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Yes, once they found the recipe for the vaccine, it should have become public right away unless someone wants to profit from this pandemic.

by acvny 6y ago

tasubotadas 6y ago
Why is it bad to want to profit from the pandemic? What's the alternative? No profit, no vaccine? Or do you think that people should invest tens of millions out of their own pocket just for a good cause? Or do you think that the government will magically conjure a vaccine without the support from the industry?
- albio 6y ago
  It is bad to encourage profit from a disaster because it creates a perverse incentive where you hope for more disaster. If you can profit from a disaster it is fine up until greed begins to interfere with solving the disaster.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Right, so. There are people out there who we can simply call profit-haters. They are of course not quite so foolish as to imagine that people with money should commit millions and billions to pay talented scientists salaries up front, with the hope of doing no more of breaking even. Instead, they envision an alternative where the private sector is simply gone, a thing of the past, and instead some government bureaucracy is placed in charge of directing all of society's resources where they see fit. Of course this gleefully ignores all economics concepts like "incentives", "accountability", the entire body of public choice theory, the principal-agent problem, numerous real world experiences of corruption, waste, and inefficiency in real-world planned economies, and the whole imposition-on-liberty thing. These all have real world effects. As a strictly topical matter, the public sector in the US was in charge of the early COVID testing approach, and its months-long delays cost the nation very dearly. Some coverage from the Grey Lady (a well-known public-sector sympathizer, at that) -- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pa... When someone advances arguments like the grandparent post has done, he generally doesn't want this mode of resource allocation to be expanded -- he wants it to be the only thing that exists in the world. It is likely that such persons cannot be dissuaded from this goal, because it is accepted as a hallowed ideological truth: profit is evil. If someone were to save society a billion dollars, and made a million dollars in profit, they would still deem it evil, and would rather see society continue to suffer. They would also be happy for society to pay steep prices in terms of lives, or in terms of freedom. So in the end, one generally can't meaningfully argue with these assertions. All you can do is just point out to others how extremist and foolish the position is. A dead post adjacent laments people profiting from disaster, suggesting this encourages disasters. This is thinking about the incentives, but it is also, unfortunately, somewhat insane in the current context.
bagacrap 6y ago
right, so, we're allowed to profit by releasing a new clone of candy crush but not by saving humanity from a global pandemic...
- romwell 6y ago
  > we're allowed to profit by releasing a new clone of candy crush but not by saving humanity from a global pandemic... Pretty much, yes. We also shouldn't be allowed to profit from saving the humanity from crime (by running private prisons), for the same reasons.

Yes, once they found the recipe for the vaccine, it should have become public right away unless someone wants to profit from this pandemic.

by acvny 6y ago

Yes, once they found the recipe for the vaccine, it should have become public right away unless someone wants to profit from this pandemic.

tasubotadas 6y ago

Why is it bad to want to profit from the pandemic? What's the alternative? No profit, no vaccine? Or do you think that people should invest tens of millions out of their own pocket just for a good cause? Or do you think that the government will magically conjure a vaccine without the support from the industry?

albio 6y ago
It is bad to encourage profit from a disaster because it creates a perverse incentive where you hope for more disaster. If you can profit from a disaster it is fine up until greed begins to interfere with solving the disaster.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
Right, so. There are people out there who we can simply call profit-haters. They are of course not quite so foolish as to imagine that people with money should commit millions and billions to pay talented scientists salaries up front, with the hope of doing no more of breaking even. Instead, they envision an alternative where the private sector is simply gone, a thing of the past, and instead some government bureaucracy is placed in charge of directing all of society's resources where they see fit. Of course this gleefully ignores all economics concepts like "incentives", "accountability", the entire body of public choice theory, the principal-agent problem, numerous real world experiences of corruption, waste, and inefficiency in real-world planned economies, and the whole imposition-on-liberty thing. These all have real world effects. As a strictly topical matter, the public sector in the US was in charge of the early COVID testing approach, and its months-long delays cost the nation very dearly. Some coverage from the Grey Lady (a well-known public-sector sympathizer, at that) -- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pa... When someone advances arguments like the grandparent post has done, he generally doesn't want this mode of resource allocation to be expanded -- he wants it to be the only thing that exists in the world. It is likely that such persons cannot be dissuaded from this goal, because it is accepted as a hallowed ideological truth: profit is evil. If someone were to save society a billion dollars, and made a million dollars in profit, they would still deem it evil, and would rather see society continue to suffer. They would also be happy for society to pay steep prices in terms of lives, or in terms of freedom. So in the end, one generally can't meaningfully argue with these assertions. All you can do is just point out to others how extremist and foolish the position is. A dead post adjacent laments people profiting from disaster, suggesting this encourages disasters. This is thinking about the incentives, but it is also, unfortunately, somewhat insane in the current context.

bagacrap 6y ago

right, so, we're allowed to profit by releasing a new clone of candy crush but not by saving humanity from a global pandemic...

romwell 6y ago
> we're allowed to profit by releasing a new clone of candy crush but not by saving humanity from a global pandemic... Pretty much, yes. We also shouldn't be allowed to profit from saving the humanity from crime (by running private prisons), for the same reasons.