Mangu-Ward:

This means lower profits in the short term, less R&D in the long term.

Maybe so. If so, so what? The government’s duty is not to maximize the amount of new pharmaceutical research going on in the world. It’s to get the hell out of the way and let individual drug-makers and drug-takers bargain freely over how much the new drugs are worth to them. Which would require, among other things, that the government not ban all competition for 20 years, or indefinitely ban efforts at arbitrage through buying drugs in foreign markets.

Noisewater:

In this instance, I believe that “allowing the government to negotiate bulk discounts” should be called by it’s better known name — a price control.

… as opposed to the government using taxes to buy up ~100% of the supply of a particular drug at the price set by drug companies for a now effectively non-existant retail market. Which we should call, what, market pricing?

In reality, whenever the government buys nearly all of a particular good, using tax dollars without any individualized control by the people forced to pay them, any price whatsoever that the government pays for the good will effectively be a price control. This is true whether the government allows itself to “negotiate” with the sellers or passively takes whatever prices they name. The only solution is to stop having the government do all the buying, not to substitute a higher price-controlled price for a lower one.

Oh, so he means that Democrats are likely to weaken the State-enforced regime of monopoly profiteering that currently subsidizes new pharmaceutical research.

Well, sure. So what?

Regardless of what it is, I am not entitled to any of these by rights. Each of these was acquired through somebody else’s resources and initiative, and I am not entitled to it. I must get whoever can provide “healthcare” to offer it to me via a mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange.

That’s mighty big of you. So when can we expect a statement in favor of immediately repealing all patent laws, which forcibly exclude generic drug makers from making “mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange” with willing patients, for a term of up to twenty years from the development of new drugs?

Greg Mankiw: My interpretation: The Dems will likely give us lower drug prices and less research into new drugs. Good news if you plan to be sick soon. Bad news if you plan to be sick in the more distant future.

Garth: Perhaps I worded poorly…what I mean is since they are already given temporary monopoly power to pay for their R&D costs etc, why give them MORE by making it impossible to compete?

Steve: Because there is a cause and effect relationship between potential profitability and the amount of capital invested in a venture. A venture with potential for only minimal profits will only attract minimal investment. A venture with enormous potential for profits will attract lots of capital. The US pharma industry has been the most productive in the world at producing new drug therapies because it is highly profitable. Reduce the profits, reduce the investment.

Greg and/or Steve:

You both seem to be worried about the possibility of too little money being invested in long-term drug research.

Just out of curiosity, how did you calculate what the most efficient rate of long-term investment in drug research would be, absent a process of free market competition?

Mankiw:

My interpretation: The Dems will likely give us lower drug prices and less research into new drugs. Good news if you plan to be sick soon. Bad news if you plan to be sick in the more distant future.

I wasn’t aware that the United States Congress was “giving us” pharmaceutical research at all. Who knew that we were electing biomedical researchers instead of legislators?

Kennedy,

American policy does a lot of bad things. Call me selfish, but I’m far more concerned with the bad things it tries to do to me. The Iraqis are way down my list.

There’s nothing wrong with looking out for yourself. My point was just that this…

We’ve lost a couple thousand soldiers in Iraq and 5K people to 9/11.

… is not a complete list of the effects of foreign policy. (And the reason that the list was left incomplete may have something to do with whoever the hell this “we” is supposed to be.)

Foreign policy mostly affects us in what shows up in the newspapers. We’ve lost a couple thousand soldiers in Iraq and 5K people to 9/11. Big whoop-de-do.

I hear that American foreign policy is having some effects on Iraqis.

Len: “Tell that to someone like Ron Paul. With term limits in place, he wouldn’t still be in congress.”

And neither would Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, Rick Santorum, Trent Lott, Ted Kennedy, Ted Stevens, …

There’s a lot more bad ones profiting from unlimited incumbency right now than there are good ones. And more importantly there’s a lot more bad policies being protected by the stifling status quo in Mordor-on-the-Potomac than there are good policies. The point of term limits is throw the bums out and prevent new entrants from accumulating and institutionalizing that kind of entrenched power.

One of the problems here is that “agnosticism” can be used to describe at least two quite distinct views:

1. Holding that, as a matter of fact, you do not know whether or not God exists.

2. Holding that, in principle, you cannot know whether or not God exists.

(1) is probably the more common usage but (2) seems to be closer to the philosophical position espoused by Huxley and other early self-identified “Agnostics.” It’s not so much that they entertained God’s existence as a non-negligible possibility, but rather that they had epistemological objections to the idea that you could even assess the possibility. In any case, I think the second usage is taxonomically more useful and more interesting, since it helps you to classify the position not only of agnostics like Huxley or Ingersoll who didn’t believe in God, but also the views of folks like Kant or Kierkegaard, who did believe in God but denied the possibility of theoretical knowledge as a basis for their faith.

Jeremy,

Furthermore, I know that my participation is interpreted as support for the institution, regardless of my electoral choice or my intent in voting.

Well, sure, but won’t your refusal to vote be interpreted—by exactly the same people—as acquiescing to the political status quo?

You could say that it’s not just a matter of refusing to vote, it’s a matter of refusing to vote plus explaining to people why you’re refusing to participate in the election. But then couldn’t you just as easily choose to vote plus explain to people why you are choosing to participate in the political process?

That said, there are circumstances under which I would vote. I would vote if I were willing to back up my electoral choice with violent action. In such a case my vote is a proxy for my own willingness to compel others to accept a just outcome. However, I see no scenario where that kind of circumstance is likely to occur.

If I lived in South Dakota, I’d vote to repeal the state abortion ban in the upcoming referendum on precisely these grounds. If Michigan ever ends up with a referendum to restore the death penalty — which is not at all out of the realm of possibility — I think that voting against that would be another clear-cut instance.