You are making the extremely false assumption that our economy is already Pareto-optimal with respect to saving human lives.
Actually, I don’t. And it’s not even necessary for the argument. Even if we nationalized all the investment funds and hanged all the evil capitalists, someone would still die because there would not be enough money to cure them.
(How could I possibly know? My country was like this. And the people here lived on average shorter than our evil neighbors. The medicine was completely free of charge, you just couldn’t get it, because there was not enough made.)
Back to the original topic, an analysis that concludes that some people will die either way, is simply a realistic analysis. Unless we have already solved the problem of Friendly Singularity. We can, and should, look for the ways to minimize this number. It’s not going to be zero, anyway. Even if we had a world-wide government of incorruptible angels with mandatory cryonics right now.
(How could I possibly know? My country was like this. And the people here lived on average shorter than our evil neighbors. The medicine was completely free of charge, you just couldn’t get it, because there was not enough made.)
That means that your country wasn’t ruled well. On the other hand if you live in a country like Germany you do have access to all medicine that”s proven to work in clinical trials.
When it comes to drugs the expensive part is research, marketing and other things that aren”t about the production costs of the actual drug.
Back to the original topic, an analysis that concludes that some people will die either way, is simply a realistic analysis.
Yes, but that doesn’t refute the case-by-case ummm… case, that we’re looking at a deadweight loss of human life in this particular instance. If you don’t hold that the economy is Pareto-optimal, then there are improvements we can feasibly make without suddenly causing shortages of medicine.
Actually, I don’t. And it’s not even necessary for the argument. Even if we nationalized all the investment funds and hanged all the evil capitalists, someone would still die because there would not be enough money to cure them.
(How could I possibly know? My country was like this. And the people here lived on average shorter than our evil neighbors. The medicine was completely free of charge, you just couldn’t get it, because there was not enough made.)
Back to the original topic, an analysis that concludes that some people will die either way, is simply a realistic analysis. Unless we have already solved the problem of Friendly Singularity. We can, and should, look for the ways to minimize this number. It’s not going to be zero, anyway. Even if we had a world-wide government of incorruptible angels with mandatory cryonics right now.
That means that your country wasn’t ruled well. On the other hand if you live in a country like Germany you do have access to all medicine that”s proven to work in clinical trials.
When it comes to drugs the expensive part is research, marketing and other things that aren”t about the production costs of the actual drug.
Yes, but that doesn’t refute the case-by-case ummm… case, that we’re looking at a deadweight loss of human life in this particular instance. If you don’t hold that the economy is Pareto-optimal, then there are improvements we can feasibly make without suddenly causing shortages of medicine.