thought for the day... again... capitalism? dying? dead?

[fred quimby]

You pointing out that I'm wrong is far more important than those tens of millions of deaths.

[fred quimby]

we've had the drugs answer for malaria for decades.

So, the question has to be asked: why are huge numbers still dying from malaria?

[eFestivals]

of course not durrr. Was just challenging your statements, see how they stood up.

from the number you yourself quoted, put against what I actually said (and not what you've wrongly taken as what I said), it stands up.

So there we go: capitalism is far more evil than either Hitler or Stalin.

But western humanity will keep tootling along, pretending to itself that it's a fluffy kitten and that everything is alright.

[Ed209]

Sorry should have said they now have the inoculation for malaria. Yes we have had the drugs to treat it for years. Not sure on timescales I heard but in a few years(?) we could see the almost eradication of the disease.

[fred quimby]

from the number you yourself quoted, put against what I actually said (and not what you've wrongly taken as what I said), it stands up.

[eFestivals]

A lot of drugs are a direct product of capitalism... I think that is known as an inconvenient truth...

PMSL - what it is is an unavoidable consequence of operating a capitalist system, the same system which says "we've got this drug that can save you, but we're not going to bother".

Necessity is the mother of invention, not money.

So having invented, we have a choice: to leave to die, or not.

And capitalism says "die you fuckers", no different to what Hitler was saying to the Jews.

[eFestivals]

God here we go

so I was questioning this statement

"Personally, I don't find it laughable that the west operates a system that condemns more people to death in any single year than either Hitler or Stalin each managed in their lifetimes by the systems they operated,"

Yes I was wrong with my first 30 million and should have edited to the 60 million, hence where some confusion may come in

I took the figures and they didn't match your statement.

My statement says that you should have used the 30M figure, but perhaps it wasn't as clear as it might have been.

The "each" was put in there to try and make clear that it should have been taken individually, and not combined.

[fred quimby]

My statement says that you should have used the 30M figure, but perhaps it wasn't as clear as it might have been.

The "each" was put in there to try and make clear that it should have been taken individually, and not combined.

Edited November 1, 2011 by fred quimby

[fred quimby]

Because what drug makers want is not to sell their products?

[eFestivals]

The 57 mil dying each year isn't all Capitalism either.

It's something which capitalism allows to happen, in fact REQUIRES to happen.

If there's no consequences from failing to join the fray, capital ceases to have any power - and so those who worship the power of capital require that some suffer the ultimate consequence of their power.

[eFestivals]

Because what drug makers want is not to sell their products?

care to tell me how they'd not be selling their products if everyone needing a particular drug to fend off death got bought that drug?

You can't get away from the fact it costs millions to create these inventions...

No, it takes a decision to allocate resources towards creating an invention.

The 'millions' are merely a way of accounting for those resources within a system that has already placed a price on people's lives and where some lives are considered worthless against that system.

[fred quimby]

It's something which capitalism allows to happen, in fact REQUIRES to happen.

[eFestivals]

the figure was total people dying so that includes natural,

Nope, it's not - unless people alive now are living hundreds perhaps thousands of years.

Perhaps you should have asked me to do the maths.

is it not something that people allow to happen though

You what?

A holiday for someone to somewhere exotic, or those resources allocated instead to (say) buying malaria drugs for those who don't get them?

C'mon - surely you're not that dim?

[fred quimby]

Nope, it's not - unless people alive now are living hundreds perhaps thousands of years.

Perhaps you should have asked me to do the maths.

[fred quimby]

You what?

[eFestivals]

Not sure what you mean. 57 million die each year, some of those will be natural (old age, accidents etc)

The world population would have to be less than 3Bn for it to be just 60M a year.

But anyway, the relevant point is that the estimates of the number of just the unavoidable starvation deaths and unavoidable malaria deaths is in the range of 10M to 20M people a year, while the numbers killed directly (not including war deaths) by both Hitler and Stalin is around 10M or less in total for each during their lifetimes. This is what I was getting at.

was a question of whether a system kills people or people within that system that allow it to happen. If we had any other system would this just cease to happen, I would say no, be nice if it didn't

The first part is meaningless semantics.

And the point is that the huge majority of that 10M to 20M a year that die unnecessarily now could be saved if we chose to save them.

Instead the western world choose new TVs, nice holidays, new cars, and whatever else.

For the people who die unnecessarily, it might as well be Hitler putting them in the gas chambers. Death is death.

[lost]

A large proportion of hunger in places like Africa is people being displaced via war from areas where food is available to refugee camps either which can't sustain the numbers or are difficult to reach due to the ongoing war..

There are many other factors though, not to mention a certain socialist called Robert Mugabe who single handedly destroyed the food production of the bread basket of Africa (Zimbabwe) via a war on white farmers and running the countries economy into the ground.

[Ed209]

PMSL - what it is is an unavoidable consequence of operating a capitalist system, the same system which says "we've got this drug that can save you, but we're not going to bother".

Necessity is the mother of invention, not money.

So having invented, we have a choice: to leave to die, or not.

And capitalism says "die you fuckers", no different to what Hitler was saying to the Jews.

[eFestivals]

A large proportion of hunger in places like Africa is people being displaced via war from areas where food is available to refugee camps either which can't sustain the numbers or are difficult to reach due to the ongoing war..

yup, war is a part of the mix, tho far less than I reckon you're presuming.

And to take things back to around where this thread started out, those wars are of course wars over resources, or more correctly, over the lack of resources - cos the west has taken them.

There are many other factors though, not to mention a certain socialist called Robert Mugabe who single handedly destroyed the food production of the bread basket of Africa (Zimbabwe) via a war on white farmers and running the countries economy into the ground.

yup - tho death thru starvation hasn't really been a consequence of that.

[eFestivals]

Much of the development of technology and drugs is driven by competition between companies. Remove the competition, you remove the drive. Tech and drugs industry is a filthy business, but it is also a vital industry that thrives under capitalism.

that's not true.

Did Pasteur and his ilk only do what they did cos of capitalism and the pay of drug companies?

Its a fucked up system, but the tech and drugs company's drive for profits is what drives the invention into becoming a real product.

what's fucked up is this view. See above.

I'm fairly sure that without capitalism, medine, technology and science would be no where near the levels we have now.

again, not true. Problems are overcome by the desire to over-come them.

Just because the driving desire currently is filthy lucre doesn't get to mean that the desire goes if the money does. Would you refuse to help your mother unless she paid you?

The pace at which things are developed would be much less were the companies and the competition between them removed. The fucked up part comes in the fact that the same system that drives these amazing advancements is the one that limits their availability.

the same fucked up view. See above yet again.

It is the important jobs of charities and governments to ensure that the gap is bridged and the people that really need them have access to them.

After people have had lots of tax cuts so they can have holidays, cars and TVs, obviously.

Oaf has shown how it is. He's not paying more taxes and losing his holiday. He's worked hard, and he believes that the rewards of his work are exclusively his own and created only by his own doings.

[Ed209]

you know my point wasn't that science advancement only occurs under capitalism, so I don't know why you tried to make it out it was. I was talking about the pace at which technology and drugs become available on a mass scale. This is driven by profits, and have been for a long time. The alturistic acts of a genius in a lab are a long way from a company that takes that idea, spends millions and billions of pounds developing it so that it can actually be used on a mass scale to make them profits.

That competitive developing process these companies go through to be the first out there, spawns new ideas and new products, that not only help the companies, but give ideas to the people in the labs, which all self perpetuates the technological advancement.

People would still see the need, and try to invent something to solve it, without capitalism, the pace at which it actually happens would be slower. I'm not saying I like it, Its just the way it is. I really don't think this view is that crazy.

[lost]

People would still see the need, and try to invent something to solve it, without capitalism, the pace at which it actually happens would be slower. I'm not saying I like it, Its just the way it is. I really don't think this view is that crazy.

[eFestivals]

I was talking about the pace at which technology and drugs become available on a mass scale. This is driven by profits, and have been for a long time.

well of course it is: we have a capitalist system in operation. It a feature of capitalism for things to work in this way.

But what is really driving things is not directly money, but instead desire - the desire to do something. Within capitalism any desire "to do good" is intermixed with the money it brings as a result, but it doesn't have to be like that, and no modern Pasteur type goes into pharmaceutical research nowadays because of the money they might make, that's merely an aside to any discovery they might make.

It's certainly the case that not a jot of anything which is done under capitalism couldn't be done with another driving force. It's ultimately the actions of humans that bring the results, the money is merely a side issue.

The alturistic acts of a genius in a lab are a long way from a company that takes that idea, spends millions and billions of pounds developing it so that it can actually be used on a mass scale to make them profits.

In most cases that not actually the case. Most medical advances come initially from small groups of people working outside of the big companies. It's only when they're onto something that the big companies get involved by buying them up to ensure that no one creeps up and steals the hugely profitable market they've carved out for themselves.

For example, one of the investors of of the original company that owned efests ran a biotech company that was doing work of some kind around cancer. That company had raised around £10M in funding, and the financial plan was for them to get so far down the road and then sell-out for a HUGE amount (£100M+) to a one of the majors (cos that efests company folded, I've no idea how things panned out [and funnily enough, that efests failed because it was greed-driven, this efests succeeds because it's not]).

So, in that example, the work was (comparatively) cheap. The high costs aren't from the work itself, but from the greed that surrounds it. Greed before need as it were, and yet the underlying drivers are people trying to make medical progress no different to Pasteur - just because they can!!

That competitive developing process these companies go through to be the first out there, spawns new ideas and new products, that not only help the companies, but give ideas to the people in the labs, which all self perpetuates the technological advancement.

and which would all happen far faster if the technological advancements aren't being hidden from others who could take them further much faster, but for the secrecy needed for profits.

People would still see the need, and try to invent something to solve it, without capitalism, the pace at which it actually happens would be slower.

There's absolutely no proof for what you say here, we've only ever tried it that way in recent times; until another way is tried we can't know how fast it'll go. Referring back to the past and saying development then was slow proves nothing.

All knowledge is built on top of previous knowledge, and the more there is to build on the more there is that can be built. That alone accounts for increasing speed.

Just as much as you might like to think that BigPharm drives it all and might provide evidence to back up (but not prove) that idea, evidence can be presented that can show without any doubt that BigPharm also holds things back. It's not the one way street that you're believing, as the morally sickening agreements that BigPharm has been forced to make (against their will, despite the huge rewards it still brings them) in providing drugs for the developing world gets to show.

[abdoujaparov]

A lot of drugs and the benefits are a direct product of capitalism... I think that is known as an inconvenient truth...

And I choose do something by directly funding the purchase of these drugs for the third world. While Neil sits here with his nodding dogs.

[Ed209]

well of course it is: we have a capitalist system in operation. It a feature of capitalism for things to work in this way.

But what is really driving things is not directly money, but instead desire - the desire to do something. Within capitalism any desire "to do good" is intermixed with the money it brings as a result, but it doesn't have to be like that, and no modern Pasteur type goes into pharmaceutical research nowadays because of the money they might make, that's merely an aside to any discovery they might make.

It's certainly the case that not a jot of anything which is done under capitalism couldn't be done with another driving force. It's ultimately the actions of humans that bring the results, the money is merely a side issue.

In most cases that not actually the case. Most medical advances come initially from small groups of people working outside of the big companies. It's only when they're onto something that the big companies get involved by buying them up to ensure that no one creeps up and steals the hugely profitable market they've carved out for themselves.

For example, one of the investors of of the original company that owned efests ran a biotech company that was doing work of some kind around cancer. That company had raised around £10M in funding, and the financial plan was for them to get so far down the road and then sell-out for a HUGE amount (£100M+) to a one of the majors (cos that efests company folded, I've no idea how things panned out [and funnily enough, that efests failed because it was greed-driven, this efests succeeds because it's not]).

So, in that example, the work was (comparatively) cheap. The high costs aren't from the work itself, but from the greed that surrounds it. Greed before need as it were, and yet the underlying drivers are people trying to make medical progress no different to Pasteur - just because they can!!

and which would all happen far faster if the technological advancements aren't being hidden from others who could take them further much faster, but for the secrecy needed for profits.

There's absolutely no proof for what you say here, we've only ever tried it that way in recent times; until another way is tried we can't know how fast it'll go. Referring back to the past and saying development then was slow proves nothing.

All knowledge is built on top of previous knowledge, and the more there is to build on the more there is that can be built. That alone accounts for increasing speed.

Just as much as you might like to think that BigPharm drives it all and might provide evidence to back up (but not prove) that idea, evidence can be presented that can show without any doubt that BigPharm also holds things back. It's not the one way street that you're believing, as the morally sickening agreements that BigPharm has been forced to make (against their will, despite the huge rewards it still brings them) in providing drugs for the developing world gets to show.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Ed209