Antibiotics show free market failure

[Seth]

Just because you think some public project is a good idea doesn't mean you're right or that everyone (or anyone) else should be obliged to pay for it.

...so if your neighbour were to just leave their trash in front of their house, and poo in their back garden, they shouldn't be coerced into paying for it to be removed?

I'm not so sure about this Libertarian ideal of yours.

Unless the trash and poo are exporting actual harm such as vermin or disease or odors from his property, which constitutes an initiation of force, what he does on his property is none of your business. If you don't like his lifestyle, persuade him to change it, help him change it or pay him to change it, or put up with it because his right to live as he pleases without initiating force or fraud against you is equal to yours.

When you begin authorizing the government to regulate aesthetics rather than regulating only force or fraud you open the door to all manner of government mischief and interference with individual rights under the guise of collective decision making until you have places in the US where the local government tells you where your house can be built on your property, what color it has to be, how many windows you can have and in which walls, what landscaping you must install and maintain in perpetuity, etc., all because they think that their collective aesthetic judgment is superior to yours and your neighbors don't want to have to look at something they find aesthetically unpleasing.

If I want to erect a silo on my ranch and artistically transform it into a giant pink phallus with the worlds "Fuck the County Commissars" on it, it's my First Amendment right to do so, even if you don't want to look at it.

[Seth]

If it weren't for government seed money and low interest loans, the REA, the WPA, and the TVA, most of "The American Heartland" would vote on paper ballots, because there would still be no electricity available outside cities.

And that would be a bad thing because....???

The rural electification program was just another Progressive attempt to garner votes. When rural people need and want electricity, they will drive the demand that will result in someone serving the market. If it weren't for Progressive central planning and a desire to build giant power plants as public works projects (TVA) solar, wind and micro-hydro power might be much, much more advanced than it is because demand for cheap power in the hinterlands drove innovation and invention to provide power at an affordable price.

My guess is that most rural areas would run on low-power DC generated and stored on site and there wouldn't be this massive power grid that's prone to failure. Power would be produced where it's needed, not shipped hundreds or thousands of miles through billions of tons of valuable copper wire just to make country bumpkins more comfortable at the expense of everyone else.

If you don't like living without electricity, then either create your own or move to the city, in which case urban sprawl would likely be much less impactful and people would live where they work instead of commuting hundreds of miles every day spewing pollution all the while.

Rural electrification was not necessary, it was a public-works project intended to garner votes for Progressives and to employ the unemployed that the Progressives unemployed by meddling with the free market economy.

If it was necessary, it would have happened anyway.

It did.

Yes, by government fiat, not through the actions of the free market. And many thousands of people who lived in the Land Between the Lakes were dispossessed of their land and their heritage against their will and were compensated a pittance for the taking as a result, "for the common good."

Government can accomplish many things by the exercise of blunt force and coercion, but that doesn't make it morally correct or ethical to do so.

[piscator]

If it weren't for government seed money and low interest loans, the REA, the WPA, and the TVA, most of "The American Heartland" would vote on paper ballots, because there would still be no electricity available outside cities.

And that would be a bad thing because....???

The rural electification program was just another Progressive attempt to garner votes. When rural people need and want electricity, they will drive the demand that will result in someone serving the market. If it weren't for Progressive central planning and a desire to build giant power plants as public works projects (TVA) solar, wind and micro-hydro power might be much, much more advanced than it is because demand for cheap power in the hinterlands drove innovation and invention to provide power at an affordable price.

My guess is that most rural areas would run on low-power DC generated and stored on site and there wouldn't be this massive power grid that's prone to failure. Power would be produced where it's needed, not shipped hundreds or thousands of miles through billions of tons of valuable copper wire just to make country bumpkins more comfortable at the expense of everyone else.

If you don't like living without electricity, then either create your own or move to the city, in which case urban sprawl would likely be much less impactful and people would live where they work instead of commuting hundreds of miles every day spewing pollution all the while.

Rural electrification was not necessary, it was a public-works project intended to garner votes for Progressives and to employ the unemployed that the Progressives unemployed by meddling with the free market economy.

If it was necessary, it would have happened anyway.

It did.

Yes, by government fiat, not through the actions of the free market. And many thousands of people who lived in the Land Between the Lakes were dispossessed of their land and their heritage against their will and were compensated a pittance for the taking as a result, "for the common good."

Government can accomplish many things by the exercise of blunt force and coercion, but that doesn't make it morally correct or ethical to do so.

It didn't take a lot of blunt force and coercion to help provide cheap electricity to places the market couldn't. Folks wanted it!
I don't recall any mass dispossessions and destructions of heritage required to bring electricity and clean water to Bugtussle. Certainly nothing on the scale of Federal troops opening the West for cattle and railroads.

[pErvinalia]

If you don't like living without electricity, then either create your own or move to the city, in which case urban sprawl would likely be much less impactful and people would live where they work instead of commuting hundreds of miles every day spewing pollution all the while.

And where would your food come from under this fantastical model?

The law of supply and demand would provide it, just as it has for all of human history. If you live in the country and want electricity and have crops to sell, you use the money from the crops you sell to get electricity. Pretty simple really.

Umm, how do you pay for massive state/nationwide infrastructure with some potatoes cropped by horse and till?? Seriously, you spout some inane shite sometimes (actually, most of the time).

You do realise, that even if this magical unicorn fantasy theory did work, your food would be too expensive to purchase, right?

[Jason]

Tap and Die.

[Seth]

It didn't take a lot of blunt force and coercion to help provide cheap electricity to places the market couldn't. Folks wanted it!

Which folks? The ones living in the Tennessee River Valley and the Cumberland River Valley and on the slopes and heights above on the border between Kentucky and Tenneesee? No, they didn't want to leave, particularly when they found out that many of their homes wouldn't be flooded, but rather were being stolen from them to create a public recreational area, now called "Land Between the Lakes," by FDR and his evil minions. They were, in some cases, forcibly removed from the land, and in every case dispossessed by the use of eminent domain rather than being bought out by the TVA in a standard land transaction based on a fair market price that the owner of the land was willing to accept for that land. FDR used eminent domain to save the TVA money so it didn't have to pay much, much more than he thought the land was worth, but what the owners felt was their due and right, if, that is, they were willing to sell at all, which many of them were not.

I don't recall any mass dispossessions and destructions of heritage required to bring electricity and clean water to Bugtussle. Certainly nothing on the scale of Federal troops opening the West for cattle and railroads.

Just because you don't recall it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[JimC]

Any modern industrial society is the product of a mixed economy, with most of the production coming from free enterprise, but with government funds via taxes steering much of the infra-structure and public services in directions deemed suitable for the good of the society as a whole. Societies that get the balance right prosper, and the political parties steering them reap the benefits at the next election.

[Tero]

Antibiotics are some of the oldest drugs on the market. It's difficult to find a new bacterial target enzyme or mechanism. Vital targets were new in the 80s and led to cures. There is now a cure for hepatitis C.

Drug companies ften do not invent the new targets, they come out of university labs. The professors with success in some area have new PhDs that then get hired by industry to apply new ideas to practice. The unmet need phrase gets repeated, new diseases get treated that never had drugs.

Antibacterials will eventually make money again, then there will be investment.

Many new drugs are more complicated and do not survive the oral route, thus are given by injection.

[Seth]

If you don't like living without electricity, then either create your own or move to the city, in which case urban sprawl would likely be much less impactful and people would live where they work instead of commuting hundreds of miles every day spewing pollution all the while.

And where would your food come from under this fantastical model?

The law of supply and demand would provide it, just as it has for all of human history. If you live in the country and want electricity and have crops to sell, you use the money from the crops you sell to get electricity. Pretty simple really.

Umm, how do you pay for massive state/nationwide infrastructure with some potatoes cropped by horse and till?? Seriously, you spout some inane shite sometimes (actually, most of the time).

How? The question is "why" not "how." That "massive state/nationwide infrastructure" could cause the end of civilization in the US if it fails precisely because it is one giant infrastructure rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of small, independent power generating systems that operate efficiently and are invulnerable to systematic attacks by the Chinese or a single EMP weapon or something as simple as a solar flare that happens to go off while pointed at this planet, which could fry the entire world's electrical grids in a split second and which would rain chaos down more certainly than even a nuclear exchange.

Go read "One Second After" and then get back to me.

You do realise, that even if this magical unicorn fantasy theory did work, your food would be too expensive to purchase, right?

No it wouldn't. The laws of supply and demand would and do keep food prices where they need to be. Electricity's no different. It's a product consumers want in differing amounts and to differing degrees. When a market for a product emerges, the market responds by creating the product. AC electrical systems were not invented by the government, they were invented by the likes of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison and they expanded in cities because commercial demand existed and PRIVATE power companies emerged to serve that demand because there was profit in it.

The Rural Electrification Program was another of FDR's make-work Progressive projects that made no economic sense whatsoever, and still doesn't. Power companies were compelled to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars extending rural electrical service to isolated lots (it costs about $60,000 per mile to extend a basic 7500 volt line these days) not because there was any profit to be made, but because FDR wanted to pander to rural voters at the expense of private industry, which was required to absorb those costs.

I can show you places in Colorado where the power companies were obliged to build, at NO COST to the landowner, transmission lines as much as 20 miles long through rugged mountains and forest just to supply a few cabins and a commercial hunting lodge in the middle of the Grand Mesa. Over a million dollars was spent and paid by the ratepayers to put in that service, and more to maintain it for the last 80 years, when the owners could much more cheaply have installed their own generators and fuel supplies at their own cost.

If they couldn't afford their own power source, then they could have done without or simply not built in the middle of the forest and expected others to pay for their power.

Many farms and ranches in eastern Colorado had only basic electrical service for decades, built by the REP, but when center-pivot irrigation was developed and the need for high-current three-phase electricity to run the pumps developed, the infrastructure was improved at the expense of the farmers who wanted it, and they had to figure the costs of extending that service to their wells as a part of the overall business plan for farming that land. If the economics didn't work out, no farming. That's how it's supposed to work in a free market.

[Seth]

Any modern industrial society is the product of a mixed economy, with most of the production coming from free enterprise, but with government funds via taxes steering much of the infra-structure and public services in directions deemed suitable for the good of the society as a whole. Societies that get the balance right prosper, and the political parties steering them reap the benefits at the next election.

Or, bureaucrats line their own pockets by pandering to the unwashed masses (welfare) at the expense of the productive class so as to stay in power regardless of how awful the effects of generational dependence on government largess is to the dependent class.\

That's what's happened here.

[Blind groper]

Unwashed masses that do not get cared for, at least minimally, either turn to crime to survive, or else form the base of yet another Marxist revolution. And that does not even address the ethical need to help those who are less fortunate. If that is Seth's idea of paradise on Earth, no wonder he feels the need to go around armed to the teeth. I do not want to live in your choice of society, Seth.

[pErvinalia]

If you don't like living without electricity, then either create your own or move to the city, in which case urban sprawl would likely be much less impactful and people would live where they work instead of commuting hundreds of miles every day spewing pollution all the while.

And where would your food come from under this fantastical model?

The law of supply and demand would provide it, just as it has for all of human history. If you live in the country and want electricity and have crops to sell, you use the money from the crops you sell to get electricity. Pretty simple really.

Umm, how do you pay for massive state/nationwide infrastructure with some potatoes cropped by horse and till?? Seriously, you spout some inane shite sometimes (actually, most of the time).

How? The question is "why" not "how." That "massive state/nationwide infrastructure" could cause the end of civilization in the US if it fails precisely because it is one giant infrastructure rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of small, independent power generating systems that operate efficiently and are invulnerable to systematic attacks by the Chinese or a single EMP weapon or something as simple as a solar flare that happens to go off while pointed at this planet, which could fry the entire world's electrical grids in a split second and which would rain chaos down more certainly than even a nuclear exchange.

I doubt they are actually nationwide in the sense that one hit in one part of the nation can shut down the rest of the nation. They would indeed be smaller units. There would be some interconnectedness and reliance at times with other units, but it's not the case you portray.

You do realise, that even if this magical unicorn fantasy theory did work, your food would be too expensive to purchase, right?

No it wouldn't. The laws of supply and demand would and do keep food prices where they need to be. Electricity's no different. It's a product consumers want in differing amounts and to differing degrees. When a market for a product emerges, the market responds by creating the product. AC electrical systems were not invented by the government, they were invented by the likes of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison and they expanded in cities because commercial demand existed and PRIVATE power companies emerged to serve that demand because there was profit in it.

The Rural Electrification Program was another of FDR's make-work Progressive projects that made no economic sense whatsoever, and still doesn't. Power companies were compelled to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars extending rural electrical service to isolated lots (it costs about $60,000 per mile to extend a basic 7500 volt line these days) not because there was any profit to be made, but because FDR wanted to pander to rural voters at the expense of private industry, which was required to absorb those costs.

There is a profit for government and society - i.e. a viable agricultural system. You can't have millions of people living in cities with electricity and the primary producers working their land with horses and arranging commerce via telegram. It simply couldn't work. If power companies charged the rural sector for it's electrical infrastructure, then the farmers would have to pass that cost onto the consumers in the city. How are they going to pay for it? Of course the top end of town could probably afford it, but how will everyone else?? I know you don't actually care about those less fortunate than yourself, so I suppose it is meaningless asking you this question. Organising a stable and viable food supply is obviously (along with clean water) the most important thing a government has to do for it's people. It's more important than health and education. I.e. it is the absolute basics of survival. Without a stable and affordable food supply, there really isn't much use in electing a government. Everything else is secondary to those basic needs.

I can show you places in Colorado where the power companies were obliged to build, at NO COST to the landowner, transmission lines as much as 20 miles long through rugged mountains and forest just to supply a few cabins and a commercial hunting lodge in the middle of the Grand Mesa. Over a million dollars was spent and paid by the ratepayers to put in that service, and more to maintain it for the last 80 years, when the owners could much more cheaply have installed their own generators and fuel supplies at their own cost.

If they couldn't afford their own power source, then they could have done without or simply not built in the middle of the forest and expected others to pay for their power.

There's obviously going to be specific anecdotes where the cost probably wasn't worth the return. But as an overall principle, a nation needs a food supply. A food supply for a booming nation needs electricity.

If the economics didn't work out, no farmingstarvation. That's how it's supposed to work in a free market.

:FIFY: :FIX: :FIXED: :FIXITFAIRY:

[pErvinalia]

Any modern industrial society is the product of a mixed economy, with most of the production coming from free enterprise, but with government funds via taxes steering much of the infra-structure and public services in directions deemed suitable for the good of the society as a whole. Societies that get the balance right prosper, and the political parties steering them reap the benefits at the next election.

Or, bureaucrats line their own pockets by pandering to the unwashed masses (welfare) at the expense of the productive class so as to stay in power regardless of how awful the effects of generational dependence on government largess is to the dependent class.\

That's what's happened here.

The productive class ARE the unwashed masses, you clown. The average worker is the producer in an economy. Without workers you have nothing.

[Seth]

Any modern industrial society is the product of a mixed economy, with most of the production coming from free enterprise, but with government funds via taxes steering much of the infra-structure and public services in directions deemed suitable for the good of the society as a whole. Societies that get the balance right prosper, and the political parties steering them reap the benefits at the next election.

Or, bureaucrats line their own pockets by pandering to the unwashed masses (welfare) at the expense of the productive class so as to stay in power regardless of how awful the effects of generational dependence on government largess is to the dependent class.\

That's what's happened here.

The productive class ARE the unwashed masses, you clown. The average worker is the producer in an economy. Without workers you have nothing.

That's not to whom I am referring. The dependent class and the working class are two distinct, but occasionally overlapping groups.

[pErvinalia]

So you envisage a huge class of people who are dependent, but not workers?? Lol. The number of people who aren't workers outside of the old and the young and the permanently injured/disabled is usually only about 10% or so. And that's a rotating number. That is, it's not the same ten percent over time. It's usually only a very small percent that are permanently unemployable. THEY aren't the problem. The problem is the top end of town that siphons huge profits offshore to tax havens, and employ tactics only available to the rich to avoid paying much tax at all. They are also the recipients of VAST sums of corporate welfare that DWARFS the welfare of that small percentage at the other end of the welfare spectrum.