Capitalism values things based on what people will pay for them, not what is 'correct' by any other metric, and what people will pay for their life is 'anything'. Therefore capitalism cannot value medicine correctly. Q.E.D.
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enh it's what the market will bear in both directions if one guy will sell you your life for everything you own, and the other will sell it to you for everything you own minus one dollar, the problem then is if there isn't anybody who'll go one dollar lower than that
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In reality you just price fix at infinity, especially in a market with as stringent supply and IP restrictions as medicine.
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right, those stringent supply and IP restrictions having been created to prevent market entrants from selling at cartel-breaking $(n-1) price points and sold as protections
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There are a few other goods that might bear 'infinity' on the demand side as the uppermost price; food and shelter. Unlike medicine, however, those have finite bounds because almost all people could produce those themselves given sufficient price pressure, unlike insulin/medicine
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Replying to @unormal @chaosprime and
So medicine is, I think, uniquely positioned as a good that breaks capitalism pretty hard.
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Replying to @unormal @chaosprime and
Big agree with Brian here. You cannot make educated market decisions about your health, because you have zero power in such an exchange, because you are automatically in a position of vulnerability
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Replying to @tegiminis @unormal and
i don't think that's immutable and i think there are vast cultural factors that are working to put people in that position that could be changed there's basically an asymmetry of sacrality
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Replying to @chaosprime @tegiminis and
the cultural value of the sacredness of life means that it's deeply *wrong* on a level most people can't articulate for the health care consumer to speak of price, much less quibble at it or shop around
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Replying to @chaosprime @unormal and
I think it is impossible to make a properly educated decision about your healthcare regardless of cultural values. Can you reasonably ask a man with a broken arm to decide on which doctor he wants to set it?
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it doesn't seem *that* impossible, but accepting that it's challenging there are extremely well-worn ways to in effect make the decision before your arm is broken when you can be more rational about it
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