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Originally posted by Tobiasly
First of all, what "most of the international community" thinks is irrelevant. And the language in the treaty you link to says "members <I>may exclude</I> from patentability" those various products. Nowhere does it say that "patents were not valid when the product would save people's lives", as you've repeatedly tried to claim here.
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Wow...have you even read what I've said? My basic argument is that it's greedy and wrong for companies to rake in millions in profit because the prices of their drugs are too high for the poorest people, who need them most, to gain access to them. I think government subsidies are the best remedy to this.
Now, back to the treaty. Our country has gone back on this treaty by threatening countries who adhere to that clause, and allow companies to make generic versions of these drugs.
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But that's not even the point I'm trying to make. Regardless of whether disallowing patents on life-saving drugs should be done, you seem to completely dismiss the effect it would have on whether companies would continue to invest in developing drugs. How do you know they could "still make a ton of money"? How do you know the full impact that such a law would have -- on that company's investors, on their cashflow, on their budget priorities? You can't double the cost a company incurs in marketing a product and just hope they'll keep on doing it.
As I've said already, if such a law were passed, companies wouldn't simply roll over and take it. They'd find new ways to make money.
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Who says this will double it? You're dealing in extremes. I'd venture to say that the cut wouldn't be enough to really cut into their bottom line. Most of the proposals out there would use private donations to pay for the cost of the drug for the absolute bottom of the barrel poor and ask the companies to donate the rest. I just think it's idiotic to let famine or pestilence ravage an entire region just because it's far away and out of sight. This leads to resentment - and resentment, with a little bit of craze (ok, a lot) sprinkled in, leads to things like terrorism.
And I have no problem with them making money. The right to the pursuit of happiness is one of our basic tenets.
Ok, onto what Socrates said. My only concern with your comments is that often the hardest working aren't the highest earning. They get exploited, which then leads to theories like communism.
The problem with pure libertarianism is that there are
no checks to halt the explotiation of the hardest working. You also focus entirely on social welfare programs, ignoring the flipside - corporate welfare. Special contracts, tax breaks, lucrative deals, etc. ad infinitum are really no different than the social programs - except that instead of trying to redistribute the wealth more equally, which is the intent of social welfare, these programs attempt to keep the wealth in one place. Which is just as much of a de-motivator (if not more). If you can't break through the ceiling, then why bother?
Ok, enough with that rant. I love doing this. I could argue politics/theory for days with a smile on my face.