51–60 of 110 posts
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Equitable? The raw material is a far cry from the final product which required perhaps hundred of millions in R&D. If people are willing the give a unit of plasma for $7.50 and supply is meeting demand, it seems precisely equitable. The key question is that donating so frequently must be safe for the donor. If there's long term health implications then the firms have to coordinate if necessary to ensure donations are…
> If people are willing the give a unit of plasma for $7.50 and supply is meeting demand, it seems precisely equitable. The US actually provides 50% of the world's plasma supply, because there are more people in the US willing to donate under the current system than there is a need for it, whereas most of the world (which does not pay for plasma donation) has an ongoing shortage. Plasma, like whole blood, also has a…
This reminds me of "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics": http://web.archive.org/web/20160806191858/https://blog.jaibo... Our culture has a very strange belief that you shouldn't benefit from the less fortunate. Even if you benefit them too. People that have never donated a dollar to charity in their lives, will come out of the woodwork and complain about "exploitation".
In the US I've even heard people using this rational to avoid fuelling the military industrial complex. However a well functioning government that best served society would not have this problem. In principle it's the government's job to take care of society's needs, not the charities'.
I think the existence of Planned Parenthood is a case in point. Undoubtedly they provide a necessary service, but in what world should a pregnant teenager not have access to a doctor?
In practice charities act as a highly inefficient decentralised mechanism for providing basic needs to those that can't afford them. In some cases, the charities are stellar. In others, they come with a religious taint (e.g. access to a doctor through a church). In the worst case a charity can operate as a scam, see the untouchable tele-evangelists.
Pretty basic economics. Quantity supplied generally == quantity demanded, as long as there's a functioning price system. It's why you can go to a gas station and (while the price certainly changes) count on them never being out of gas, despite whatever else is going on in terms of weather, OPEC or whatever. Paying people for plasma donation means there's plasma available for patients who need it. And it's not like th…
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Showing that people are willing to pay a price does not make it equitable. You have to account for power dynamics and market conditions. I believe the original question was whether there was a relatively even or fair split of 'profits' from the current setup. One could make a case for this being even, and also for it being somehow relational to investment (blood from the giver, r&d + logistics from the receiver). You…
You're welcome to "make the case" for whatever you want, but this comment suggesting it's something in anyone's control belies what's really going on. The price system and "profit" splits aren't something any one entity (plasma doner nor company) sets down and decides. It (like most prices) is an emergent phenomenon. You might as well "make the case" the morning commute from downtown Chicago up to Evanston should be…
I wasn't saying it was in someone's control. I was discussing analysis of the system as it is.
Pretty basic economics. Quantity supplied generally == quantity demanded, as long as there's a functioning price system. It's why you can go to a gas station and (while the price certainly changes) count on them never being out of gas, despite whatever else is going on in terms of weather, OPEC or whatever. Paying people for plasma donation means there's plasma available for patients who need it. And it's not like th…
Also note while the monetary price for blood is $0, that's probably not the full price -- just ask anyone who has reluctantly donated blood because they didn't want to be the only person in their school or office not donating during a blood drive. There's often a social cost to NOT donating too.
Also, even with these differences/caveats the lack of a price system for blood does lead to some mismatches between supply and demand. There's currently a big blood shortage as we speak (google it), leading some hospitals to cancel elective surgery.
This reminds me of "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics": http://web.archive.org/web/20160806191858/https://blog.jaibo... Our culture has a very strange belief that you shouldn't benefit from the less fortunate. Even if you benefit them too. People that have never donated a dollar to charity in their lives, will come out of the woodwork and complain about "exploitation".
A donated dollar is one less taxable dollar, so in practice provides a means for individually diverting taxes to charities one finds agreeable. In the US I've even heard people using this rational to avoid fuelling the military industrial complex. However a well functioning government that best served society would not have this problem. In principle it's the government's job to take care of society's needs, not the…
I disagree strongly. Concentrating responsibility concentrates power, which is dangerous. Governments should share power internally, share between levels (federal, state, local), and leave a lot of the power with the people (who may use it for private enterprises, NGOs, etc.).
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You're welcome to "make the case" for whatever you want, but this comment suggesting it's something in anyone's control belies what's really going on. The price system and "profit" splits aren't something any one entity (plasma doner nor company) sets down and decides. It (like most prices) is an emergent phenomenon. You might as well "make the case" the morning commute from downtown Chicago up to Evanston should be…
I think you misunderstood me entirely. I wasn't saying it was in someone's control. I was discussing analysis of the system as it is.
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The "donations" in this case aren't really donations. They're being paid in exchange for their blood plasma. So I don't see the comparison to pro-bono legal firms.
> The "donations" in this case aren't really donations. They're being paid in exchange for their blood plasma. Which gets back to the question - what's wrong with that? The alternative is not to pay people for donating plasma, and we can see quite clearly that that doesn't work - every country that does not pay for blood plasma donations runs a shortage, and most of them end up importing plasma from the US. So, we ha…
Sure, right now we gave good tests for most diseases, but the next AIDS has no test making the long term risks real.
Although somewhat grotesque to many on the face of it, this seems like fundamentally a good thing. Poor people get money they need, and people with severe injuries get their lives saved. I find it unusual there always seems to be an aversion to companies making money on healthcare (the emphasis on for-profit). This is weird, because no one would suggest companies should only be allowed to make money on irrelevant or…
Relevant Churchill quote: >Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public con-science, and agitation was set on foot, municipal autho…
The core intuition is that rents will go up, but not by the full six pence - perhaps only five. The landlords will be unable to extract the entire surplus. The people will have slightly more money, which they can save to gain that negotiating power you're talking about.
However, the monetary policy of USD directly destroys this natural rising. Instead of accepting that slight deflation is natural [0], deflation has been cast as a bogeyman [1] and banished at all costs. The result is massive monetary base inflation to keep the CPI rising, which precisely affects the areas where new money is injected into the consumer economy - anything which can function as collateral and thus be financialized. So cheaper life necessities that should be a boon (eg Walmart) simply cause rents (landlord or bank) to rise fully in compensation as a matter of policy.
[0] In the steady state, both technological progress and general market competition should lead to continually lower prices - a lower price is generally how one wins out in a market.
[1] In the days when communication was slow, price signals were a comparatively large portion of all market coordination. A slowing down of purchasing meant also a slowing down of communication, causing a positive feedback loop as people doubled down on their expectations. Contrast with computing devices which have developed rapidly enough to even outpace the forced inflation - we've all delayed purchases of new devices for a year or two until new tech came out, but despite the promise of an even better deal, eventually our present utility function overrides future savings and we upgrade.