[ExI] Transhumanism and Politics

[spike]

> Stathis Papaioannou
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Transhumanism and Politics
> 
> On 26/01/2008, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> 
> > Imagine the US goes for Michael Moore's idea and removes all profit 
> > motive from all things medical.  All the medical technology stocks 
> > plummet, investors take the cash elsewhere.
> 
> The idea is that if you get sick and need expensive medical 
> treatment, the government will pay for it out of the taxes it 
> collects, just as it pays for the police and the armed 
> forces. This doesn't stop a private company developing better 
> or cheaper treatments to sell to the government health 
> providers, or even directly competing by setting up a 
> parallel private health service...

> What about the $28 billion annual budget of the NIH:
> http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm... Stathis Papaioannou


Stathis, I am with you on this, but what I argue is that with government
health care, private companies will not have sufficient profit potential to
compel investors to dump capital into medical tech.  A paltry 28 billion
isn't enough for what I have in mind, not nearly enough.  

Governments are poor customers.  Onlookers thing of governments as huge
money bags that are terrific customers, but reality is just the opposite.
Rich people with terminal diseases willing to dump it all into hail Mary
treatments are terrific customers.  Goverments, nah.  Investors go where the
money is.  We will end up with really good cars and computer games, but
relatively pokey advancement in med tech.

Somewhere on this planet, med tech for pure profit, filthy lucre, down and
dirty money, must be allowed to exist.  Forget the humanitarian need
business, the wanting to help mankind, notions that are wonderfully exibited
in some people.  Rather let them do research for the fame, or the good old
fashioned religion of technology for personal gain, that most reliable
emotions that has served us so long and so well.  Then all the world's
finest medical researchers can go there and do their thing, and may they do
it to their utmost, and may they work quickly please, STAT, for our time is
short.  We will pay you.  Very quickly please, doctors.

spike