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> This is why the USSR created the Polio vaccine, Venezuela created the MMR vaccine, and India leads the world in drug resistant antibiotics. > OH WAIT. The U
by 394549 8y ago
> This is why the USSR created the Polio vaccine, Venezuela created the MMR vaccine, and India leads the world in drug resistant antibiotics.
> OH WAIT.
The USSR actually did a lot of interesting work developing phage therapies which could become increasingly important as current antibiotics become more and more ineffective due to antibiotic resistant bacteria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
And it's not like any of the vaccines you listed were developed by corporations following capitalist profit-motives. The ones I checked were developed by researchers focusing on contributing to the public good, for instance:
> Salk [developer of the first successful polio vaccine] campaigned for mandatory vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a "moral commitment."[7] His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, "Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk)
But of course, you probably didn't know that. People who write comments like yours usually don't know much beyond certain ignorant dogmas.
- analognoise 8y agoI knew Salk refused the patent, not about the USSR's pioneering work in barely feeding their people (sorry, phage therapies). But if Salk had made 100M dollars, would that have been bad? Lebron is worth way more than that. He plays basketball. We as a society should be recognizing and paying for talent, not pretending workers co-ops and non-profits are effective or that capitalism hasn't produced all of the good things we enjoy.
- mgkimsal 8y ago> But if Salk had made 100M dollars, would that have been bad? If it had come with the cost of fewer people being vaccinated, probably.
- 394549 8y ago> I knew Salk refused the patent, not about the USSR's pioneering work in barely feeding their people (sorry, phage therapies). That's pretty stupid snark, by the way. More evidence of unthinking dogmatism and rather limited understanding. No one sensible seriously claims the Soviet Union had a model worthy of emulation. However, it's foolish to think it was totally flawed or that its flaws somehow prove "capitalism is best, the more the better." > But if Salk had made 100M dollars, would that have been bad? Lebron is worth way more than that. He plays basketball. > We as a society should be recognizing and paying for talent, not pretending workers co-ops and non-profits are effective or that capitalism hasn't produced all of the good things we enjoy. Some segments of society need to stop pretending that capitalism is a suitable replacement for literally every other kind of human motivation. The main strength of capitalism is that it sometimes incentivizes the already greedy according to their own logic to behave in ways that are socially beneficial (at least more than some other systems), but that's about it. It's a serious error to want to corrupt the noble people who raise above greed and want to do good for its own sake to the point they need to rely on capitalism to motivate them. It's also a serious error to think that capitalist motivations will accomplish all the good those people would have done for their more noble reasons.