If you like your Covid-19 vaccine, thank a big corporation.

Well, that's the point that the other repliers are responding to.

Who, specifically, are these who are in a certain political bubble for whom this is a difficult point to accept, even as they all line up to get their Pfizer or Moderna vaccine?

I am pretty sure Hightor lined up for a vaccine. I would be surprised if he hadn't already received one of the premier corporate vaccines... either Pfizer or Moderna.

He can correct me if I am wrong. Hightor is dogmatic, but he isn't stupid and he isn't crazy.

This topic doesn't apply to anti-vaxxers who, in my opinion, are out of touch with reality anyway.

In those countries, yes.

If you lived there and felt good about having gotten vaccinated would you "thank" those state-run companies?

Of course I would thank them. I don't want to end up in a reeducation camp. I am not stupid.

Good one.

Okay, would you feel thankful nonetheless?

I think you already know this... but the word "thank" is metaphorical. I have not, nor will I, write a letter of thanks to Pfizer for my vaccine. I did thank the nice lady who administered my shot at the CVS.

I do recognize the importance of corporations as part of our modern lifestyle. That doesn't mean corporations are above reproach. It doesn't mean that I don't think corporate behavior shouldn't be regulated. I am corporate moderate.

The knee-jerk anti corporate sentiment is silly. And yes, it is just as silly to always side with the corporations.

Corporations are an imporant part of modern life. And, in this case, corporations were an imporant part of our response to a global pandemic. You haven't really argued on either of these points.

I don't really know what your point is, sometimes it seems you argue just to argue without having a real point to make. But that is my point.

To tell you the truth, my vaccination experiences were very positive and I did feel a lot of gratitude – everyone did. Because the process worked. The way it's supposed to. There were many sincere "thank you" events, I can assure you.

So for you to show up and start spouting about how we need to feel gratitude for corporate control of the pharmaceutical supply is as bad as oralloy singing Trump's praises for "Operation Warp Speed" — you're basically pissing on one of the few positive civic experiences I've had since last March.

My point was addressed earlier when you remarked:


My response was:




They only played an important role because the laws of capitalism were suspended and their risk was minimized arbitrarily. You give them too much credit, as if they were doing this themselves out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.

One of the clearest lessons of history is that capitalism works.

My issue with you is that you are one-sided. It is the absolutism of your political narrative that is the problem; that you can't even admit any benefit from corporations.

There are two sides, of course. I have no problem discussing the problems of some corporate behaviors. The opioid crisis is a perfect example.

Your inability to admit that the for-profit corporations, operating to make a profit, did a great thing here is the problem. You are correct, they did it to make a profit (not out of the goodness of their hearts). That doesn't change the fact that the system worked.

How extreme are you on this? Is there any thing produced by our corporation system that you would accept are beneficial?

- Smart phones?
- Airlines?
- Antibiotics?
- Affordable automobiles?

I am pushing back on this knee-jerk political narrative that sees everything from corporations as evil while ignoring the way that our corporate economy directly benefits us.

If you are anti-corporation and yet line up at a CVS for the Pfizer vaccine with your Android phone... there is an inherent cognitive dissonance here.

I am curious how far this ideological purity extends into your daily life?

Do you drink coffee, or eat bananas or mangos?

I assume you use Windows 10 (or maybe Apple IOS). And you probably have a Google Android or Apple IPhone.Am I right?

Just to make it clear...

The argument is that profit-driven corporations produce many things that improve our lives and make society better.

I have never argued that corporations are motivated by anything other than profit, nor should they be (when corporations spout feel good social issue messages it makes me gag). And I have never argued that everything that corporations do is good.

If you are not willing to accept that our economic system that consists of large corporation has benefits including the covid vaccine... then put down your cell phone, stop buying bananas and install linux (although even so, you will be using either Intel or AMD hardware).

One of the clearest lessons of history is that many socioeconomic systems work and have worked.

Can you name two?

I am not sure if Hightor intends to defend Chinese corporations. I hope not, Chinese corporation represent the worse parts of what liberals hate about corporations.

In China, power is concentrated in the hands of a very few, very rich, very powerful men. These men control the government and the economy. Part of the problem with the Chinese vaccine is that it wasn't subject to any outside regulation or accountability. They did what the power elite wanted to do with no one to question them.

It is similar in Russia. Russia apparently produced a safe and effective vaccine... however they were able to avoid any of the regulatory or safety oversight that Western corporations had. Western corporations went through external audits and scientific trials. Russia simply skipped over that to distribution.

If anyone wants to argue that this Russia or China ability to avoid any outside accountability was a good thing, I will will argue strongly against this.

Vladamir Putin did get his vaccine, and scientific analysis done after the fact suggests it does wok. I can't argue with the result.

Feudalism and socialism.

Please give an example of socialism working.

If salvation hinges on profitability, we had better send all this money back to its rightful owners!

You want to bring back serfs? Fuedalism worked well for the nobility.

Maybe we just have different ideas on what makes a good economic system. I don't think either feudalism or socialism would have produced a covid vaccine (and please don't embarass yourself by claiming that either China or Russia are socialist countries).

I claim no 'ideological purity nor did I ever say that corporations were evil. We live in a society which is immersed in corporate capitalism, to our benefit and to our detriment. There's no escape. That doesn't mean we can't be critical of the system's shortcomings and failures, just as Brandon 9000 is free to trumpet its successes.

The government of a modern industrial nation will usually seek to promote the general welfare of its citizens. In the face of an unprecedented pandemic, the Western democracies funded the rapid development of vaccines through the mechanism that was available to them — direct subsidies to corporations in the medical field. Russia and China used a different model, where the state has much greater control over production, and developed their vaccines accordingly. I'm not that well-versed in the actual way the relationship between industry and government is structured in those two countries but that's immaterial.

The fact is, they produced vaccines without the contribution of shareholder-owned corporations. There are alternative models of the industrial state. maxdancona will probably say I'm defending China — I'm not. I'm just pointing out that China and Russia used something other than free enterprise. To be honest, so did we. In a situation like this we couldn't rely on the normal process corporations use to fund research and development and jump-started the process with a massive infusion of money from the US Treasury. This is the reason I've criticized the one-sided view maxdancona lays out in the header to this thread.



I think any economic system which achieves a certain degree of wealth and technical competence would be capable of producing modern effective vaccines. While there are no purely socialist states, all the modern democracies feature aspects of socialism. But that's another conversation.

I think you are confusing political systems (democracy) with economic systems (socialism). They are not the same thing you can easily have a country that is both socialist and Democratic, or you could have a monarchy that is capitalist.

I would also argue that the large state-owned enterprises in China operate very much like corporations. The main difference is that being owned by the government a state-owned Enterprise has zero external accountability. They are controlled by one or two very rich very powerful men.

I am not saying that our system is perfect. But I have no problem saying that I prefer our system to what they have in China.