Go Socialism!

Actually, I am less skeptical about it after debating it with you than I was on hearing about the idea for the first time. Having considered your explanations, I am left with no clear-cut reason why this cannot possibly work. I'm not ready to endorse your idea yet either, but my opposition is now down to gut feelings like: If government uses some mechanical rule to buy up patents above market price, businesses will find a way to game the system and conspire to raise the market price -- perhaps with dummy bidders for the patents. Or: If government buys up patents at its discretion above market prices, the people who run the responsible government agency will somehow use the discretion to give kickbacks to favored businesses while withholding them from others. But I admit that at this point, I can't suggest an exploit of your system that would be obvious and severe enough to prove my point.

On a different note, I have browsed the income statements of other, non-pharmaceutical Fortune 500 companies. Looking at their ratios of "R&D" to "Selling, General, Administration", it turns out the value is in the same ball park whether they deal in pharmaceuticals (cited above), airospace (Boeing), IT (Lucent, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft), materials (3M) or are conglomerates (Siemens). And like George says, "Selling, General, Administration" appears to be a catch-all that cover some R&D costs for at least some companies. For example, the R&D entry in General Electric's income statement is empty, which certainly understates how much this conglomerate is actually spending on research and development. Based on these observations, I doubt that pharmaceutical companies are actually spending unusually high sums on marketing, compared to other sectors of the economy.

What may be relevant here is that, at least in this country, pharmaceutical companies are spending much more on advertising specific drugs that they did just ten years ago, when such advertising was quite restricted by both law and prevailing practice. A similar change may have occurred in other countries as well.

This new spending for advertising has been a factor in the quick public acceptance of a host of expensive new drugs, many for the treatment of chronic conditions, and which substantially increase the expenditures of government agencies, insurance companies, businesses, and individuals in health care. To the extent that providers indulge in rationing as a form of cost control, this advertising is a challenge. I have the impression that at least part of Einher's motivation here relates to this process. It is appropriate to recognize that the explosion of new drugs is itself a good thing. How we deal with it involves many complications having to do with our in place systems and methods.

Is the problem the advertising cost itself, or the effect it has on collective systems for health care whose primary concern is the containment of cost, and whose normal technique is the rationing of service and care?

I'm sure one could come up with a way to retire a patent for one geographical area only. Basicaly all that needs to be done is for laws and treaties to be changed.



I was only aiming to cut down on marketing expenses. I'm not sure how rationing would be affected. I've never considered governmental rationing a problem, only waste, governmental or private.

Oh and Thomas, I've given uptrying to figure out the marketing to R&D ratios. I've read that they are high, and I'm ready to leave it at that as it makes sensse to me. Besides, if GE is listing 0 for R&D I'm not comfortable relying on my interpretation of what the numbers signify anyway.

That's about all I have to say about this patent idea. Perhaps we should get back on the topic of socialism. Does anybody have any preferences on what aspect to discuss next?

Einher,

Don't be mistaken. You have offered an idea that has interesting and potentially beneficial possibilities. My impression is that both Thomas and I initially reacted negatively towards it out of our (slightly different) habitual modes of thought about such matters. After reflection both of us acknowledged that the idea just might work under some circumstances, but expressed reservation about it based on our own skepticism about the behavior of governments and businessmen who work hard to outsmart governments.

Even for me this was a significant admission (and I'm a much more easy-going guy than Thomas). For him the opening was truly heroic.

I think your original proposition that we can make progress on the general consideration of socialism through consideration of specific applications of its ideas, has been demonstrated to be correct in this case.

You won (mostly). Try to accept yes for an answer.

Serious discussions are always such hard work. Can we exchange a few brainless partisan slurs with nimh and Walter please? I'm sure they feel the same way about the hard work part.

Well, it IS.

Doctors, nurses and so on get paid.

The question is by whom, and how directly?

Will do.

So, that being sorted, how do we get nimh around for exchange of partisan slurs?

Since I'm only good at brainless slurs - please do start, Thomas :wink:

OK, I'll start. Norwegians are all very stubborn, Germans a bit testy, and Irish Americans are cheerful, magnanimous, and easy going. (Don't ask me about the French.)

Hmm - although George didn't change his usual tone at all, I don't think, I can leave that without response.




I heavily suspect that this follows alone from bad aquaintances. :wink:



This is quite serious, since it is wellknown throughout history that pride goes before a fall.



Norwegians have the Line Aquavit, so they are out of any critic.

Discussing France/ the French with George is a life-task, which not only would go beyond the scope of this thread but of A2K, even the internet in totaliter.


Just my 2 €-cents.

Venezuela Tries To Create Its Own Kind of Socialism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501483_2.html

Interview With Minister of Planning and Development Jorge Giordani

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080600018_2.html

It is just more of the old familiar use of the national resources of the country by a power-seeking tyrant to bribe the population into submission. The bribes don't seem to be qworking so well now that many venezuelans are reacting to the loss of their former freedoms. Meanwhile Hugo's mismanagement of the economy and the cronyism that has now replaced competence in the management of the oil industry are combining to lower petroleum production and further reduce the resources available for social programs.

Eventually Chavez' misrule and the worn-out authoitarian socialist ideas he is advancing (merely under a new name) will kill the goose that has so far laid the golden eggs. Venezuela's economy will collapse; Chavez will be overthrown by yet another authoritarian regime the san history of poor, but potentially rich, Venezuela will continue.

Yes, I keep hearing that. If it realy works we might have to kill'em.

-------------------------------------------------




Venezuela's four-legged mobile libraries
A university in Venezuela is using a novel method to take books into remote communities and encourage people to read. As James Ingham reports, the scheme is proving a great success.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6929404.stm

What will the people do with the new found learning that comes with reading in a land that denys them freedom to act on it?

it's possible that they will get ticked off enough to throw crates of tea overboard, tell their leaders to buzz off and form a democracy.

smarter is better in any country.

Meanwhile, in Caracas.............

If under capatalism I get paid 70 cents an hour to barley stay alive and sleep in the dirt to pick coffee for starbucks where i could grow food for my family am I free?

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"Socialism is founded on the logic of work, and not on the exploitation of work. That comes from classic economics...What has to be overcome is for that work to be distributed to found a new type of society that's more just, more equal, more free and more democratic."

- Jorge Giordani, Minister of Planning and Development

-----------------------

With oil income rising fourfold during Chávez's presidency, the economy has registered double-digit growth the past three years. Gross domestic output has gone from $103 billion in 1999 to $174 billion last year, according to recent testimony on Capitol Hill. Increased royalties and taxes leveled on private oil companies since 2004 have generated nearly $6 billion for government coffers, Chávez said last month, and authorities are cracking down relentlessly on tax evaders.

(bm)... maybe i'll say something later. having grown up in communism on the wrong side of the barricade, i know i am not objective about the topic... so i'll just read along for awhile.

Yes and oil production is falling due to the lack of investment and the increasingly incompetent management of the operation by the Chavez cronies.

Russia was a major exporter of grain to Europe prior to 1914. Under Soviet rule agricultural production fell dramatically, and by 1955 the USSR had become a major importer of grains. Soviet industry was grossly inefficient and when the empire fell, and the Soviet barter system collapsed with it, the products of this system could not compete, either in quality or price with those available from other sources. So much for the great economic promises of authoritarian socialism !