[ExI] Why is “cost of living” such a big problem?

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat



On Tuesday, 3 November 2026 at 17:52, spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>
> ...> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
>

>...I'm happy to be living in a country that has socialised healthcare (that actually saved my life at a time when I wouldn't have been able to afford the treatment if I'd been living in the US, so I'd be dead now), and can, according to you, sponge off the wonderful achievements of the US medical system that it is so generously giving to the rest of the world while its own people have the poorest health and lowest life-expectancy of all the developed countries.

Thanks!

---
Ben

_______________________________________________


No need to thank me Ben, for I have never been a big investor in medical companies.  The payoff on those is high, but also the risk.  There is a lot of competition in medical research, which means most of those companies lose money.  But one of them makes a ton of money to compensate those who take the risk.  Citizens from your country and your government are among those investors, as are investors all over the planet.

The socialists suggest the payoff should be lower.  If so, investors go elsewhere to other more profitable industries.  Had not obscene profits been a possibility, your life would not have been saved.  Capitalism is our friend.

spike