[rualca]

> In a normal market situation, prices are determined by supply and demand. But that's really not such a situation here.

Isn't it exactly the situation here?

I mean, a few months ago we even had central governments bid against their own local governments to have access to vaccines. Doesn't that lay out quite clearly that this is a demand-driven market?

[mdbug]

The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return, so I just hope they have negotiated other terms to get the vaccines at fair prices.

[rualca]

> The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return (...)

I don't believe this is a fair or accurate description of what really happens.

Countries invest in education and free and open research, countries invest in entrepreneurship and in people launching startups, and countries invest in partnerships between their public research and private companies to foster the creation of added-value products and services.

And in the end those companies pay taxes back to the state, which in Europe (where BioNTech is from) is higher than 20%.

Furthermore, your comment has nothing at all to do with markets. You're trying to pin onto the "market" tag one of the most basic characteristics of social democratic societies, where the state invests in infrastructure and in lowering or eliminating barriers to entry in business.

[heavenlyblue]

> And in the end those companies pay taxes back to the state, which in Europe (where BioNTech is from) is higher than 20%.

Every company needs to do that. If a government invests in a company then maybe they should also pay a HIGHER tax rate?

[rualca]

The initial thesis was that governments get nothing in return from their investment in education and research. This is patently false. Companies pay taxes, and the higher income they make, the more taxes they pay.

You may argue that over 20% in income tax is not enough, but in the case of BioNTech and Pfizer, you're arguing between two scenarios: seeing the states get about 20% from the profit extracted from billions in revenue, or getting zero due to the absence of any investment in education and basic research and supporting research projects.

Getting paid a 20% chunk of a multi-billion euro revenue is not small change, and this also ignores the fact that this prior investment in education and research shared with startups, which mind you supported the bulk of the development cost of these vaccines and thus enabled humanity to have vaccines with such a low turn-around time, was what ultimately allowed the world to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. How valuable is that?

Not to mention the externalities in fostering the creation of industries and high-value tech jobs.