In this respect Tom is fully right. If the West would like to end the war in Ukraine, they have all the means to do so. Western market economy has lots of advantages BUT it's driven by one thing: profit. Just look at the Covid-crisis. Where at the official start of the pandemic (around March20) the outlook for vaccines was: It takes at l…
In this respect Tom is fully right. If the West would like to end the war in Ukraine, they have all the means to do so. Western market economy has lots of advantages BUT it's driven by one thing: profit. Just look at the Covid-crisis. Where at the official start of the pandemic (around March20) the outlook for vaccines was: It takes at least 5 years of development. And then in December20 (9 months later) they rolled out the first vaccine batches and in another 6 months they went from "severe shortage" to "we can literally flood the market". Just because Western politicians gave the pharmaceutical industry sort of a blanco cheque. That's like a blend of drug and steroid for capitalists and market economy. If they would do the same for arms industry, I'm sure they would drown Ukraine with ammo and weapons within a year.
That's actually not as simple as that. The drug development takes 5 years or more because of the slow investment, the large number of experiments/trials and the thorough regulatory process. Also, there are many molecules in trials and most of them fail. In case of Covid it was huge investment and many of the regulatory steps were on fast-forward or even by-passed. So it is not only profit, but the ratio profit/losses and what a company can afford without going bankrupt. And the societal interest. When it is Covid, one can expect profit, so there is investment. In case of orphan drugs, it is a completely different story.
Nothing is "simple", but when you promise investors the profit margin of their lifetimes (as happened with the Covid vaccines) you can be sure that they let hell break loose to achieve it and that they are also pressing politicians to by-pass regulations, push 24h hours to get machinery, supplies, raw materials and staff to produce.
You are making assumptions, and thre truth is not very close :) These things are done on governments' money, not on investors' money. This is why I gave the example of orphan drugs. Investors can make enough money on OTC drugs and obesity control pills. Do we need medicines for rare diseases? Do we need cures for cancer? Do we need something fast to combat a pandemic? Then it's a public health issue, not investor's issue. So it's not investor's gain, but instead it is "loss" of public money. If you want to call it a loss; I would say it is a necessity. Like in the case of helping Ukraine in this war. We cannot let the private market to solve the issue, whatever profit they can make.
Where did I say that it is a loss of money? IMHO with a "whatever it takes" approach flooding Ukraine with the ammo and weapons it needs, this war would be over soon and in the end less public money would have been wasted, than with this "here some millions", "there one billion", approach, which just grants Ukraine too much to die, but too less to live.
Well, then I have misunderstood something, I am sorry. Yes indeed. Maybe I am being naive, but I hope they have a good reason for that. Otherwise it's nonsense. Democracy replaced with survival of the fittest (or richest, depending upon the case).
In this respect Tom is fully right. If the West would like to end the war in Ukraine, they have all the means to do so. Western market economy has lots of advantages BUT it's driven by one thing: profit. Just look at the Covid-crisis. Where at the official start of the pandemic (around March20) the outlook for vaccines was: It takes at least 5 years of development. And then in December20 (9 months later) they rolled out the first vaccine batches and in another 6 months they went from "severe shortage" to "we can literally flood the market". Just because Western politicians gave the pharmaceutical industry sort of a blanco cheque. That's like a blend of drug and steroid for capitalists and market economy. If they would do the same for arms industry, I'm sure they would drown Ukraine with ammo and weapons within a year.
That's actually not as simple as that. The drug development takes 5 years or more because of the slow investment, the large number of experiments/trials and the thorough regulatory process. Also, there are many molecules in trials and most of them fail. In case of Covid it was huge investment and many of the regulatory steps were on fast-forward or even by-passed. So it is not only profit, but the ratio profit/losses and what a company can afford without going bankrupt. And the societal interest. When it is Covid, one can expect profit, so there is investment. In case of orphan drugs, it is a completely different story.
Nothing is "simple", but when you promise investors the profit margin of their lifetimes (as happened with the Covid vaccines) you can be sure that they let hell break loose to achieve it and that they are also pressing politicians to by-pass regulations, push 24h hours to get machinery, supplies, raw materials and staff to produce.
You are making assumptions, and thre truth is not very close :) These things are done on governments' money, not on investors' money. This is why I gave the example of orphan drugs. Investors can make enough money on OTC drugs and obesity control pills. Do we need medicines for rare diseases? Do we need cures for cancer? Do we need something fast to combat a pandemic? Then it's a public health issue, not investor's issue. So it's not investor's gain, but instead it is "loss" of public money. If you want to call it a loss; I would say it is a necessity. Like in the case of helping Ukraine in this war. We cannot let the private market to solve the issue, whatever profit they can make.
Where did I say that it is a loss of money? IMHO with a "whatever it takes" approach flooding Ukraine with the ammo and weapons it needs, this war would be over soon and in the end less public money would have been wasted, than with this "here some millions", "there one billion", approach, which just grants Ukraine too much to die, but too less to live.
Well, then I have misunderstood something, I am sorry. Yes indeed. Maybe I am being naive, but I hope they have a good reason for that. Otherwise it's nonsense. Democracy replaced with survival of the fittest (or richest, depending upon the case).