The Cost of Drugs

[Berzerker]

Japher - You've mis-read my post and raised a series of strawmen. I don't care if the FDA exists (as long as the Constitution is amended), but I want their policing powers removed so we can make our own decisions. If you are afraid, you can wait for the FDA to approve your food or medicine. The rest of us can too, or we can wait for a seal of approval from an organisation like UL. And for those who are sick and/or dying, they can decide if the risk of trying a new drug is warranted by their specific situation. If people have to wait for our permission via the FDA, we are responsible if they die in the interim.

[Ramo]

But I'd prefer eliminating the subsidy rather than getting into constant fights over IP and rights via subsidy.

As would I.

Whatever they can make during the patent protection period. If it takes 10 years to recoup R&D costs, another 5-7 years is long enough.

Why should the state automatically guarantee profit for any such investment?

Not the same thing. Corporate welfare is when a politician threatens to harm me to get my money - taxes - to enrich a corporation. That isn't analogous to protecting a corporation's IP.

A politician threatens to harm me to prevent me from breaking the monopolies the state guarantees. How is this significantly different from corporate welfare?

Let's say that instead of biotech, the state defends a monopoly on schools. So, if I want to start up an independent school, the state could destroy my business. Would that be ok?

Why does this matter? Taking a snapshot of history to ignore all of history is illogical.

How is this illogical? When debating current public policy, surely it makes sense to consider current implications.

How did you get that idea after our debates about the jail/death penalty, etc.?

You had a weird definition of coercion. In this case, the state is taking away my natural right to produce or buy certain kinds of products, under your ideology. So this is unjust, correct?

That's the important part, the owner is the one who should benefit. Social welfare requires taking money from the rightful owners and giving it to others just as with corporate welfare. IP protection allows the owner - the inventor - time to benefit from their labor.

IP takes away the money of those who would want to break state-mandated monopolies and gives it to the person who holds the state-mandated monoploy.

And why should the state guarantee a person to get money from one's labor? If I spend the next year typing "a" on my computer, I did a great deal of labor. Should the state therefore guarantee me money from it?

How can a person own an idea? That doesn't make any sense in libertarian ideology. I never agreed that I wouldn't produce, say, an important AIDS drug. Why should the state have the ability to prohibit me from producing this drug? You say you believe in free enterprise. Intellectual property is the opposite of free enterprise.