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Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

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Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#141

Post by kragen »

dekhn wrote: post #114
kragen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How weak are they? Detecting very weak signals (-110 dBm) at hundreds of MHz and even GHz is routinely done by Wi-Fi cards and cellphone radios, and GPS receivers detect signals that are orders of magnitude weaker than that (routinely -150 dBm), but only at tens of MHz. My eyes routinely detect submillilux signals when I look at the stars at night, with an integration time of well under a second; if I'm doing the cal…

The signals are weak, but more importantly, the signals are being detected in a volume wiht a huge magnetic field. You can't even put a digital circuit anywhere in the amplifier. When I worked on the NMR all the monitors in the room were shifted toward the magnet, it would wipe your credit cards, and to adjust the amplifier involved sitting under a multi-ton device twiddling knobs to minimize the impedence. Think of…

As I understand it, the magnetic field doesn't have to be voluminous; it just has to be strong and uniform. It can be arbitrarily small as long as it's large compared to an atom, which is why benchtop NMR machines can exist at all, though they won't ever be truly miniature unless either we can also miniaturize the cryostats and refrigerant supply, or we can find a usable room-temperature superconductor. Am I misunderstanding something? As I said, you know a lot more about this than I do.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#142

Post by lend000 »

cloudfifty wrote: post #131
lend000 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget to read the last part, describing the major things that need to change?

I did not.

Then you clearly misunderstood and your response adds no value. Nobody said sit tight. I said change some major things with powerful gatekeepers. Don't let your ideology get in the way of entertaining new ideas.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#143

Post by kragen »

notch656a wrote: post #136
kragen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be both an industry consortium and a DIY anarchist collective, like Linux; the Linux Foundation isn't Linux. It turns out that industrial companies don't appreciate being subject to monopoly rents any more than private individuals do! The GPL is undeniably very anarchist, and it serves as a kind of constitution that keeps the companies that participate in GPL projects from controlling them. Consider, fo…

Capitalism isn't incompatible with anarchism unless you're speaking with leftist.

Anarchism is leftist.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#144

Post by notch656a »

kragen wrote: post #143
notch656a wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism isn't incompatible with anarchism unless you're speaking with leftist.

Anarchism is leftist.

I consider myself anarchist in the sense I do not believe in the legitimacy of government. I do not have any leftist view whatsoever, but I think people should retain ownership of their property except through consensual trade. Does that mean I'm not an anarchist, or does that mean I'm a leftist?

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#145

Post by kragen »

notch656a wrote: post #137
beaconstudios wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people had a lot of hope in the Soviet Union, especially when there were actual soviet councils involved. It didn't take long to devolve into a regular dictatorship. After all the state was supposed to be a vanguard for the implementation of socialism but power begets power and in the end it existed to serve itself. I think that's the main reason that most sane leftists* are some flavour of anarchist…

How can one be both anarchist and leftist? Doesn't re-allocating resources in an unprofitable way for the owner require some sort of involuntary transaction, or would you expect owners of capital will all relinquish them peacefully? It seems like capitalism is more compatible with anarchism as capitalism can be contained within voluntary transactions.

It sounds like you would benefit from reading at least the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#146

Post by cloudfifty »

kragen wrote: post #138
cloudfifty wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the forest for the trees. This is what Capitalism has always been and always will be due to its incentive structure. If you accept wealth and thus power concentration, you accept market manipulation. The corps won't skip this due to some overarching ideological free-market reason. That's just naive. I mean, just look at the jungle of regulations and the vast inefficient bureaucracy of the US healthcare…

This is an absolutist fallacy. The fact that no capitalist market has ever been free of market power doesn't mean that they all function just as badly as Brezhnev-era Soviet "markets" or the US healthcare "market". There are actually existing markets that are more capitalist and less capitalist. Markets mostly organized around government-granted monopolies are by definition failing at capitalism. I think that very li…

> This is an absolutist fallacy.

Why? You haven't really answered anything with regards to the incentive structure of Capitalism to manipulate the market ASAP. What good "free markets" segments of society even exists today? Restaurants? No, the big chains lobby intensely there as well - less profits if employees earn a living wage.

> I think that very little of your hypothetical US$100 would benefit the patient, precisely the opposite of giving US$100 to every consumer in a capitalist market.

You're missing the point entirely. The comparison if ofc with what would happen if e.g. a Nordic government would do the same thing under a system of universal healthcare.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#147

Post by cloudfifty »

lend000 wrote: post #142
cloudfifty wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not.

Then you clearly misunderstood and your response adds no value. Nobody said sit tight. I said change some major things with powerful gatekeepers. Don't let your ideology get in the way of entertaining new ideas.

I did not misunderstand you. The suggested changes are bullshit.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#148

Post by notch656a »

kragen wrote: post #145
notch656a wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one be both anarchist and leftist? Doesn't re-allocating resources in an unprofitable way for the owner require some sort of involuntary transaction, or would you expect owners of capital will all relinquish them peacefully? It seems like capitalism is more compatible with anarchism as capitalism can be contained within voluntary transactions.

It sounds like you would benefit from reading at least the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism .

Oxford dictionary: noun belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.

That sounds compatible with mere free trade amongst men without any sort of socialism. Seems like leftism wants some involuntary reallocation of capital, but maybe I'm mistaken. If they don't I'd say they're just charitable capitalists.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#149

Post by kragen »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #139
dekhn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing I said above disagrees with the fact that many pharma are indeed doing what you call "monopoly rent extraction". I think all of those drugs are overpriced for non-economic reasons. Regulatory compliance, for example, with the FDA approval process, isn't a deadweight loss; it's a process that reduces the risk a dangerous drug will be given to the public. It's mostly costly due to incompetence and bureaucracy,…

Umm, the variance in prices in only very slightly due to quality, like often 5% or 1% or less than 1% of the variance. Please show data accounting for why anti-parasitics that costs 5 cents per dose for a horse or 5 cents per dose in India with 20 high quality generic versions are $50 in the US. Hint. BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET ON HIGH-QUALITY AND SAFE DRUGS. WE HAVE A PAY TO EXTRACT RENT SYSTEM.

I wish you wouldn't post things like this because, although what you are saying is factually correct, you are saying it in a patronizing and shouting way, which will lead people to associate these insights with acting like an asshole. That makes it harder for them to assimilate them, even when I'm the one explaining them and even if I'm managing not to act like an asshole.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#150

Post by lend000 »

cloudfifty wrote: post #147
lend000 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you clearly misunderstood and your response adds no value. Nobody said sit tight. I said change some major things with powerful gatekeepers. Don't let your ideology get in the way of entertaining new ideas.

I did not misunderstand you. The suggested changes are bullshit.

From your comment history, it appears you have a problem with making HN-quality comments [0]. Reddit's always an option if you don't want to change.

Otherwise, please work on entertaining new ideas and contributing with your own ideas/suggestions/explanations rather than being "that guy" who shits on people with low value comments lacking any reason or explanation (typically because they are wrong but don't want to admit their position for fear of ridicule by people like themselves).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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