Wednesday, January 22, 2003
One of the characters in Atlas Shrugged says:
The code of competence is the only gold standard for morality.
That's very interesting and probably even applies most of the time. I found the following excerpt on Objectivist morality:
Traditional ethics extol charity as the mark of nobility; Objectivism extols productive achievement, because no one exists merely for the sake of others. It is an ethic for those who want all life has to offer, consistently, over the full course of life.
So I wonder what the objectivist position is on a fictional character such as Hannibal Lecter. He's extremely competent. He produces and acheives a lot, he makes some lavish meals out his victims. He is a very rational actor, with one small exception, he strives to make art out of other people.
1:09:17 PM
Cost of Medicine
Noticed a small blog-meme about the price of prescription drugs and how some countries have a socialized single-payer system where the people do not have to pay for them.
I've got mixed feelings about that. I'm thankful that I do not take any prescription drugs but I know plenty of people who do, and the costs can be enormous. But drugs take billions to develop and push through clinical trials and FDA bureaucracy. Drug companies need to recoup these profits somehow and they do it by disproportionately charging American insurance companies, who pass those costs along to us in the form of high medical premiums.
What makes me think that? For one, Glaxo SmithKline threatens to no longer sell to Canada if Canadian pharmacies continue to sell to a handful of Americans. That implies that a handful of American payers is worth more to Glaxo than the whole freaking country of Canada. That's probably because the government of Canada, as a single payer for pharmaceuticals, has a lot of bargaining power and can set prices ridiculously low, Glaxo may sell for a negligible profit, definitely not for their desired ROI for the efforts that went into developing those drugs. The only place where companies can recoup their investment into pharaceutical research is in the free U.S. market for drugs.
So it's bad enough that everyone else gets to pay so little for drugs, it's even more grating that Americans are forced to subsidize this through high drug prices and insurance premiums. But it's all right. Just consider it another way America does its little bit to help the world by subsidizing much of the $364 billion (in 2001) pharmaceutical market.
9:57:23 AM
Last Update: 2/2/2003; 8:46:58 PM
