) $0.01, we are talking about a 50x increase in the cost of selling that asset. If you look at the returns on information (as in people that buy things as a result of spam or other direct mail), I think it makes the information cost more than it is worth to actually pay you for it.
And, finally, the biggest reason they don't pay you, no matter the economics: they don't have to. People are not demanding those protections as a pre-condition to doing business with most sites. Until the consuming public demands it, why would a company increase their cost of doing business? This is again a case of people may cry and moan, but, in the end, people are voting with their patronage.
Another disclaimer: I am super privacy paranoid and don't want my info going anywhere for any reason, payment or not. I'm just trying to provide a reasoned answer to your question.
And a few decades ago someone tried to bann the Law of Supply and Demand
Hate to tell you, but this "law" is already banned, or at least curbed, in most countries:
1) Import Tarriffs
2) Labour Union Legal Protections
3) Government support of State Sponsored Enterprises
4) Business license schemes
Maybe not explicit, but all of these mute market forces and generally hurt the local population's long-term interests (though often giving short-term gains)
that current outsourcing trends slow enough due to a competent IT worker shortage in India
You may not realise how right you are. I've been doing some variety or other of work between the western world, India, and China since 1998. I hate to say it, but it is true: the good engineers from India and China move to the West where they get paid a lot more, live a hell of a lot better lifestyle, don't have to bride government officials to get a drivers license, and generally chase the "dream." The ones that can't make it stay home.
I'm sure I'll get completely flamed for this, but it is true. I am a Westerner who spent a cumulative year in India in different IT companies. Some of the best programmers I've known are Indian, but I met them in the UK, the US, and Canada. All the ones in India I've met were usually not good, but at best were building experience to qualify to go "onsite" from "offshore."
That is why I think wages won't crash. Sure, work migrates to lower cost, but labour migrates to higher pay.
There is no job training, nor employee loyalty in the US tech sector.
I'm not sure if you meant to write employee loyalty, but you hit the nail on the head.
I'm a junior executive in the telecom industry (a bit over 300 staff, and a total budget well over US$100M), and as every person with financial responsibilities can tell you, year end is budget season. I attempted to increase the amount of my training budgets to "grow" more talent internally (both technical and management), rather than always looking outside. HR cautioned me against it, even though I can well afford it: here is why.
If I train people, I raise my cost of employment, and therefore will not be able to pay as high of salaries as my "labour competitors" do. So I go and train up my people, and they use that training to jump ship to a higher paying company with a much worse training programme (doesn't matter: they have already been trained).
The fact is there is no total-good/total-bad in the current state of the professional labour market: there is plenty of blame to go around. I remember admonishments from my father about "in his day" he didn't worry about pay - just working for a good company for a lifetime. Now there is no loyalty in either direction.
The problem is that the group (employees or employers) that show loyalty first will be the biggest losers (see the example of me increasing my training budget and perversly losing employees). You have employees with a sense of entitlement (anyone who's done labour relations will tell you all about that) and employers who now feel different from their workforces.
Absolutely. Those who don't fight for their themselves don't deserve much respect. But then you go so wrong...
It's just as likely that the phone company itself invented this charge out of thin air to buffer its slumping revenues as it is that "hackers" did it.
Wow. You find it just as likely that corporations will invent crimes with no basis in fact (no matter how twisted?). I know Corporations Are Evil (TM) and all... but isn't this paranoia a little extreme? "I find it just as likely that PETA skins animals alive themselves to make a point about protecting animals." Ok. I can see why someone would propose that - but just as likely? Hardly.
I would not settle for a penny.
Again, perfect. Those who roll over deserve to be trampled on, but...
And I'd start killing executives if they tried to garnish my wages.
Start killing people? Granted I'm a bit of a pacisifist generally, but even the war-mongers amongst us must be pretty alarmed by that. Start suing, ok. Start yelling at - fine. Start punching - sure. But killing?
After all this, people wonder why poor foreign people tend to dislike the USA. Hello Roche, you are one of the reasons.
Wow. People hate the USA because people like you are ignorant, and associate everything you don't like with the USA.
Roche is Swiss.
I would rather see the drug not manufactured than witheld from needy people.
That is certainly an option. If we tear down the patent system, perhaps we can insure that many, many drugs never get developed, and so never manufactured. We all die equally.
Btw, Tiawan can afford the drug. The amount of money in the corruption-fueled grey economy of corrupt officials is more than enough to buy the drugs. Just check out the world-wide corruption studies in The Economist for evidence. It's not about lack of money in Tiawan, but about priorities of spending (bribing MPs is more important than buying drugs - so break the patents).
Given the moral hazard in pricing such a product (like cure for cancer), the profit incentive (along with funding) diminishes.
I hope you get modded +5 insightful. I never thought of this, but it is an interesting line of reasoning. I think you are right, although I've never thought of it. And if you are right, it is scary.
To say your position another way: Curing cancer is good. However, charging money for the cure is bad. Therefore, no one can fund finding a cure. Therefore, no cure, which is bad. So our own morals have prevented us from doing good (curing cancer) by making a necessary part (funding finding a cure) bad.
The topic of Tiawan and bird-flu shows you are right. What is the way out though? Can we educate society that profit is not evil, and so allow a cure to cancer to be made a sold profitably?
This will be a thinker for me this evening (and maybe even a topic amongst my friends).
Are you saying that Roche refused to sell the drugs to Tiawan? If so, that is criminal.
If not, they then would make a deal. The shear amount of money in the grey economy of government corruption in Tiawan would buy all the drugs needed from Roche at full price. So your argument is basically that the money is better spent to bribe corrupt cops into not giving speeding tickets than to pay for bird-flu drugs.
Interesting argument.
And if you doubt the amazing amount of money in the corruption-driven grey economy of Tiawan, I suggest you do some research. The money is available in Tiawan to buy the drugs, so it's not a question of making the price higher than Tiawan could pay. It's more a question of priority.
No, but thanks for asking. I was subjected to many standard IQ tests through school (the price of always being in Gifted & Talented programmes), so I am certifiably not someone of significant learning disabilities (which is what I assume you mean by retarted). There is also the full computer science scholorship I went to college on that implies I do not have significant learning disabilities. And if you think your question was rhetorical, you don't know the meaning of that word, as the question did not advance a line of debate.
The whole point of government is to do what the private sector will not or cannot do.
I don't recall that in the charter of any government. What about things like "common defense" and "general welfare"? I thought that was the point of government, as well as generally protecting the population from itself.
If the private sector didn't make an AIDS drug, then we can let the government do it.
There are roughly 200 national governments in the world. Where are the AIDS drugs coming from them? Unless you think the current drugs are good enough, should we see much more drugs coming from these 200 governments than a handful of private sector companies?
They already do it and then give the research away to the pharmaceutical companies anyway.
How do they decide which big company to simply give the research away to? Or, as you either simply don't know or are not saying, is the research being a) funded jointly by government and a certain company or b) done by a university then licensed to a drug company on a royalty arrangement.
If nationalizing pharma is a good idea, why don't countries do that and then produce mountains more good drugs than the private-sector model in the US? Where was the USSR? What about China? France (which funds a ton of bio-techs)? Why aren't countries with a more socialist system outstripping US private drug research and production?
Good luck to 'em all, I say; saving lives trumps patents.
Absolutely! Let's demolish the whole patent system! Take away patents, and making generics is the best drug business to be in. All existing drugs will be cheap generics! Yay!
I hope the existing drugs work well, though. Because there will be no new drugs. If there are new diseases, no research will be done. How will you be able to recoup billions USD in research investment when the day you make a breakthrough, the market-value of the drug drops to the marginal cost of production (which is what basic economic theory says happens without market distoring things like patents).
No big deal though.
Unless you are the one with a disease that needs a cure and no one funds the research.
If nobody went into business if they weren't guaranteed pharma-class profits, there'd be a lot of industries that wouldn't exist.
It's all about risk and value add. Grocery stores (to use the parent's example) take almost no risk and add almost no value. They are distributors.
I once saw a study comparing the profit margin of Wendy's (a US hamburger chain) and grocery strores, and then looking at all fast-food resturants and all grocery strores. Because of the value-add component of prepared food, profit margins were shown to be higher.
Go back to Big Pharma. Huge risk. Huge value add. So, huge profit.
Note I'm not passing judgement one way or the other about whether they deserve huge profit, but you didn't seem to understand why some industries have higher profit than others, so I thought I would tell you what the most recent economic research suggests.
Where is the incentive to develop new drugs that work? There will never be a cure for cancer. There is no money in it.
Fortunately for us (but destroying your argument), the modern world uses a capitalist system. If the world were communist or socialist with central planning, your argument would be right, but it isn't. Your argument is the same as saying that VoIP will never be developed because it will hurt the massive phone companies. True that it will hurt massive phone companies, but the more "capitalist" an economy, the more it developed anyway (unlike highly controlled economies that continue to restrict things like VoIP because they hurt state-owned phone companies - see China as an example, and in general an example of the problems of state-owned companies).
You are right. Big firms make a lot by treating disease. But I make zero. So I might just go out and start up a company to cure cancer. As I make zero on cancer treatment now, it is all upside for me.
Now, I don't have the expertise to do this, but lot's of bright young medical types do, and there is a lot of venture money to go around.
Should a lack of patent laws cause the death of people? Imagine that the entire world declared that for "serious disease" no one had to respect patent laws. Let's say that AIDS was declared such a disease. Would any more private sector research money (by far the most research money spent) go into finding a cure or better treatment for AIDS? Would anyone be able to write a business case to get venture money to start a new bio-tech firm looking at AIDS treatment?
The problem with patent-law violation reasoning is that it seems to be without regard to the future. It's the same logic that leads to other poor policies (who cares about the environment! It's not messed up today).
If patent protection isn't required for drug development, where are the "open source" drugs? It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.
Oh, and addressing this specifically: if this stands, and other countries follow, no more advances may be made in bird flu research since all private-sector motivation is removed.
just because you are not privy to their business plans doesn't mean that the plans are not feasible
I remember wondering out loud how furniture.com would ever make money. How big was the market for people that buy furniture sight unseen?
I was told that a) I didn't understand the "new economy" and b) I just didn't know their business plan, and, if I did, it would all make sense, because why would smart investors throw money at a bad idea.
furniture.com went belly-up. Sometimes the outsider's view is better.
Go back to the year 2000, when a US spy plane crashed into a Chinese fighter - very likely over Chinese water, no matter what was said.
You have it backwards. The US plane (listening post the size of a 737) was flying straight-and-level on autopilot, while the Chinese fighter was trying to "bump" him (a little nuissance trick involving flying under-and-up to disrupt the air of another plane and knock 'em around a bit). The Soviet's and the American's used to do it to each other all the time - but they both had better pilots than the Chinese. Long story short, Chinese pilot screwed up.
Even if you reject all accounts from everyone and say it's an American lie, basic right-of-way rules says that, amoung two powered aircraft, the least-maneuverable (the US 737-sized spy plane) has the right-of-way over the nimble fighter-jet, so it is still the Chinese pilot's fault.
The incident occured over water the Chinese claim as territory, but the rest of the world recognizes as international waters under maritime law.
but after this you'd better be sure they'll start developing that capability FAST
Ever think it might be a Soviet style trick? Maybe the US WANTS these nations (NK, Iran) to try to go full-scale. It is wicked expensive, and if they try to make a full-run, they will bankrupt themselves and collapse, just like the USSR.
So the US gets to destroy a country it sees as a threat without needing to go to the bother and expense of a war. Just issue a documentment, and let stupid nations react.
I said "stupid" intentionally, btw. I hope some nations would be smart enough to see it as a trick, and just say "OK, US, nuke us if we pose a threat, we plan on no retaliation... we'll just roll over." That would be a stroke of genious, actually, Given the people and government system in the US, it would be impossible the the US to ever actually attack anyone the US population was sure was not a threat. Remember, to attack Iraq, the President had to convince the nation they were a threat (and Saddam was dumb enough to keep up the rhetoric and throw out the inspectors... the putz played into Dubya's hand). So the best thing for security from the US would, ironically, be to be powerless against the US.
Democracy isn't for war-makers, unless the other side allows it.
Do there people actually think they have the right to spend time with their families and enjoy job security?
No one stops anyone from spending time with their families (unless they are in prison, then the state stops them). France does not allow indentured servitude, so quitting is always an option for employees.
Need the money? Life is about tradeoffs. I wish I could get paid while never showing up to work and drinking margaritas all day, but, alas, life is about tradeoffs.
How is job security a right? If an employee has the right to quit, than an employer should have the right to fire them. If you want a model of indentured servitude, where I can deny your right to quit, then a balance would be preventing me from firing you.
In all of my employement contracts, I have insisted that the "right to termination" be equal in both directions. If I expect 6 months of notice or pay if the company wants to fire me, then I must give a 6 month notice to resign.
Why shouldn't responsibilities be a two-way street?
the use of fragments of a fossilized skeleton, while I admit can be useful, seems tenuous at best.
I thought the same thing. Anyone else ever been to a museum where they found like, a tooth and toenail, and then reconstructed what the entire animal looked like? They talk about mating patterns, herding, sounds they made... I mean, I love a good BS fest like anyone else, but, seriously, does anyone else think they are just sitting around a pub seeing who can make up the most ridiculous "dinosaur sound" and get it published? They probably just record the "dinosaur sounds" their kids make.
I guess that is the benefit of being in a profession where, if you are careful, you can't really be proven wrong. They must be the ones keep time travel technology under wraps...
They put a reactor on the type of ship that is the textbook example of poor design due to cutting corners?
Perhaps you missed the point of the Liberty Ship. It was supposed to be a cheap, crappy ship with a pittifully short lifespan.
At the point in WWII right before the Liberty, the Axis powers basically owned the North Atlantic. US ships heading the England were getting sunk constantly. So, in a good example of actual thinking by the government, America came up with a ship it could build cheap and, more importantly, faster than the Germans could sink them.
That kept the Allies supplied even with the large sink rate. Once the Allies regained control of the North Atlantic from the Germans, the Liberty was not a great ship - but, by then, America had too many to throw them away.
So, in spite of bad design, they met their original purpose (keep the allies supplied in spite of huge shipping losses), and are part of what kept England from being invaded (by keeping it well supplied) until America and the Allies could beat back the Germans.
Anytime there is a disconnect in the feedback loop such that conserving money does not directly benefit the person who makes the decision to conserve
But you have to be careful about setting it up the other way: so that any money saved benefits the person responsible. Then they make brain dead decisions.
What you need is a system that rewards "value" ( = benefit/expense) over a time period. The problem with most object/reward systems (MBO systems, for instance) is that the timeframe is too short (usually 1 quarter). The problem with a longer time period is that it may be long enough as to not seem like reality to the person it is meant to incent.
If you found a way to reward for "value delivered" both in the measured term (just closed) and by somehow predicting the future (with believable TCO obtained and long-term financial benefits), then you would have a system where people are rewarded for doing the right things.
Plus, you wouldn't have to worry about using up all your budget, because if you ask for more budget next year even though you didn't use it all this year, the "higher ups" may think you have a case, because if you spent extra money without good cause, you only hurt yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they merely believe a lot of people would be willing to pay for sounds produced by 50 Cent. If no one wanted it, there wouldn't be a "it should be free" argument - no one would want it, free or not.
To me, since they can push the crap that 50 Cent records, it proves they are excellent business people - I would have no idea how to convince people to buy it.
No law needed. All this is covered in the contract between the label and the artist. Both sides agreed to the terms. If the artists should negotiate the best terms the market allows, and be prepared to shop for bids among different labeles.
Already an option - anyone that wants to can refuse to purchase music and still be perfectly legal by any definition out there. If some artist or label demands payment, simply don't accept their terms and don't listen to their music.
If the market truly demands free music, then exactly what you are saying will happen: no revenue will drive those artists and labels out of business, leaving only the ones that don't charge for their music. Even if there is a market for paid music, you can choose to not be a part of it.
That is not exactly what the 9th amendment says. To quote:
In other words, just because the right isn't stated, it isn't necessarily denied. Many people confuse privileges and rights, and call their favourite privileges "rights". (Another wide tangent is to point out that what a "right" is is highly dependent on the culture in question anyway - for instance, both Americans and Europeans have a right to free speech, but in America that means you can deny the holocaust ever happened, while a statement such as that is illegal in many European countries.).
The previous poster seems correct: "fair use" is a common-law concept, not grounded in the constitution, that can simply be done away with with an act of Congress. Since the legal concept of "rights" in America is based in the constitution, I think that makes "fair use" a privilege, and its defense must recognize that or be doomed.
I think the problem is how little your information is worth. The information on millions of people is worth something, but each individual's information is probably worth a fraction of a cent.
Disclaimer: I am not in the mass-marketing or data collecting industry, so I'm saying this based on what I've seen and read on the amount people sell information for.
Now, what I do know about is transaction costs. If it costs $0.50 to send you the money you are owed for information, but the underlying value was a (generous) $0.01, we are talking about a 50x increase in the cost of selling that asset. If you look at the returns on information (as in people that buy things as a result of spam or other direct mail), I think it makes the information cost more than it is worth to actually pay you for it.
And, finally, the biggest reason they don't pay you, no matter the economics: they don't have to. People are not demanding those protections as a pre-condition to doing business with most sites. Until the consuming public demands it, why would a company increase their cost of doing business? This is again a case of people may cry and moan, but, in the end, people are voting with their patronage.
Another disclaimer: I am super privacy paranoid and don't want my info going anywhere for any reason, payment or not. I'm just trying to provide a reasoned answer to your question.
Hate to tell you, but this "law" is already banned, or at least curbed, in most countries:
1) Import Tarriffs
2) Labour Union Legal Protections
3) Government support of State Sponsored Enterprises
4) Business license schemes
Maybe not explicit, but all of these mute market forces and generally hurt the local population's long-term interests (though often giving short-term gains)
You may not realise how right you are. I've been doing some variety or other of work between the western world, India, and China since 1998. I hate to say it, but it is true: the good engineers from India and China move to the West where they get paid a lot more, live a hell of a lot better lifestyle, don't have to bride government officials to get a drivers license, and generally chase the "dream." The ones that can't make it stay home.
I'm sure I'll get completely flamed for this, but it is true. I am a Westerner who spent a cumulative year in India in different IT companies. Some of the best programmers I've known are Indian, but I met them in the UK, the US, and Canada. All the ones in India I've met were usually not good, but at best were building experience to qualify to go "onsite" from "offshore."
That is why I think wages won't crash. Sure, work migrates to lower cost, but labour migrates to higher pay.
I'm not sure if you meant to write employee loyalty, but you hit the nail on the head.
I'm a junior executive in the telecom industry (a bit over 300 staff, and a total budget well over US$100M), and as every person with financial responsibilities can tell you, year end is budget season. I attempted to increase the amount of my training budgets to "grow" more talent internally (both technical and management), rather than always looking outside. HR cautioned me against it, even though I can well afford it: here is why.
If I train people, I raise my cost of employment, and therefore will not be able to pay as high of salaries as my "labour competitors" do. So I go and train up my people, and they use that training to jump ship to a higher paying company with a much worse training programme (doesn't matter: they have already been trained).
The fact is there is no total-good/total-bad in the current state of the professional labour market: there is plenty of blame to go around. I remember admonishments from my father about "in his day" he didn't worry about pay - just working for a good company for a lifetime. Now there is no loyalty in either direction.
The problem is that the group (employees or employers) that show loyalty first will be the biggest losers (see the example of me increasing my training budget and perversly losing employees). You have employees with a sense of entitlement (anyone who's done labour relations will tell you all about that) and employers who now feel different from their workforces.
How do we get out of this mess?
Absolutely. Those who don't fight for their themselves don't deserve much respect. But then you go so wrong...
It's just as likely that the phone company itself invented this charge out of thin air to buffer its slumping revenues as it is that "hackers" did it.
Wow. You find it just as likely that corporations will invent crimes with no basis in fact (no matter how twisted?). I know Corporations Are Evil (TM) and all ... but isn't this paranoia a little extreme? "I find it just as likely that PETA skins animals alive themselves to make a point about protecting animals." Ok. I can see why someone would propose that - but just as likely? Hardly.
I would not settle for a penny.
Again, perfect. Those who roll over deserve to be trampled on, but...
And I'd start killing executives if they tried to garnish my wages.
Start killing people? Granted I'm a bit of a pacisifist generally, but even the war-mongers amongst us must be pretty alarmed by that. Start suing, ok. Start yelling at - fine. Start punching - sure. But killing?
You may want to seek professional help.
Wow. People hate the USA because people like you are ignorant, and associate everything you don't like with the USA.
Roche is Swiss.
I would rather see the drug not manufactured than witheld from needy people.
That is certainly an option. If we tear down the patent system, perhaps we can insure that many, many drugs never get developed, and so never manufactured. We all die equally.
Btw, Tiawan can afford the drug. The amount of money in the corruption-fueled grey economy of corrupt officials is more than enough to buy the drugs. Just check out the world-wide corruption studies in The Economist for evidence. It's not about lack of money in Tiawan, but about priorities of spending (bribing MPs is more important than buying drugs - so break the patents).
I hope you get modded +5 insightful. I never thought of this, but it is an interesting line of reasoning. I think you are right, although I've never thought of it. And if you are right, it is scary.
To say your position another way: Curing cancer is good. However, charging money for the cure is bad. Therefore, no one can fund finding a cure. Therefore, no cure, which is bad. So our own morals have prevented us from doing good (curing cancer) by making a necessary part (funding finding a cure) bad.
The topic of Tiawan and bird-flu shows you are right. What is the way out though? Can we educate society that profit is not evil, and so allow a cure to cancer to be made a sold profitably?
This will be a thinker for me this evening (and maybe even a topic amongst my friends).
Are you saying that Roche refused to sell the drugs to Tiawan? If so, that is criminal.
If not, they then would make a deal. The shear amount of money in the grey economy of government corruption in Tiawan would buy all the drugs needed from Roche at full price. So your argument is basically that the money is better spent to bribe corrupt cops into not giving speeding tickets than to pay for bird-flu drugs.
Interesting argument.
And if you doubt the amazing amount of money in the corruption-driven grey economy of Tiawan, I suggest you do some research. The money is available in Tiawan to buy the drugs, so it's not a question of making the price higher than Tiawan could pay. It's more a question of priority.
No, but thanks for asking. I was subjected to many standard IQ tests through school (the price of always being in Gifted & Talented programmes), so I am certifiably not someone of significant learning disabilities (which is what I assume you mean by retarted). There is also the full computer science scholorship I went to college on that implies I do not have significant learning disabilities. And if you think your question was rhetorical, you don't know the meaning of that word, as the question did not advance a line of debate.
The whole point of government is to do what the private sector will not or cannot do.
I don't recall that in the charter of any government. What about things like "common defense" and "general welfare"? I thought that was the point of government, as well as generally protecting the population from itself.
If the private sector didn't make an AIDS drug, then we can let the government do it.
There are roughly 200 national governments in the world. Where are the AIDS drugs coming from them? Unless you think the current drugs are good enough, should we see much more drugs coming from these 200 governments than a handful of private sector companies?
They already do it and then give the research away to the pharmaceutical companies anyway.
How do they decide which big company to simply give the research away to? Or, as you either simply don't know or are not saying, is the research being a) funded jointly by government and a certain company or b) done by a university then licensed to a drug company on a royalty arrangement.
If nationalizing pharma is a good idea, why don't countries do that and then produce mountains more good drugs than the private-sector model in the US? Where was the USSR? What about China? France (which funds a ton of bio-techs)? Why aren't countries with a more socialist system outstripping US private drug research and production?
Absolutely! Let's demolish the whole patent system! Take away patents, and making generics is the best drug business to be in. All existing drugs will be cheap generics! Yay!
I hope the existing drugs work well, though. Because there will be no new drugs. If there are new diseases, no research will be done. How will you be able to recoup billions USD in research investment when the day you make a breakthrough, the market-value of the drug drops to the marginal cost of production (which is what basic economic theory says happens without market distoring things like patents).
No big deal though.
Unless you are the one with a disease that needs a cure and no one funds the research.
It's all about risk and value add. Grocery stores (to use the parent's example) take almost no risk and add almost no value. They are distributors.
I once saw a study comparing the profit margin of Wendy's (a US hamburger chain) and grocery strores, and then looking at all fast-food resturants and all grocery strores. Because of the value-add component of prepared food, profit margins were shown to be higher.
Go back to Big Pharma. Huge risk. Huge value add. So, huge profit.
Note I'm not passing judgement one way or the other about whether they deserve huge profit, but you didn't seem to understand why some industries have higher profit than others, so I thought I would tell you what the most recent economic research suggests.
Fortunately for us (but destroying your argument), the modern world uses a capitalist system. If the world were communist or socialist with central planning, your argument would be right, but it isn't. Your argument is the same as saying that VoIP will never be developed because it will hurt the massive phone companies. True that it will hurt massive phone companies, but the more "capitalist" an economy, the more it developed anyway (unlike highly controlled economies that continue to restrict things like VoIP because they hurt state-owned phone companies - see China as an example, and in general an example of the problems of state-owned companies).
You are right. Big firms make a lot by treating disease. But I make zero. So I might just go out and start up a company to cure cancer. As I make zero on cancer treatment now, it is all upside for me.
Now, I don't have the expertise to do this, but lot's of bright young medical types do, and there is a lot of venture money to go around.
Should a lack of patent laws cause the death of people? Imagine that the entire world declared that for "serious disease" no one had to respect patent laws. Let's say that AIDS was declared such a disease. Would any more private sector research money (by far the most research money spent) go into finding a cure or better treatment for AIDS? Would anyone be able to write a business case to get venture money to start a new bio-tech firm looking at AIDS treatment?
The problem with patent-law violation reasoning is that it seems to be without regard to the future. It's the same logic that leads to other poor policies (who cares about the environment! It's not messed up today).
If patent protection isn't required for drug development, where are the "open source" drugs? It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.
Oh, and addressing this specifically: if this stands, and other countries follow, no more advances may be made in bird flu research since all private-sector motivation is removed.
I remember wondering out loud how furniture.com would ever make money. How big was the market for people that buy furniture sight unseen?
I was told that a) I didn't understand the "new economy" and b) I just didn't know their business plan, and, if I did, it would all make sense, because why would smart investors throw money at a bad idea.
furniture.com went belly-up. Sometimes the outsider's view is better.
Envy. The ugliest of the seven deadly sins. Do yourself a favour and go with Sloth and Lust.
You have it backwards. The US plane (listening post the size of a 737) was flying straight-and-level on autopilot, while the Chinese fighter was trying to "bump" him (a little nuissance trick involving flying under-and-up to disrupt the air of another plane and knock 'em around a bit). The Soviet's and the American's used to do it to each other all the time - but they both had better pilots than the Chinese. Long story short, Chinese pilot screwed up.
Even if you reject all accounts from everyone and say it's an American lie, basic right-of-way rules says that, amoung two powered aircraft, the least-maneuverable (the US 737-sized spy plane) has the right-of-way over the nimble fighter-jet, so it is still the Chinese pilot's fault.
The incident occured over water the Chinese claim as territory, but the rest of the world recognizes as international waters under maritime law.
Ever think it might be a Soviet style trick? Maybe the US WANTS these nations (NK, Iran) to try to go full-scale. It is wicked expensive, and if they try to make a full-run, they will bankrupt themselves and collapse, just like the USSR.
So the US gets to destroy a country it sees as a threat without needing to go to the bother and expense of a war. Just issue a documentment, and let stupid nations react.
I said "stupid" intentionally, btw. I hope some nations would be smart enough to see it as a trick, and just say "OK, US, nuke us if we pose a threat, we plan on no retaliation... we'll just roll over." That would be a stroke of genious, actually, Given the people and government system in the US, it would be impossible the the US to ever actually attack anyone the US population was sure was not a threat. Remember, to attack Iraq, the President had to convince the nation they were a threat (and Saddam was dumb enough to keep up the rhetoric and throw out the inspectors... the putz played into Dubya's hand). So the best thing for security from the US would, ironically, be to be powerless against the US.
Democracy isn't for war-makers, unless the other side allows it.
No one stops anyone from spending time with their families (unless they are in prison, then the state stops them). France does not allow indentured servitude, so quitting is always an option for employees.
Need the money? Life is about tradeoffs. I wish I could get paid while never showing up to work and drinking margaritas all day, but, alas, life is about tradeoffs.
How is job security a right? If an employee has the right to quit, than an employer should have the right to fire them. If you want a model of indentured servitude, where I can deny your right to quit, then a balance would be preventing me from firing you.
In all of my employement contracts, I have insisted that the "right to termination" be equal in both directions. If I expect 6 months of notice or pay if the company wants to fire me, then I must give a 6 month notice to resign.
Why shouldn't responsibilities be a two-way street?
I thought the same thing. Anyone else ever been to a museum where they found like, a tooth and toenail, and then reconstructed what the entire animal looked like? They talk about mating patterns, herding, sounds they made... I mean, I love a good BS fest like anyone else, but, seriously, does anyone else think they are just sitting around a pub seeing who can make up the most ridiculous "dinosaur sound" and get it published? They probably just record the "dinosaur sounds" their kids make.
I guess that is the benefit of being in a profession where, if you are careful, you can't really be proven wrong. They must be the ones keep time travel technology under wraps...
Perhaps you missed the point of the Liberty Ship. It was supposed to be a cheap, crappy ship with a pittifully short lifespan.
At the point in WWII right before the Liberty, the Axis powers basically owned the North Atlantic. US ships heading the England were getting sunk constantly. So, in a good example of actual thinking by the government, America came up with a ship it could build cheap and, more importantly, faster than the Germans could sink them.
That kept the Allies supplied even with the large sink rate. Once the Allies regained control of the North Atlantic from the Germans, the Liberty was not a great ship - but, by then, America had too many to throw them away.
So, in spite of bad design, they met their original purpose (keep the allies supplied in spite of huge shipping losses), and are part of what kept England from being invaded (by keeping it well supplied) until America and the Allies could beat back the Germans.
But you have to be careful about setting it up the other way: so that any money saved benefits the person responsible. Then they make brain dead decisions.
What you need is a system that rewards "value" ( = benefit/expense) over a time period. The problem with most object/reward systems (MBO systems, for instance) is that the timeframe is too short (usually 1 quarter). The problem with a longer time period is that it may be long enough as to not seem like reality to the person it is meant to incent.
If you found a way to reward for "value delivered" both in the measured term (just closed) and by somehow predicting the future (with believable TCO obtained and long-term financial benefits), then you would have a system where people are rewarded for doing the right things.
Plus, you wouldn't have to worry about using up all your budget, because if you ask for more budget next year even though you didn't use it all this year, the "higher ups" may think you have a case, because if you spent extra money without good cause, you only hurt yourself.