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The End of Anitbiotics and the Failure of Capitalism More

The End of Anitbiotics and the Failure of Capitalism

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  • How is an economic system responsible for biochemical effects?

    • Read the interview? Profit seeking without planning or ethics, tied to stock performance drove the unexamined over-use of medicines.

      • Oh, right: profit is as evil as private property.

        • Profit, like all else, requires a context. Please, read the whole interview.

          • Do you think that it’s fair to say that we’ve had a failure of capitalism here?
            The fact that these are for-profit companies that we asked to develop drugs for us, then it should come as no surprise to us if the drugs that we’re asking to develop don’t make money that they’re not going to invest a large amount in making new ones.

            Somebody I know intimately does pharmaceutical project management for a living.
            The irony here is that among the major bad guys in all of this are patent laws, and the implementation of the international standards on running studies. A recommended blog on the topic is pharmalot [pharmalive.com].

            • Patent laws and "standards", that are a result of industry pressure, designed to eliminate competition. A government can only acquiesce to them if it wants to stay in business. Otherwise an opposition is created, funded, and put in place through rigged elections or military coup to do their dirty business. As always power is derived from wealth, and wealth comes from the power to steal.

              • As always power is derived from wealth, and wealth comes from the power to steal.

                Because nothing says 'theft' like a successful restaurant. By which I mean to say that your point has occasional merit.

                • Look, if I can be successful by adopting orphan babies from the 3rd world, then selling their kidneys at a profit? Hey!

                  Let's just pump the market with anti-biotics, in disregard for the ethics, morals and science. The horrifying, rotting deaths are at least 30 years in the future, and the money is here now! Hooray for the invisible hand!

                  • By you logic, Weyerhaeuser [weyerhaeuser.com] should've long since stripped Oregon bare.
                    But they haven't. Why not? Among the reasons are that the anti-capitalist slur that business people "Let's just pump the market. . .in disregard for the ethics, morals and science" is exactly that.
                    Get this: the same people that show up to work, follow the laws, pay the bills, and deliver a product ALSO understand that you can't just blow away the market and expect any profitability down the road.
                    Same's true for pharma. It takes SO long,

                    • There's a reason Weyerhaeuser hasn't stripped Oregon bare. Of all their corporate peers, they've paid some of the highest environmental penalties. Their management is responsible enough to know that someone is watching.

                      And they try to keep their clear-cutting to native American lands, away from scrutiny.

                    • "Of all their corporate peers, they've paid some of the highest environmental penalties."

                      Do you mean they've had to endure some of the most asinine, shrill, granola-head idiocy of anyone on they planet? If that's what you meant, you're quite correct.

                    • Either way, they haven't clear-cut the forests, unlike their less-closely scrutinized peers in certain parts of the world.

                      Since a corporation cannot have morals, there are only a few mechanisms by which moral accountability can be achieved. Government, unions and the "free market". Since none of us are actually customers of this particular corporation, there are no free market mechanisms to achieve moral accountability.

                      You want moral accountability, don't you? Isn't that like bullet point #1 on the react

                    • Strangely, I agree with you. Corporations cannot have morals. Morals are an individual, spiritual, subjective thing.
                      Corporations are composed of people, and people mostly adhere to ethical norms.

                      you can achieve moral accountability for corporations without government or unions, I am eager to hear

                      Media, especially social. When corporations cannot be abusive without market feedback, that is, they make more money through ethical behavior, we can improve.
                      You seem to have missed the point that a union is a corporation whose product is not-labor. Such feedback is occasionally useful for system stability. Howeve

  • End of anti-biotics? Well, who didn't see that coming. It will only boost marijuana products. Colorado needs the capital after those fires screwed so much up.
    Colorado, proof of the wonders of capitalism done RIGHT!

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