3 ms·

Kind of weird to assume other people think it's fine to exchange human lives for money. Is it ethical for me to pay someone to murder you? Does it matter if it

• exabrial 1y ago
  This is a great example of a straw-man attack.
  • cess11 1y ago
    No, it is not. They said that since someone, which is typically a fictive person, had spent a lot of money, they deserve to restrict physical persons' access to supposedly life saving substances. I would like to know how far they take that position.
    • WillPostForFood 1y ago
      How many people do you feel liek you are personally responsible for killing because you haven't given 100% of your disposal income to food relief? Hundreds? Thousands?
      • CobrastanJorji 1y ago
        This isn't "I could use my money to acquire food for the poor." It's "I'm going to prevent anyone else from selling food, and that will let me charge 100x as much for food."
        • cman1444 1y ago
          And yet, if the system wasn't set up this way it's likely that these medicines would never have been developed in the first place. If we take away investor returns now, why would they ever pursue developing similarly effective drugs in the future?
          • cess11 1y ago
            On the contrary, profit motive and immaterial rights slow down innovation and the spread of new technologies. This is why states are the main producers of knowledge and funding most of the interesting research.
          • CobrastanJorji 1y ago
            Good point, maybe researching drugs and treatments shouldn't be done primarily by for-profit companies, and governments should take this on themselves.
• ashdksnndck 1y ago
  Why do we pay doctors? Are they evil if they refuse to go to work for free?
  • cess11 1y ago
    Please explain the relevance of this supposed analogy. How is a doctor withholding their labour restricting the behaviour of anyone else?
    • ashdksnndck 1y ago
      People spend their time and resources developing drugs because they know that the patent system provides them an opportunity to earn a return. If drug patents weren’t enforced, GLP-1 would have never been developed. We could rug-pull the particular companies who own GLP-1 patents by removing patent protection after the fact, that would work to improve access to these particular drugs. But then the next lifesaving drugs won’t be developed, because there will be no prospect for a return. Similar to how doctors save lives and earn a paycheck. We could stop paying doctors, enslave them to work 18 hours 7 days a week so more people get medical care. On top of being obviously evil and wrong, it would also be counterproductive, because then nobody would become a doctor. Put simply, drugs cost money because money is how we direct resources as a society. There is not a cheat code where we can simply make the drugs free and still expect resources to magically appear and manifest the drugs. The drugs exist because we pay for them. I share the feeling that it’s awful that people are blocked from access to these lifesaving drugs by money. But simply eliminating patent protection is not a workable solution. It needs to be accompanied by a replacement mechanism to incentivize drug development. For example, government gives out massive prizes to the drug developer but there is no patent protection.