[dgacmu]

We do have a lot of policy levers that are tilted in favor of making money in finance, though, and we could change those levers.

  - The carried interest loophole
  - We could add small transaction taxes
  - We could raise capital gains taxes
  - We could be a little more focused on enforcing antitrust
  - We could raise higher end marginal tax rates to reduce the relative attractiveness of off-scale payrate jobs
  - We could provide better universal services to do the same

All of these things could shift people's interest in and ability to do work in areas of greater long-term societal importance without bringing in any form of centralized resource allocation.

[0x3f]

I'm not sure you could alter these without significant negative effects on the other things you're trying to encourage.

It's not like capital is uninvolved in the provision of biotech, or that medical startup founders aren't also motivated by massive tax-efficient future payouts, for example.

If anything I'd think you'd want to encourage the movement of investment into riskier bets, which would generally mean _decreasing_ capital gains taxes.

[logicchains]

>long-term societal importance without bringing in any form of centralized resource allocation.

The onus is on the biomedicine industry to demonstrate it's capable of producing anything of societal importance because so far it's largely failed to deliver. There's nothing noble or scientific about throwing good money after bad into an industry that's continuously failed to deliver.

[vladms]

More people living more after cancer diagnosis? (ref: https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/people-are...)

[dgacmu]

You'll note I didn't try to specify what was of import.

We can create mechanisms that enable more people to follow their own idea of what is important instead of merely what is lucrative. Not everyone will agree with the choices other people make, and it wouldn't eliminate money as a motivating factor, it would just slightly reduce the strength of that signal relative to other potential signals such as "I feel like I'm doing something meaningful."

[0x3f]

Honestly I think you'd be better off just making _existing_ cheaper than trying to discourage wealth seeking. The cost of living, especially housing, is a huge motivating factor to try and 'get rich first', before doing the 'meaningful work' part.

[wat10000]

Antibiotics? Vaccines?