So you're saying that you expect the doctors to find out about drugs themselves? You must be, because "educating" doctors is actually called "marketing" to doctors. Drug company representatives visit doctors to tell them about their new drug and all the great things it can do. Sounds a lot like marketing to me.
Your assertion of there being a "fixed" number of people who need a drug is false. People become sick all the time! People get old. People hurt themselves. The demand for drugs increases as the population with the affliction increases.
Medicine is a business. Without the promise of profit, we'd still be using leaches and blood letting to "treat" patients. If it only mattered that we care about people, you would have people who care about people being doctors, not necessarily the smart people who could actually make improvements.
Government will never... let me repeat that NEVER be successful at doing this research. They don't have the pressure of getting results. They just have to wring more money out of the tax payers if they aren't making any headway.
If I were Bayer, I wouldn't sell so much as an aspirin in India. They probably don't anyway. That was out of protection years ago.
Well, if it weren't for all of the massive government spending created by Mr. Roosevelt, it would have ended a lot sooner. There was another recession in 1920 that could have led to a depression had Presidents Harding and Coolidge not lowered the massively high tax rates from ~%73 down to %25 for the highest earners. The tax revenues actually went up. Look up the "Laffer Curve".
The tax rates now are just about right. It's the spending that is killing us. Cut the spending to bring some clarity to what the future holds and businesses will loosen the purse strings.
If you completely liquidated all of the assets of the 1% and all of the assets of the Fortune 500, you could run the bloated government for less than 2 years!!!! Who will be next in line to pay their "fair share" then?
It has to stop. We can't pay for everyone's everything. There aren't enough people not being paid.
So let's take all of the assets of these corporations and all of the assets of the 1%. You just funded the government for less than 2 years. Now what? There isn't anyone left who has any money to invest in new ideas or start a new business.
And the protesters are pointing out that the provided opportunities are no longer good enough to count as a substantially fulfilled obligation. If you owe $1000 and you hand over $900 and buy some food, we can understand. If you owe $1000 and hand over a penny and buy a new jet ski, we will not. The latter is what the 1% have been doing.
Who is to decide what is "good enough"? The protesters can decide to not take the jobs that are offered for whatever reason (pay, benefits, etc.) They can create their own opportunities.
The 1% have not borrowed anything from the rest of us. Have businesses been provided money from the taxpayers? You bet they have. Did they deserve it? Not in the least. Government should not be giving out our money to bail anyone out. If they made bad decisions, let them fail. If I make a bad decision, let me fail. Maybe I'll make a better one next time. If you bail me out, you can bet your a$$ that I'll keep gambling with your money!
The answer isn't to take money from those who have succeeded. Everyone should succeed to the level they can. Nobody owes anyone else anything, and nobody should expect anything from anyone else. It's OK for someone to ask and the other to provide as they wish.
Name one thing that the Government currently does, that they do better and more cost effectively that it could otherwise be done by someone else.
The bigger government gets, the less significant you (or I) become. That IS a big part of the problem right now. We are unable to "donate" enough money to get their attention. They pass laws that are lobbied for.
It's time to start applying some of the checks on their power as laid out in the Constitution. Only when we get it (government) under control, will it do what we need it to do.
Capitalism means that you are free to share your food with those in need. Socialism means that you are forced to provide for those who can't or more importantly... won't.
Do you invite the less fortunate to eat supper with you? I doubt it.
Nice statement. Where is the evidence that the Tea Party movement was manufactured?
I consider myself part of the Tea Party. Nobody contacted me. I just became fed up with the Government spending too much money on things that it shouldn't be spending money on, like bailing out corporations that took too much risk. They should have let them fail. It would have been painful, but it would have been over by now.
Unless you create your own wealth, then you rely on those who will employ you. They will get wealthier while you work for them (if they know how to run their business). You will also become wealthier, but not at the same rate. You are free at any time in this process to strike out on your own to compete. Maybe you have a better way to serve customers, great! You have the freedom to pursue that, but just remember that you have the same freedom to fail.
Look to the people who bailed them out. It's not the financial institutions who are to blame. They asked for help (some were forced to accept help) from the Governement. They were given help. Blame the Government. That's where the protests should be.
The result of the Revolution was freedom! Freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. As far as I can tell, the "protesters" are choosing to accept their own failure and blaming it on someone else.
Freedom means being able to make a choice. The problem with these people is that they want to "choose" to take from someone else. That is called theft.
You talk like there isn't anything that person can do. There are those that can't do anything and they should be helped, but 99.9% if the "protestors" aren't doing anything but complaining.
When I graduated from school, the job market sucked. I had a degree in electrical engineering. I was newly married. I worked at Blockbuster and Subway for 6 months while looking for work. I did what I had to do. I'd be willing to be that all of these people could find some type of job to make ends meet. Would it be the job they trained for or went to school for? Maybe, maybe not.
It's not society's job to guarantee anyone a particular outcome. It's society's job to provide the opportunity. Are there barriers? Yes. Are there inequalities? Yes. Is it fair? No. Nobody said life was fair. Get off your butts, do something worthwhile, quit whining.
No. If you didn't have government officials willing to take money for favors, then corrupt business would have nowhere to go with their money.
Think of it this way... A parent allows their child to stay up late every night, even though they both know that bed time is 9:30. It's the parent's fault when the kid throws a tantrum when they try to enforce the 9:30 bed time. If the rules were applied the same way all the time without preferential treatment for one child over another, there wouldn't be any tantrums. They would go to bed at 9:30, because that's when bed time is, no questions asked.
If government would apply the law equally, without picking winners and losers, then businesses would have to operate within the law. The will do whatever they are allowed to do, just like children. On the flip-side, over regulation stifles business. There is a balance to what rules the Federal Government should regulate, and I believe those are spelled out in the Constitution. The states can deal with the rest. That way the balance can be investigated in 50 different experiments.
You are 100% right. With government able to pick winners and losers by not applying the law the same in every case, companies are able to "contribute" and get favors. The corruption in government enables the crony capitalism that distorts the economy.
If the state controlled capital, then the bureaucrats would be the ones picking who gets a loan or who gets the goodies. Are you sure you want that? I can't name a single thing that government has done efficiently and cost effectively. With government in control of capital, you would lose 50% of it off the top.
Government isn't necessarily bad, but too much government is necessarily bad, VERY bad. (See Soviet Union)
The American Revolution did have leaders, commonly referred to as the "Founding Fathers". These were the leaders of each of what would become the several states. Those leaders were elected to speak for their constituents. They led the people of the colonies to what they thought the colonists wanted... freedom from the tyrannical rule of monarchy. Our Revolution didn't end up by killing the other side's leaders and their supporters, unlike the French variety.
Why SHOULD I be forced to license IP that I created, let alone provide technical details to allow others to use it? It's my idea! If I decide to protect it, then I should be protected. I can decide to license it, but if I don't, nobody else should be able to profit from it.
If there is protected IP that you want to use, then you might actually be forced to come up with your own idea. Would you want to be forced to share that new idea and help your competition drive you out of business? Not likely!
If you remove the incentive for the creation of new ideas, i.e. money, then you will get less of that. This is another case of people not thinking things through to the end.
Check the ratings of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert... nearly 2 million per day (1.8 million or so) Glenn Beck is over 3 million per day. I don't think he or his viewers give a rat's ass about either of these guys.
All of the negative comments about Beck don't hold water. It's obvious that none of the people spewing have watched his show. He points out freely available information about things he disagrees with ( a lot of it coming from videos of the people in question ). There is never an attempt to correct the information if he is wrong. He only gets attacked for asking the question.
He is a bit nutty, and he'll admit that himself. He's there to entertain, and he'll admit that too. He tells his viewers, "Don't take my word for it. Investigate it for yourself and make up your mind." I don't hear Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olberman saying anything like that. They assume that we're all idiots and they need to tell us what to think.
Watch Beck's show for a week. Do some of your own research to see if he's telling the truth. Make up your own mind. You may be surprised.
The United States is NOT perfect. It IS, however, the BEST nation on this planet. There isn't a single other nation that comes as close to pure LIBERTY for its citizens. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has the opportunity to achieve their best.There is nothing in place to prevent ANYONE to achieving whatever they can dream. There is no guarantee, though. You can't be lazy. You can't expect anyone to help, but if you are trying your hardest, you'll likely get some.
We should revert back to the policy of our Founding Fathers. Strict neutrality in all cases where our security is not in peril. We will trade fairly with any and all countries regardless of form of government.
We should pull our troops and equipment from all other countries and bring them back to the United States. Our presence is not appreciated, and we certainly aren't getting much out of having them there. When they get home, we have plenty of things for them to do, like guarding the borders. If there is a war, trade will continue as possible with all involved countries.
We should cutoff all funding to other countries be it military or humanitarian. All you other countries do is complain about us anyway. We should eject the United Nations from our country. They are not following their charter and are no longer of any value to the United States. In the event of natural disaster, the United States will offer all possible assistance in terms of personnel, equipment, and knowledge at no cost. Nothing will be expected in return except the opportunity to trade freely with that nation. If that does not happen, no will assistance will be offered in the future, until such time as free and fair trade has been established.
We should refocus our energy policy to within the borders of the United States and develop known oil reserves, resurrect our nuclear power industry, work to improve efficiency and cleanliness of coal, continue development of secondary energy sources such as solar and wind. We will still purchase energy where necessary and consider any restrictions placed on that trade as a hostile action to be dealt with proportionately.
We should continue to develop our capability to shoot down incoming missiles. We should continue to develop our capability to detect and protect against hand carried nuclear devices. We should continue to develop our capability to detect and protect against biological weapons. All of these capabilities would be made available (for sale) to other countries who we believe to be "important" to our security either militarily or economic. It is in our interest to make all of these weapons obsolete and ineffective.
We should retain our nuclear capabilities in order to be prepared for the worst case. If there is a case where the strategic defense is overwhelmed, then we must inflict maximum damage to the offending country. We should continue to develop our conventional defense capabilities in case we are invaded.
We should not withdraw from the international community, but we should not entangle ourselves in external matters. We can make our approval or disapproval known, but we should take no other action unless our security is threatened in a real and meaningful way.
I am just as bummed about HL2 being late as anyone, but what I don't get is why so many people are ATTACKING the developers.
They are making a game to sell. Don't you think they want to release it as soon as possible? They announced a release date last summer. It didn't happen. GET OVER IT!!! They don't owe anybody anything except a good product when it ships.
If people don't buy it, because they have lost interest, fine. Valve doesn't make as much money, and probably takes steps to prevent this type of thing in the future.
My guess is everyone who is bitching about it will buy the game, and be totally blown away. Do you think they will eat a little crow when the time comes? NOPE. They will just be bitching about the next thing.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying that you expect the doctors to find out about drugs themselves? You must be, because "educating" doctors is actually called "marketing" to doctors. Drug company representatives visit doctors to tell them about their new drug and all the great things it can do. Sounds a lot like marketing to me.
Your assertion of there being a "fixed" number of people who need a drug is false. People become sick all the time! People get old. People hurt themselves. The demand for drugs increases as the population with the affliction increases.
Medicine is a business. Without the promise of profit, we'd still be using leaches and blood letting to "treat" patients. If it only mattered that we care about people, you would have people who care about people being doctors, not necessarily the smart people who could actually make improvements.
Government will never... let me repeat that NEVER be successful at doing this research. They don't have the pressure of getting results. They just have to wring more money out of the tax payers if they aren't making any headway.
If I were Bayer, I wouldn't sell so much as an aspirin in India. They probably don't anyway. That was out of protection years ago.
OK... You just spouted 4 statements purporting to be facts. Where are your sources for this information?
You really don't expect me to believe an anonymous coward, do you?
Occupy Facts!
Well, if it weren't for all of the massive government spending created by Mr. Roosevelt, it would have ended a lot sooner. There was another recession in 1920 that could have led to a depression had Presidents Harding and Coolidge not lowered the massively high tax rates from ~%73 down to %25 for the highest earners. The tax revenues actually went up. Look up the "Laffer Curve".
The tax rates now are just about right. It's the spending that is killing us. Cut the spending to bring some clarity to what the future holds and businesses will loosen the purse strings.
* Fix the last line *
It has to stop. We can't pay for everyone's everything. There aren't enough people being paid.
Please define "fair share"! You can't! You won't!
If you completely liquidated all of the assets of the 1% and all of the assets of the Fortune 500, you could run the bloated government for less than 2 years!!!! Who will be next in line to pay their "fair share" then?
It has to stop. We can't pay for everyone's everything. There aren't enough people not being paid.
So let's take all of the assets of these corporations and all of the assets of the 1%. You just funded the government for less than 2 years. Now what? There isn't anyone left who has any money to invest in new ideas or start a new business.
And the protesters are pointing out that the provided opportunities are no longer good enough to count as a substantially fulfilled obligation. If you owe $1000 and you hand over $900 and buy some food, we can understand. If you owe $1000 and hand over a penny and buy a new jet ski, we will not. The latter is what the 1% have been doing.
Who is to decide what is "good enough"? The protesters can decide to not take the jobs that are offered for whatever reason (pay, benefits, etc.) They can create their own opportunities.
The 1% have not borrowed anything from the rest of us. Have businesses been provided money from the taxpayers? You bet they have. Did they deserve it? Not in the least. Government should not be giving out our money to bail anyone out. If they made bad decisions, let them fail. If I make a bad decision, let me fail. Maybe I'll make a better one next time. If you bail me out, you can bet your a$$ that I'll keep gambling with your money!
The answer isn't to take money from those who have succeeded. Everyone should succeed to the level they can. Nobody owes anyone else anything, and nobody should expect anything from anyone else. It's OK for someone to ask and the other to provide as they wish.
Name one thing that the Government currently does, that they do better and more cost effectively that it could otherwise be done by someone else.
The bigger government gets, the less significant you (or I) become. That IS a big part of the problem right now. We are unable to "donate" enough money to get their attention. They pass laws that are lobbied for.
It's time to start applying some of the checks on their power as laid out in the Constitution. Only when we get it (government) under control, will it do what we need it to do.
*Fix for bad typing above*
Their morals which focus on greed, as opposed to your morals which lack respect of human life.
Their morals which lack greed as opposed to yours which lack respect of human life.
Capitalism means that you are free to share your food with those in need. Socialism means that you are forced to provide for those who can't or more importantly... won't.
Do you invite the less fortunate to eat supper with you? I doubt it.
Nice statement. Where is the evidence that the Tea Party movement was manufactured?
I consider myself part of the Tea Party. Nobody contacted me. I just became fed up with the Government spending too much money on things that it shouldn't be spending money on, like bailing out corporations that took too much risk. They should have let them fail. It would have been painful, but it would have been over by now.
Did you ever get a job from a homeless person?
Unless you create your own wealth, then you rely on those who will employ you. They will get wealthier while you work for them (if they know how to run their business). You will also become wealthier, but not at the same rate. You are free at any time in this process to strike out on your own to compete. Maybe you have a better way to serve customers, great! You have the freedom to pursue that, but just remember that you have the same freedom to fail.
Look to the people who bailed them out. It's not the financial institutions who are to blame. They asked for help (some were forced to accept help) from the Governement. They were given help. Blame the Government. That's where the protests should be.
The result of the Revolution was freedom! Freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. As far as I can tell, the "protesters" are choosing to accept their own failure and blaming it on someone else.
Freedom means being able to make a choice. The problem with these people is that they want to "choose" to take from someone else. That is called theft.
You talk like there isn't anything that person can do. There are those that can't do anything and they should be helped, but 99.9% if the "protestors" aren't doing anything but complaining.
When I graduated from school, the job market sucked. I had a degree in electrical engineering. I was newly married. I worked at Blockbuster and Subway for 6 months while looking for work. I did what I had to do. I'd be willing to be that all of these people could find some type of job to make ends meet. Would it be the job they trained for or went to school for? Maybe, maybe not.
It's not society's job to guarantee anyone a particular outcome. It's society's job to provide the opportunity. Are there barriers? Yes. Are there inequalities? Yes. Is it fair? No. Nobody said life was fair. Get off your butts, do something worthwhile, quit whining.
No. If you didn't have government officials willing to take money for favors, then corrupt business would have nowhere to go with their money.
Think of it this way... A parent allows their child to stay up late every night, even though they both know that bed time is 9:30. It's the parent's fault when the kid throws a tantrum when they try to enforce the 9:30 bed time. If the rules were applied the same way all the time without preferential treatment for one child over another, there wouldn't be any tantrums. They would go to bed at 9:30, because that's when bed time is, no questions asked.
If government would apply the law equally, without picking winners and losers, then businesses would have to operate within the law. The will do whatever they are allowed to do, just like children. On the flip-side, over regulation stifles business. There is a balance to what rules the Federal Government should regulate, and I believe those are spelled out in the Constitution. The states can deal with the rest. That way the balance can be investigated in 50 different experiments.
You are 100% right. With government able to pick winners and losers by not applying the law the same in every case, companies are able to "contribute" and get favors. The corruption in government enables the crony capitalism that distorts the economy.
If the state controlled capital, then the bureaucrats would be the ones picking who gets a loan or who gets the goodies. Are you sure you want that? I can't name a single thing that government has done efficiently and cost effectively. With government in control of capital, you would lose 50% of it off the top.
Government isn't necessarily bad, but too much government is necessarily bad, VERY bad. (See Soviet Union)
Amen to that!
The American Revolution did have leaders, commonly referred to as the "Founding Fathers". These were the leaders of each of what would become the several states. Those leaders were elected to speak for their constituents. They led the people of the colonies to what they thought the colonists wanted... freedom from the tyrannical rule of monarchy. Our Revolution didn't end up by killing the other side's leaders and their supporters, unlike the French variety.
Why SHOULD I be forced to license IP that I created, let alone provide technical details to allow others to use it? It's my idea! If I decide to protect it, then I should be protected. I can decide to license it, but if I don't, nobody else should be able to profit from it.
If there is protected IP that you want to use, then you might actually be forced to come up with your own idea. Would you want to be forced to share that new idea and help your competition drive you out of business? Not likely!
If you remove the incentive for the creation of new ideas, i.e. money, then you will get less of that. This is another case of people not thinking things through to the end.
There was no ban on research. There was a ban on Government funding the research.
Check the ratings of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert... nearly 2 million per day (1.8 million or so) Glenn Beck is over 3 million per day. I don't think he or his viewers give a rat's ass about either of these guys.
All of the negative comments about Beck don't hold water. It's obvious that none of the people spewing have watched his show. He points out freely available information about things he disagrees with ( a lot of it coming from videos of the people in question ). There is never an attempt to correct the information if he is wrong. He only gets attacked for asking the question.
He is a bit nutty, and he'll admit that himself. He's there to entertain, and he'll admit that too. He tells his viewers, "Don't take my word for it. Investigate it for yourself and make up your mind." I don't hear Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olberman saying anything like that. They assume that we're all idiots and they need to tell us what to think.
Watch Beck's show for a week. Do some of your own research to see if he's telling the truth. Make up your own mind. You may be surprised.
The United States is NOT perfect. It IS, however, the BEST nation on this planet. There isn't a single other nation that comes as close to pure LIBERTY for its citizens. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has the opportunity to achieve their best.There is nothing in place to prevent ANYONE to achieving whatever they can dream. There is no guarantee, though. You can't be lazy. You can't expect anyone to help, but if you are trying your hardest, you'll likely get some. We should revert back to the policy of our Founding Fathers. Strict neutrality in all cases where our security is not in peril. We will trade fairly with any and all countries regardless of form of government. We should pull our troops and equipment from all other countries and bring them back to the United States. Our presence is not appreciated, and we certainly aren't getting much out of having them there. When they get home, we have plenty of things for them to do, like guarding the borders. If there is a war, trade will continue as possible with all involved countries. We should cutoff all funding to other countries be it military or humanitarian. All you other countries do is complain about us anyway. We should eject the United Nations from our country. They are not following their charter and are no longer of any value to the United States. In the event of natural disaster, the United States will offer all possible assistance in terms of personnel, equipment, and knowledge at no cost. Nothing will be expected in return except the opportunity to trade freely with that nation. If that does not happen, no will assistance will be offered in the future, until such time as free and fair trade has been established. We should refocus our energy policy to within the borders of the United States and develop known oil reserves, resurrect our nuclear power industry, work to improve efficiency and cleanliness of coal, continue development of secondary energy sources such as solar and wind. We will still purchase energy where necessary and consider any restrictions placed on that trade as a hostile action to be dealt with proportionately. We should continue to develop our capability to shoot down incoming missiles. We should continue to develop our capability to detect and protect against hand carried nuclear devices. We should continue to develop our capability to detect and protect against biological weapons. All of these capabilities would be made available (for sale) to other countries who we believe to be "important" to our security either militarily or economic. It is in our interest to make all of these weapons obsolete and ineffective. We should retain our nuclear capabilities in order to be prepared for the worst case. If there is a case where the strategic defense is overwhelmed, then we must inflict maximum damage to the offending country. We should continue to develop our conventional defense capabilities in case we are invaded. We should not withdraw from the international community, but we should not entangle ourselves in external matters. We can make our approval or disapproval known, but we should take no other action unless our security is threatened in a real and meaningful way.
I am just as bummed about HL2 being late as anyone, but what I don't get is why so many people are ATTACKING the developers. They are making a game to sell. Don't you think they want to release it as soon as possible? They announced a release date last summer. It didn't happen. GET OVER IT!!! They don't owe anybody anything except a good product when it ships. If people don't buy it, because they have lost interest, fine. Valve doesn't make as much money, and probably takes steps to prevent this type of thing in the future. My guess is everyone who is bitching about it will buy the game, and be totally blown away. Do you think they will eat a little crow when the time comes? NOPE. They will just be bitching about the next thing.