Scientist/inventors/researchers developed "modern medicine", not only capitalists!
Capital thinks so HIGHLY of itself. If your great-great granddaddy held a pile of stock in some company, and you got such a great financial start in life that you now own a lot of shares in United Health Care or Pfizer, you're ENTITLED, damn it. ENTITLED to a great return on your "investment" -- I mean, on your subsidized stock market gambling habit.
But the descendants of the 50,000 people that provided knowledge and effort and answered the phones and did the research and invented the machines that represent modern medicine? Maybe they hung onto a few scraps, but more than likely they don't own much.
The human race has done an amazing job of inventing things like MRI machines and expanding knowledge of human biology. There's a LEGACY of science there that dreamed of a future era when human beings wouldn't suffer with the same diseases and that could get humane and speedy cures. With pride, they employed their ingenuity, late night work and study, their analytical insights, their willingness to be guinea pigs for treatments being tested. Sure, they made some salary that supported their lives while they worked, but who contributed the most and who benefitted the most? Whose legacy lives on in the knowledge that differentiates medicine today from the 1800s?
The dreamy, noble pursuit of scientific knowledge is portrayed to school children as a way to contribute to improve the lives of the future human race.
Ownership and effort. If 100 people are stranded on a desert island and they decide to build a boat to escape, 99 may contribute their labor and know-how but the 1 guy who possesses a single critical piece of equipment has the market cornered, and he can indenture the other 99. Do they divide by 100 their good fortune, share it evenly? Does he take 95% and the others split the 5% that remains? How desperate are they, and how replaceable? If he can sail with only 10, does he leave the other 89 behind? Or toss them overboard when they wear out? Does he auction off the space to the highest 10 or 20 bidders?
There is no sharing culture here. It is the opposite of a sharing culture.
Reality is more complicated than all of that, but the bottom line is that we don't face a crisis of science or insufficient knowledge that is causing modern medicine to be a scarce resource rationed to people at risk of life and limb. It is a crisis of greed and of concentrated ownership. The guy on the island who possesses the critical piece of equipment insists on bigger royalties. He wants 50% of the boat to himself, and if there's not room for all, too bad. He's entitled.
What would those researchers and scientists think, to see the disabled being tossed out in the street today, or to see the coffee cans by the register that raise money for sick kids to receive life-saving treatment? Life saving treatments that they discovered, using machinery that they invented, taking medicine that they helped develop or tested or, for that matter, partially funded through their tax dollars?
I learned in school that economics has to do with study of "processes by which scarce resources are allocated to satisfy unlimited wants." And I read that "ideally, the resources are allocated to their highest valued uses." By any humane measure, our economic system has to be recognized as an abject failure.
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