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There's a chicken and the egg problem here. The reason our country/world has so many resources, is because people with a commercial interest worked had to deve

There's a chicken and the egg problem here. The reason our country/world has so many resources, is because people with a commercial interest worked had to develop/build it. Like, our medicine is amazing because there historically has been so much money in it, which attracted talent and research dollars. So it's easy to look at that and say "oh wow we have so much, how can we not be giving it away for free" but that misses the point that with that mindset, we wouldn't have built what we have to begin with. People often fail to understand that it's a balance.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
I don’t actually know if we have stuff because of commercial motivations. The guys who discovered insulin didn’t do so out of commercial desire. Neither did the people who figured out vaccinations. There are inventors who make money off of their inventions, but they are often poor salespeople and are mostly tinkerers.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  These are fair points but they are individual rather than systematic. Was in the hospital with my mom a few weeks ago, in NYC. The amount of equipment, procedure, etc she received was orders of magnitude beyond that which she would have gotten in the USSR where she grew up, and most places today. For every piece of equipment, mobile bed, ekg, sensor, sample etc - here's a company that makes that stuff, efficiently and at scale. They are driven by the fact that hospitals buy this stuff, which is in part driven by the patients and insurance ability to pay. Money makes this stuff go round. And yes a homeless person walking into the ER gets a benefit out of all this stuff for free - but only because everyone else pays for them. If nobody paid for it, it wouldn't exist.
jmyeet 4y ago
This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda. The myth here is that nothing happens without the profit motive. Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin being invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away for $1 to benefit people, we're still paying outrageous prices for insulin in the USofA even with supposedly limited patent life. The system has been successfully gamed and government bought so that people can be charged $1000/month for something necessary to live that costs a fraction of that to produce. A lot of pharma is like this: pharmaceutical companies primarily spend on marketing and lobbying. A huge chunk of the so-called innovation actually happens with Federally funded research in universities that we just give away to a company to profit from. If you accept that "our medicine is amazing", what about pretty much every other developed nation giving universal access to health care? Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  // This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda Comrade, I am curious - what is the economic system of the country you live in? And if it's not socialist, why have you not migrated to one of the existing socialist paradises? I ask this as someone whose family made the move in the other direction. Life in capitalism is better empirically than the alternatives, it's not propaganda for millions of us who experienced it both ways. // Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money. Is that true and is it accurate to compare say Sweden which is a small, uniform country (everyone is an in-shape middle class white guy) to the US which is vast and diverse in every way?
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    You don't have to go to that extreme. The Myth also says that with less profit motive, less would happen. But, is that really true? If a profitable corporation has to pay a little more in taxes, and thus becomes slightly less profitable, will shareholders simply decide to "Go Galt," close the business, and stop making that delicious profit? I don't think so. If I was a business owner, and I had to go from making "great profit" to "good profit" I'm still thrilled because I'm profiting. I'm not going to take my ball and go home. Businesses close when they make no profit, or when there's not a market fit, or for many other non-tax-related reasons. I've never heard of a business failing simply because their taxes were too darn high.
    - Kalium 4y ago
      To be clear, shareholders do routinely pull their money from companies they believe are underperforming. This is what's happening when a stock price drops or bond rate climbs after a company's earnings fall short of expectations. Investors are generally not equally thrilled with a mediocre profit instead of a great profit because any profit is delicious. Do they "Go Galt"? No, but their money often goes somewhere else. A different company, a hedge fund, or even a different country are all options used quite regularly. Taking their ball and going to play somewhere else with some other people is always an option. Tax policy can and does influence this.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

I don’t actually know if we have stuff because of commercial motivations. The guys who discovered insulin didn’t do so out of commercial desire. Neither did the people who figured out vaccinations. There are inventors who make money off of their inventions, but they are often poor salespeople and are mostly tinkerers.

xyzelement 4y ago
These are fair points but they are individual rather than systematic. Was in the hospital with my mom a few weeks ago, in NYC. The amount of equipment, procedure, etc she received was orders of magnitude beyond that which she would have gotten in the USSR where she grew up, and most places today. For every piece of equipment, mobile bed, ekg, sensor, sample etc - here's a company that makes that stuff, efficiently and at scale. They are driven by the fact that hospitals buy this stuff, which is in part driven by the patients and insurance ability to pay. Money makes this stuff go round. And yes a homeless person walking into the ER gets a benefit out of all this stuff for free - but only because everyone else pays for them. If nobody paid for it, it wouldn't exist.

jmyeet 4y ago

This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda. The myth here is that nothing happens without the profit motive. Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin being invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away for $1 to benefit people, we're still paying outrageous prices for insulin in the USofA even with supposedly limited patent life. The system has been successfully gamed and government bought so that people can be charged $1000/month for something necessary to live that costs a fraction of that to produce. A lot of pharma is like this: pharmaceutical companies primarily spend on marketing and lobbying. A huge chunk of the so-called innovation actually happens with Federally funded research in universities that we just give away to a company to profit from. If you accept that "our medicine is amazing", what about pretty much every other developed nation giving universal access to health care? Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money.

xyzelement 4y ago
// This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda Comrade, I am curious - what is the economic system of the country you live in? And if it's not socialist, why have you not migrated to one of the existing socialist paradises? I ask this as someone whose family made the move in the other direction. Life in capitalism is better empirically than the alternatives, it's not propaganda for millions of us who experienced it both ways. // Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money. Is that true and is it accurate to compare say Sweden which is a small, uniform country (everyone is an in-shape middle class white guy) to the US which is vast and diverse in every way?
- ryandrake 4y ago
  You don't have to go to that extreme. The Myth also says that with less profit motive, less would happen. But, is that really true? If a profitable corporation has to pay a little more in taxes, and thus becomes slightly less profitable, will shareholders simply decide to "Go Galt," close the business, and stop making that delicious profit? I don't think so. If I was a business owner, and I had to go from making "great profit" to "good profit" I'm still thrilled because I'm profiting. I'm not going to take my ball and go home. Businesses close when they make no profit, or when there's not a market fit, or for many other non-tax-related reasons. I've never heard of a business failing simply because their taxes were too darn high.
  - Kalium 4y ago
    To be clear, shareholders do routinely pull their money from companies they believe are underperforming. This is what's happening when a stock price drops or bond rate climbs after a company's earnings fall short of expectations. Investors are generally not equally thrilled with a mediocre profit instead of a great profit because any profit is delicious. Do they "Go Galt"? No, but their money often goes somewhere else. A different company, a hedge fund, or even a different country are all options used quite regularly. Taking their ball and going to play somewhere else with some other people is always an option. Tax policy can and does influence this.