What's wrong with communism?

[Hubris Boy]

Visibly shaken, Hubris Boy snatches the cloaking device out of the wall with both hands and hurls it across the room. Sparking, hissing and trailing wires, it knocks over a cup of something that is almost but not quite completely unlike tea, ricochets off the MkIV Troll Detector(tm) and comes to rest between his magic 8-ball and a blue copy of Programming Perl. He shrugs and settles down in front of the keyboard. This may take a while. No sense wearing out another perfectly good switch.

originally posted by hermit22
The way I see it, the companies provide that good return to their investors by saving lives. That's their primary focus.

Heh. That's why nobody's ever asked you to run a major pharmaceutical company!

The Red Cross, as a non-profit, isn't in the business of saving lives, so that they aren't tied into all of that mess.

Really? What business do you suppose they're in? Cookie & juice distribution?

On the same token, saving and improving the lives of potential consumers in Africa should be important, if only for their potentiality.

Saving and improving the lives of potential consumers in Africa is properly the concern of Africans.

But when you engage in a money-making venture that plays with people's lives and well-being, you have a certain responsibility to fill.

Yes. You have the responsibility to make money, pay your workers, make money, provide your customers with a safe, high-quality product, make money and obey the laws of the state / country in which you're doing business. And make money. Did I mention making money?

It's appropriate to find the proper balance between making money and saving lives, but it's not appropriate to give up one for the other.

Oh? And who gets to decide what that "proper balance" is? You? Me? Remember Mencken's Law: "Whenever A annoys or injures B, on the pretext of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel."

A = hermit22
B = the profit-loss statement of any major pharmaceutical company
X = dying Africans

And Saturday is Mencken Day! How appropriate. Thank you, hermit22, for providing us with such an excellent illustration of the timelessness of Mr. Mencken's wisdom!

Now I don't know what distinctions you're talking about.

I was talking about the distinction between a for-profit pharmaceutical company and a non-profit philanthropical organization.

But I hope my distinction is clear.

Mmmmm... no, I think you're still having trouble with the concept. But that's okay. I'm here to help.