I wonder how the results would change if they had considered countries like Brazil, which offers a cocktail of ~17 drugs for free for everyone HIV positive since 1996 (when patents were fought in the supreme court IIRC). Many americans and europeans (also japanese) come here every year to get some of these medicines for a fraction of what they would cost back home.
I'm not a big fan of drug company profits (and the patents that provide them), but to be fair, I wonder how the results would change without American- and European-developed drugs.
I'd say few people try to maximize compensation. Rather, most people prioritize on a number of factors including not just compensation, but enjoyment/tolerance of the work. And compensation generally becomes less of a priority as it increases, as there's less need for it.
In other words, it's not clear that you need to maximize profits to get a respectable amount of human resources into a field. Capitalism is great at many things, but there's definitely cases where common cause makes other solutions more viable within a limited scope.
Also, in response to why other countries aren't funding drug development, it could be as simple as the fact that they don't need to, since the US is doing it for them. Similar to the effect of our outsized military spending allowing many allied countries to spend less on their own defense.
Ah, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with the closing sentence.
Most people aren't gung ho compensation maximizers, otherwise nobody would work in education or government. Free-market capitalism has so far been the most successful economic model, but that doesn't mean it's the right approach for everything. You might be surprised how many drugs are developed by government research institutes.
Besides, why shouldn't human rights, like healthcare, be free? Well, ok, taxpayer-funded is not quite the same as free, but the idea still has merit. Can we really say we deserve this planet if we don't even take care of our own? Desperately wanting to fit everything into a free market model has so far produced more problems than it solved.
caio1982|8 years ago
arcticfox|8 years ago
iamleppert|8 years ago
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dang|8 years ago
Commenting like this is a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please (re)-read the site rules, and please don't post uncivilly again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318709 and marked it off-topic.
unknown|8 years ago
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bryondowd|8 years ago
In other words, it's not clear that you need to maximize profits to get a respectable amount of human resources into a field. Capitalism is great at many things, but there's definitely cases where common cause makes other solutions more viable within a limited scope.
Also, in response to why other countries aren't funding drug development, it could be as simple as the fact that they don't need to, since the US is doing it for them. Similar to the effect of our outsized military spending allowing many allied countries to spend less on their own defense.
Joeri|8 years ago
Most people aren't gung ho compensation maximizers, otherwise nobody would work in education or government. Free-market capitalism has so far been the most successful economic model, but that doesn't mean it's the right approach for everything. You might be surprised how many drugs are developed by government research institutes.
Besides, why shouldn't human rights, like healthcare, be free? Well, ok, taxpayer-funded is not quite the same as free, but the idea still has merit. Can we really say we deserve this planet if we don't even take care of our own? Desperately wanting to fit everything into a free market model has so far produced more problems than it solved.
peter303|8 years ago