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Originally Posted by roachboy
without actions like that taken by the thai government, what capitalism effectively is saying is that the lives of the children of the affluent are worth more than the lives of the children of the poor.
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with actions like that taken by the thai government, it's effectively saying that it's okay to steal the results of research without just compensation. It's effectively saying that it's okay to steal. Tomayto, tomahto. Any way of thinking will "effectively" say abhorrent things, because no way of thinking comes without its negatives.
It'd be naive or dishonest to say, however, that the justification for patents lies in valuing affluent children more than poor children. At
least as naive/dishonest as saying that patent-breakers approve of theft in general.
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in other words, the extension of capitalist market relations into areas like medicine is itself unethical. what it amounts to is the subordination of the physical well-being of people in the southern hemisphere who are poor to the profits of trans nationals based in the northern hemisphere. i see no way to justify that ethically.
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I do. Medicine requires time, effort, and resources. The providers of said time, effort, and resources should be the ones who decide where the medicine goes.
I think the disagreement here goes to a very fundamental level: whether need of a product is equivalent to a just claim to the product. I don't think it is. Thus, I don't understand how health care could be considered a right.