Innovate Capitalism

One of the most persistent defenses of capitalism is that without it there would be no innovation, or much less innovation. It's easy to believe this is indeed true, as none of us, in our lifetimes, have known anything else than capitalism; it's hard for us to even imagine anything else...

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Still, I don't believe this is true, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that capitalism is relatively new; it's only 200 to 300 years old. To believe that we need capitalism to innovate is simply not what history teaches us. We innovated long before capitalism even existed. Also there have been countless innovations recently that defy the assertion that capitalism's profit-motive is the sole driver behind those innovations. I've done this before, but I'd like to remind us all of Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine who spent years of his life to develop the medicine that all but eradicated this terrible disease from the face of the Earth. When asked the question who owns the patent on this vaccine, Salk answered: "Well... The people, I would say, there is no patent. Could you patent the Sun?" He's just one of many people who realize that some things are way more important than making a buck, and he flatly refused to patent his life-saving vaccine. When compared to the sharks that populate the upper echelons of Big Pharma nowadays, this is hard to imagine, isn't it?

This brings me to the second reason why I refuse to believe that we need capitalism for innovation to thrive. Just think of what this says about human beings. To believe it, is to believe that profit is the only reason why we would strive to better ourselves and our world. That without profit nothing would be done or achieved. Do we really think so lowly of ourselves? I'm afraid we do, and increasingly so; it's the world we live in right now. Just look at the heavy opposition from Big Pharma to release the patents for the production of the covid-19 vaccine. Many people praise them for developing the vaccine so swiftly, and many credit competition and the insane profits they make for this miraculous feat. But just wait a minute; do all these people really believe that without the profit motive no vaccine would have been developed? Call me naive, but I don't believe that.

In fact, the profit motive only hinders innovation. Right now, we only spend millions of dollars on research and development if there's a profit to be made afterwards. That's why the corporations who have the know-how and technology do not invest in new medicines or medicines for rare deceases; for them it's way more profitable to develop slightly modified versions of existing cures to extend the patents, and if a disease is rare, there's just not a big enough market... So, please watch the below linked video, and maybe reevaluate your opinion on the need for competition and profits; I for one believe we're better off without them. In fact, capitalism itself is what needs to be improved...

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