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Why do you believe that biotech has higher long term returns than the valley? That's precisely the problem. Within my lifetime the current antibiotics will be

Why do you believe that biotech has higher long term returns than the valley? That's precisely the problem. Within my lifetime the current antibiotics will become useless, we will be where we were before 1937 (discovery of sulfanilamide), physicians will be as good as they always were at prognosis, but helpless in the face of bacterial infections. The apocalypse is coming, and capitalism is no tool against it.

CamperBob2 12y ago
Within my lifetime the current antibiotics will become useless Also, bananas will be extinct by 2008, and there won't be enough oil or food.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
The issue of fewer drug targets than in the past is not something that any economic system can solve. That's just chemistry. As for the rest of it, it's true that capitalism can't fix the FDA or foreign price controls. Lets hope Charlie Stross is right and the capitalists can take over the government and fix this.
- angersock 12y ago
  So, that's being too nice--recall that market forces are what have led to the overprescription of these medications and also the creation of the environments (hospitals) in which they flourish and mutate.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Yes, we would likely be better off with a Pigouvian tax on antibiotics - that's the economist solution. Unfortunately, neither the capitalistic system nor the democratic process has any real way to get us there.
    - HarryHirsch 12y ago
      Pigouvian tax on antibiotics - that's the economist solution The Swedes and British manage extremely well with national guidelines that physicians actually adhere too. In some disciplines there is no alternatives to the technocrats.
- craigyk 12y ago
  Heh, the takeaway I've gotten from some of Stross's novels is that AI makes "capitalism" indistinguishable, at least from the point of human beings, from a centrally-planned managed economy. So there could be a future in which AI's become sufficiently advanced at serving human needs that we all live as komrades in a utopian communist society.
- mcguire 12y ago
  "Lets hope Charlie Stross is right and the capitalists can take over the government and fix this." > ...but [capitalism does not require democracy] means that the interests of the public (labour) are ignored by states increasingly dominated by capital (because of [automation privileges capital over labour]) unless there's a threat of civil disorder. So states are tooling up for large-scale civil unrest. Let us hope, indeed. Sounds like fun.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    In the Chinese curse sense?
andrewla 12y ago
I don't understand how this is a critique of capitalism. Doesn't this argument of shortsightedness apply to all economic and political systems? The specific defect here is that right now, today, a capitalist country is not, in your estimation, putting enough capital behind biotech to solve the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. More expansively, you're saying that Capitalism is incapable of making this effort. It sounds facile, but what's the alternative? Isn't this a defect of every economic and political system on the planet, not just capitalism? Cuban communism is not putting sufficient capital in play to solve this problem as well, you know. Nor is passive anarchy in eastern Africa putting enough capital towards solving the problem. Even assuming that more capital would magically solve this is kind of a naive viewpoint; serendipity and advancement in parallel fields has played a much larger role in advancements in medical technology than directed research has [citation needed], and for all we know, advances in information technology could hold the answers to solving this problem in a much more effective way. The notion that a directed, centrally planned effort can solve problems (rather than just implement those solutions) is one that is historically unsupportable in any context.

CamperBob2 12y ago

Within my lifetime the current antibiotics will become useless Also, bananas will be extinct by 2008, and there won't be enough oil or food.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

The issue of fewer drug targets than in the past is not something that any economic system can solve. That's just chemistry. As for the rest of it, it's true that capitalism can't fix the FDA or foreign price controls. Lets hope Charlie Stross is right and the capitalists can take over the government and fix this.

angersock 12y ago
So, that's being too nice--recall that market forces are what have led to the overprescription of these medications and also the creation of the environments (hospitals) in which they flourish and mutate.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Yes, we would likely be better off with a Pigouvian tax on antibiotics - that's the economist solution. Unfortunately, neither the capitalistic system nor the democratic process has any real way to get us there.
  - HarryHirsch 12y ago
    Pigouvian tax on antibiotics - that's the economist solution The Swedes and British manage extremely well with national guidelines that physicians actually adhere too. In some disciplines there is no alternatives to the technocrats.
craigyk 12y ago
Heh, the takeaway I've gotten from some of Stross's novels is that AI makes "capitalism" indistinguishable, at least from the point of human beings, from a centrally-planned managed economy. So there could be a future in which AI's become sufficiently advanced at serving human needs that we all live as komrades in a utopian communist society.
mcguire 12y ago
"Lets hope Charlie Stross is right and the capitalists can take over the government and fix this." > ...but [capitalism does not require democracy] means that the interests of the public (labour) are ignored by states increasingly dominated by capital (because of [automation privileges capital over labour]) unless there's a threat of civil disorder. So states are tooling up for large-scale civil unrest. Let us hope, indeed. Sounds like fun.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  In the Chinese curse sense?

andrewla 12y ago

I don't understand how this is a critique of capitalism. Doesn't this argument of shortsightedness apply to all economic and political systems? The specific defect here is that right now, today, a capitalist country is not, in your estimation, putting enough capital behind biotech to solve the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. More expansively, you're saying that Capitalism is incapable of making this effort. It sounds facile, but what's the alternative? Isn't this a defect of every economic and political system on the planet, not just capitalism? Cuban communism is not putting sufficient capital in play to solve this problem as well, you know. Nor is passive anarchy in eastern Africa putting enough capital towards solving the problem. Even assuming that more capital would magically solve this is kind of a naive viewpoint; serendipity and advancement in parallel fields has played a much larger role in advancements in medical technology than directed research has [citation needed], and for all we know, advances in information technology could hold the answers to solving this problem in a much more effective way. The notion that a directed, centrally planned effort can solve problems (rather than just implement those solutions) is one that is historically unsupportable in any context.