[frgtpsswrdlame]

>Only institutions where profit motive is not helpful, like prisons, should be run by government. I am against private prisons, but for private almost everything else.

In telecom we've got companies screwing over their customers in a myriad of ways, in gaming we've got companies turning their games in slot machines for kids, in medicine we've got $1000 pills that cost $2 in India, in tech we've got the indiscriminate gathering of every piece of consumer information we can gather (and subsequent lack of security placed on it), agriculture's struggling with dicamba drift and so on. It doesn't seem clear to me that you can draw a strict line between the profit-seeking behavior of those private enterprises and that of a private enterprise like prisons.

[danschumann]

Yea, at times, I've thought it might be good if the internet was more like a utility. Perhaps there could be a public option, without `seizing means of production` of existing companies, ala communism.

Prescription stuff is probably one of the most screwed up parts of our country. The fact that weed is illegal because big pharma wants it to be. I don't think the situation would be much improved if the government siezed control of pharma companies, but it would be improved if pharma companies no longer had control of the government.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>I don't think the situation would be much improved if the government siezed control of pharma companies, but it would be improved if pharma companies no longer had control of the government.

Seeking control of the government is a side effect of profit motive, it's a symptom of capitalism. Seizing the means of big pharma seems totally fine to me, it's a public good and our world where the amount spent researching a cure is proportional to how much money we can milk out of those afflicted seems a lot worse to me than a world where the amount spent researching a cure is proportional to the misery of those afflicted.

[danschumann]

I'd rather stop all government funding of their research, have a public option. Let the government compete with them. First we need to stop big pharma dollars from influencing politicians.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>I'd rather stop all government funding of their research, have a public option. Let the government compete with them. First we need to stop big pharma dollars from influencing politicians.

Compete on what merits? Corporate pharma is going to win on profit created and government pharma is going to win on any altruistic measurement. At that point why even bother with the corporate pharma? The money that goes into corporate pharma is still my money, it's what I'm paying at the pharmacy. I'd much rather my tax go up a little bit and we get full on government pharma research than getting good prices on some drugs (gov created) and getting gouged on others (corporate created).