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----the present situation, the one we are talking about as a function of the article you posted---is dominated by private firms and the existing notion of ip---this is the origin of the conflict over who controls drugs that can, for example, treat (or eventually, one hopes, cure) aids.
the present situation is obviously not equitable if you actually think about, say, africa as populated with human beings worthy of being treated with respect even if they are not bourgeois as you are.
the present situation is obviously not right.
unless your concern for human suffering extends no further than thinking about potential losses endured by stockholders.
if that is the case, then we have nothing to talk about, and might as well stop now.
but i do not believe you actually think that way. what i am puzzled by is the disconnect that operates when you talk about politics or economics.
but this is a seperate matter.
second, my understanding of the specific situation with aids drugs is that internationalization as you call it amounts to an attempt to impose humanitarian considerations on capitalist logic by developing a legal mechanism for creating exceptions to the blanket use of ip law. if that is the case, then i cannot se what possible objection you would have in principle---in fact, the problem may well be in the way these exceptions are formulated--but i imagine that you would also object the the idea of international law and mechanisms to adjudicate on hypernationalist grounds in any event--if this is the case, you might as well be straight about what your objection really is.
third, capitalism always has been and always will be subject to external constraints. unless you can eliminate society in the interest of the pure functioning of (wholly fictional) "free markets"---but it would not be wise for you to go down this path here rhetorically. this is just a more recent manifestation of this general situation. owners of capital have never given anything out of benevolence--almost always, social forces have brought pressure to bear on them across the medium of law (in the cases that work within the existing order) and force---and i mean force--changes in the frame of reference.
there have always been people who argue for profit uber alles and screw the consequences, like you are. it seems to be the case also that they start to squirm if anyone tries to make them actually spell out the consequences of their own position.
so answer the question, please: would you rather see thousands and thousands of people in poorer countries, where aids is epidemic, die and continue to die from it simply because existing treatments are too expensive than see the abstract claims to property made by corporate interests (across the new legal toy that is i.p. law) be changed?
i dont care about generalities about a rightwing hallucination that explains progress or motive, or any of that.
just answer the question, please.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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