Anarchists making their own medicine (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#211

Post by notch656a » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #210

notch656a wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong but I infered on your other response you're ok with people keeping the fruits of their labor. If you're ok with them trading those fruits I'd call you a capitalist, not a socialist. Some of those fruits and some of those trades may be means of production, like a drill press or factory floor or whatever. Unless of course you're strong arming someone with violence to hand over some of those fruits. I'm…

I'm OK with people keeping the fruits of their labour. Up to a point. When you get people using money to get more money, exponentially, until they've got so much they can't think of ways to spend it and start buying NFTs and building space rockets, it's gone way too far. So I'm good with keeping "fruits of labour" if that's what you need to live, subject to the constraints of tax policy. My own political views are ne…

>You mean, when you can opt out, apparently

Yes precisely, this to me is the essence of anarchism. To have the free will to opt-out or opt-in to any voluntary exchange without coercion. To keep my factory floor if I like, and if people voluntarily want to buy enough widgets from me that I can build a space ship, that is great for everyone because I've given the world lots of value and they've voluntarily given it back to me in exchange for that value.

It's really strange to me that leftist anarchists and capitalist anarchist are such bitter enemies. I think both can survive under the banner of a system without coercion. Anarchist socialism is merely what happen when some group of people consent to each other to share their resources. Those that don't consent and want to use free trade instead look more like capitalists can continue to do so. Personally I pick the latter because I think it will bring me more prosperity, but I'm very live and let live and can see both ideologies living peacefully side by side so long as no one coercively tries to take the property of another.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#212

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #204

denton-scratch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm using the oxford definition of anarchism. Which Oxford definition? You've cited "The Oxford Dictionary" up-thread. There's a bunch of online lexicographical resources that are unrelated to the OED, but trade on its name and reputation. At any rate, a brief definition from a concise lexicon is no substitute for doing some proper reading on the subject. And even reading will leave you pretty confused about how it…

https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ Anarchism isn't some cursory subject for me. Someone up thread mentioned Rojava as an example of something closest to an anarchist collective. I went there and lived there. What I found was voluntary trade which we commonly call capitalism. I find this to be compatible with anarchism when trades are made voluntarily and not say, by strong arm of government forcing how y…

I just checked out Rojava on wikipedia; it's a new one on me. Turns out it's what I have thought to be the Kurdish Autonomous Region.

I have heard that KAR operates on roughly-anarchist lines, and works well; I'm very interested in large-scale, working, contemporary anarchist and collective societies. The only other one I can think of is Catalunya, which is sometimes described as anarchist. It appears to me to be mostly capitalism with a strong public sector, along with some major collectivised industries. But I'm not familiar with how decisions are made.

I'm very interested to hear that you've spent time in Rojava.

[Edit] Clarified, I hope.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#213

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #209

denton-scratch wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider "opening up access" to someone else's capital to be a kind of theft, in general, and not consistent with anarchism. When the capital in question is means-of-production that the workers have contributed to building, things are a bit less clear-cut. Allowing workers to join the board, perhaps as a response to an all-out strike, might be a step towards worker's collectives. It's much easier to articulat…

Isn't negotiating a wage (or choosing to accept the offered wage or not) how we determine how much of the means-of-production that a worker contributes to that they are owed? I've helped build houses for instance. When I performed the labor, I was paid cash which I can now use for ownership of my own home. The same for when I design electronics, I then used those proceeds to buy my own means of production to manufact…

You haven't mentioned how public provision is to be made. I know that things like sanitation, energy, health, water, and so on can all be provided privately, by capitalists; I know that it doesn't work as well as public provision.

Here in the UK, all of those things were public, until they were privatised in the '80s. I'm in a position to compare the service we used to have with the one we have now. In every case, they're worse (I deliberately didn't mention telecoms). The only service here that hasn't yet been completely privatised yet is health; unfortunately it's rapidly being privatised, and becoming more like the US system (I've spent a fair bit of time recently in hospitals and clinics).

The NHS is paid for collectively; "free at the point of delivery", as they say (which is a lie). But they do refuse to do some expensive treatments; many other treatments have very long waiting lists (hip replacements). They only have to squeeze harder to force more people into private treatment.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#214

Post by notch656a » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #212

notch656a wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ Anarchism isn't some cursory subject for me. Someone up thread mentioned Rojava as an example of something closest to an anarchist collective. I went there and lived there. What I found was voluntary trade which we commonly call capitalism. I find this to be compatible with anarchism when trades are made voluntarily and not say, by strong arm of government forcing how y…

I just checked out Rojava on wikipedia; it's a new one on me. Turns out it's what I have thought to be the Kurdish Autonomous Region. I have heard that KAR operates on roughly-anarchist lines, and works well; I'm very interested in large-scale, working, contemporary anarchist and collective societies. The only other one I can think of is Catalunya, which is sometimes described as anarchist. It appears to me to be mos…

I'm not sure what KAR is exactly, is that another name for Rojava? I'm familiar with the kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, which is also known as KRG. It is basically democratic capitalist. Honestly looks like a middle eastern version of america in a lot of ways and is the most prosperous part of Iraq.

All of the time I spent in Rojava was as a member of YPG. It was a few months. Most of the time was on border or self-defense tabor for defense against ISIS. My contributions were not particularly note worthy, mostly just helping them maintain their positions.

Naturally my view was not the best view of civilian. But I did travel through much of the territory and witness the people. There is definitely class and considerable disparity in quality of life, as their are nicer condos in the city cores and people in slums in the perimeters. Capitalist vendors are in the cities selling anything from cell phones to nuts. Most of the vendors were your garden variety 3rd world stalls kind of like how the storage facilities look with the metal sliding gates in front that they open up when ready for business.

Middle East culture is in general very hospitable and once taken as a guest you are taken care of until you decide to leave. But If you just entered the country as a civil citizen I'm not sure you'd find your lot any better off than in the traditional capitalist government in KRG. Qamislo and Erbil for instance are worlds apart in what they offer, although the wars are no doubt a large part of that.

It's my understanding there is collective union for some of the farming, oil extraction, and maybe some other natural resource extraction. Traditionally the kurds have also gotten a lot of income from smuggling due to their unique position in the mountains but I do not know how that is interconnected with governance.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#215

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #109

pessimizer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just call them nutritional supplements so they'll be completely unregulated for either efficacy or safety.

Supplements aren't unregulated. They're treated as food. And I'd bet there's some bit of regulation somewhere that says you can't arbitrarily label a medicine as a supplement.

They're unregulated as a matter of law until there are reports of injury. Unlike food, there's no requirement that the manufacturing adhere to any kind of standard, or that the contents of the supplement match the ingredient list.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#216

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #214

denton-scratch wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked out Rojava on wikipedia; it's a new one on me. Turns out it's what I have thought to be the Kurdish Autonomous Region. I have heard that KAR operates on roughly-anarchist lines, and works well; I'm very interested in large-scale, working, contemporary anarchist and collective societies. The only other one I can think of is Catalunya, which is sometimes described as anarchist. It appears to me to be mos…

I'm not sure what KAR is exactly, is that another name for Rojava? I'm familiar with the kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, which is also known as KRG. It is basically democratic capitalist. Honestly looks like a middle eastern version of america in a lot of ways and is the most prosperous part of Iraq. All of the time I spent in Rojava was as a member of YPG. It was a few months. Most of the time was on border or se…

> I'm not sure what KAR is exactly, is that another name for Rojava? I'm familiar with the kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, which is also known as KRG

OK, I was referring to the region in Iraq. My mistake. I need to get better-informed. Thanks for your account.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#217

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #116

cloudfifty wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't a capitalist corporation choose to lobby the government to bend the rules in their favor if they think that that would give the best ROI? In what version of Capitalism would this not happen? What would remove this incentive structure?

In almost any version of Democracy, an authoritarian politician can choose to run for office on a platform of establishing a dictatorship; in most of them, they can even succeed. That doesn't make the would-be dictator a democrat, and it doesn't make their platform a democratic platform. Similarly, free-market incentives to lobby for government monopolies don't make monopolies capitalistic, because capitalism require…

If the premise is that being elected dictator in a free and fair election is undemocratic, it's an authoritarian premise. It presumes that elections are only democratic to the extent that the results agree with some "democratic values" that are separate from the process of having elections.

I agree that the outcomes of democracy can be bad. But I don't believe that bad and undemocratic are synonymous.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#218

Post by tastyfreeze » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #180

tastyfreeze wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. Isn't this like saying I bought you lunch with money I took from you last year so your lunch was free?

No. Spreading the costs over millions of taxpayers makes the cost you pay into the system way smaller, plus gives the government a huge contractual power when dealing with pharma companies. It’s really not that hard to comprehend, but I yet have to find a single American that for some reason doesn’t try to justify or straight up defend the US broken and unequal healthcare system.

Yes, medical cost in the US is out of control. No, the government should not be the provider. That doesn't fix the problem. It just makes new ones. Our government is extremely limited by the Constitution on what they are supposed to do. Unless "providing medical services" is added as a power of government to the Constitution there will continue to be a large, vocal opposition to government healthcare.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#219

Post by waterhouse » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #202

waterhouse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are a big part of how the stifling is done. Getting rid of them, or at least cutting their term by a factor of 3-4, would help a great deal.

Not with epinephrine, because it's out-of-patent. For clarity, I very much dislike the patent system.

Epinephrine itself, sure. Epipens, though? Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine_autoinjector , I see "In 2009, Teva Pharmaceuticals filed an ANDA to market a generic EpiPen in collaboration with Antares Pharma Inc, a maker of injection systems; Pfizer and King sued them for infringing US Patent 7,449,012 that was due to expire in 2025", and "In 2010, Pfizer and King sued Novartis' Sandoz generic unit for patent infringement after Sandoz submitted an ANDA to sell a generic EpiPen."

You need a delivery mechanism that can be used quickly and reasonably safely, ideally by someone in the early stages of anaphylaxis. Taking out a vial and a syringe, and carefully extracting the epinephrine from the vial with the syringe, are not things you'd want to be doing under those circumstances. Hence the invention of better approaches.

But epipens were originally "brought to market in 1983". How are there still active patents for it? "Kaplan continued to improve his designs over the years, filing for example US Patent 6,767,336 in 2003." I wonder if the new patents cover the 1983 devices. If so, that seems like an obvious abuse of the system: keep filing a new patent for different aspects of or variations on the device, and you can multiply the duration of your monopoly grant.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#220

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #211

denton-scratch wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm OK with people keeping the fruits of their labour. Up to a point. When you get people using money to get more money, exponentially, until they've got so much they can't think of ways to spend it and start buying NFTs and building space rockets, it's gone way too far. So I'm good with keeping "fruits of labour" if that's what you need to live, subject to the constraints of tax policy. My own political views are ne…

>You mean, when you can opt out, apparently Yes precisely, this to me is the essence of anarchism. To have the free will to opt-out or opt-in to any voluntary exchange without coercion. To keep my factory floor if I like, and if people voluntarily want to buy enough widgets from me that I can build a space ship, that is great for everyone because I've given the world lots of value and they've voluntarily given it bac…

> It's really strange to me that leftist anarchists and capitalist anarchists are such bitter enemies

Not enemies; I don't have bitter enemies. I just see opposition to capitalism as a pretty fundamental aspect of anarchism. I'm not gatekeeping "anarchist". I see you as hijacking the term; a capitalist anarchist is not an anarchist, it's a libertarian, or an individualist. I think you know this.

I think your persistent claims that small traders are capitalists is disingenuous. There's nothing against trade in anarchism or in socialism. Trade is not the same as capitalism.

I'm afraid I don't like being referred to by you as a "leftist" - nobody calls themselves a leftist. That's a term used by people who dislike socialism and want to portray socialists as "bad". So I think I will not respond to this thread again.

[Edited for grammar, mainly]