[Pants-of-dog]

No. I would hate to run this site.

For that reason, I am extremely grateful to noemon and the rest of the mods and admins.

[SolarCross]

No. I would hate to run this site.

For that reason, I am extremely grateful to noemon and the rest of the mods and admins.

Yeah me too. Okay, I guess co-ops are not all unicorns and free moonshine after all. Wow, we actually agree on something!

[Unthinking Majority]

Why aren't you free-market types *decrying* the current intervention of the federal government, into the markets?

Why aren't you *incensed* and calling for the government to *retract* the $1.5 trillion in liquidity, in favor of your so-called 'free markets' ideology / mythology?

Hypocrites.

If you've read my responses you can clearly see that i'm not at all for "free markets". I'm for a mix of capitalism with strong government regulation and a healthy dose of socialism. This has led to countries in Europe, Canada, New Zealand etc. do wonderfully. Not perfect, but the best we've seen in human history. You need a balance. Laissez-faire capitalism is dangerous too.

[Unthinking Majority]

But the capitalists do try to stop us when we try to implement democratic socialism. They come with guns and dictatorship.

————————

@SolarCross

You are the one who brought up co-ops.

Nobody is going to stop you from starting a co-op. Democratic socialism is in a large number of western countries. In the US, people are stopping it democratically by peaceful voting, not guns and dictatorship. That's their democratic choice. Dictatorship would be implementing democratic socialism just because you want it, and not because the majority of the country wants it, which they don't unfortunately.

[Unthinking Majority]

As long as we agree that capitalism is causing climate change and has no solutions.

How is it causing climate change? If the world was communist people wouldn't be burning fossil fuels for the last 150 years?

Technology got us into this mess, and it will get us out of it. Renewables and EVs etc are progressing rapidly, and their costs keep decreasing,

Trump is part of the problem, but many of the problems the USA has is because of private health care. The best shot at a vaccine right now is a government funded lab.

Source?

And if you want to force people to pay for a vaccine, you are still creating financial disincentives to stop people from getting better.

Since the virus is destroying the economy, it would be in the government's and private industry's best interest to ensure everyone gets the vaccine whether private citizens or government pays for it. I'd imagine that most governments would want to pay for it so everyone gets it. I'm certainly not saying there's never a role for government. But you're saying there's a never a role for private industry, which is a ridiculous extremist position.

[Pants-of-dog]

Nobody is going to stop you from starting a co-op.

I never claimed they would.

But they will try to stop more structural changes to society.

Democratic socialism is in a large number of western countries.

No. Most developed countries are capitalist with strong social programs. This is not socialism.

In the US, people are stopping it democratically by peaceful voting, not guns and dictatorship. That's their democratic choice. Dictatorship would be implementing democratic socialism just because you want it, and not because the majority of the country wants it, which they don't unfortunately.

I was referring to US support for military actions against democratically elected socialist governments.

[SolarCross]

But they will try to stop more structural changes to society.

Good.

[Pants-of-dog]

How is it causing climate change? If the world was communist people wouldn't be burning fossil fuels for the last 150 years?

It is causing climate change by extracting fossil fuels from the ground and burning them for various uses, which then creates a series of steps which result in global warming.

This is true regardless of whether or not this would have happened in socialism.

Technology got us into this mess, and it will get us out of it. Renewables and EVs etc are progressing rapidly, and their costs keep decreasing,

No, things like subsidising fossil fuel industry, externalities, and lobbying by fossil fuel companies are also responsible.

Source?

The sheer number of university labs working with public funding is probably higher than the number of private labs, plus the private sector has shown itself to be bad at vaccines lately.

Since the virus is destroying the economy, it would be in the government's and private industry's best interest to ensure everyone gets the vaccine whether private citizens or government pays for it. I'd imagine that most governments would want to pay for it so everyone gets it. I'm certainly not saying there's never a role for government. But you're saying there's a never a role for private industry, which is a ridiculous extremist position.

Yes, I can see why capitalists would support a policy where the private sector gets a profit for each vaccination, and the government pays the bill.

[noemon]

So pofo should get some of that good stuff too. A lot of people get arbitrarily unperson-ed on the whim of the bosses. How can we be a community without community ownership? :?:

The first thing about community is respecting its rules instead of trying to get attention all the time.

It should be needless to tell you that it is only because of community that you are not being banned right now. But you will if you carry on.

[SolarCross]

Admin Notes: 24-Hour Ban.

[Unthinking Majority]

.
No. Most developed countries are capitalist with strong social programs. This is not socialism.

Yes you're right, got the terms mixed up, was referring to social democracy.

I was referring to US support for military actions against democratically elected socialist governments.

Fair enough.

[Unthinking Majority]

It is causing climate change by extracting fossil fuels from the ground and burning them for various uses, which then creates a series of steps which result in global warming.

This is true regardless of whether or not this would have happened in socialism.

If it would have happened in socialism, then capitalism isn't causing climate change.

Fossil fuels have long been more efficient and more cost effective than solar or wind etc, that doesn't change whether workers or rich people own the means of production. Cost and efficiency seems to be changing though, because of technological advances and economies of scale.

No, things like subsidising fossil fuel industry, externalities, and lobbying by fossil fuel companies are also responsible.

Yes those have influences unfortunately.

Yes, I can see why capitalists would support a policy where the private sector gets a profit for each vaccination, and the government pays the bill.

I don't care whether government or business develops the vaccine. If businesses develop it they deserve some compensation for their work without gouging people. Unless they choose to not be paid for their work if they're really feeling charitable, which they might but i doubt it.

[Pants-of-dog]

If it would have happened in socialism, then capitalism isn't causing climate change.

No. Logic and reality do not work that way. Just because group B engages in behaviour X, it does not mean that group A did not.

Yes those have influences unfortunately.

And these influences only exist in capitalism.

I don't care whether government or business develops the vaccine. If businesses develop it they deserve some compensation for their work without gouging people. Unless they choose to not be paid for their work if they're really feeling charitable, which they might but i doubt it.

My original point was that private companies are unnecessary for developing vaccines and can even hamper production and distribution of vaccines.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ebola-va ... -1.5429060

Canada's Ebola vaccine almost didn't happen, new study reveals

A review of hundreds of government documents tells troubled story of Ebola vaccine development

Kelly Crowe · CBC News · Posted: Jan 17, 2020 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: January 17

A new study published this week tells a darker story about one of Canada's key scientific discoveries — the development of the world's first approved Ebola vaccine.

Dalhousie University law professor Matthew Herder used Canada's Access to Information Act to obtain hundreds of documents to track the development of the vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) from the first experiments at Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory in the early 2000s through to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014.

The documents reveal Canadian government scientists struggling against federal funding cuts and industry indifference to push the discovery forward.

After spending five years piecing the story together, Herder said Canada's Ebola vaccine experience challenges the dogma that drug companies are the only way to commercialize academic drug discoveries.

Herder's analysis suggests that Canada's scientists did most of the technical development work — even generating hundreds of doses of manufactured vaccine — while the private sector allowed the discovery to languish.

In the paper, published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Herder concludes "the private sector was not only unnecessary to its development, but also likely slowed it down."

"We have this dogmatic reliance upon the private sector," Herder said. "That is not always warranted. Our case study of this Ebola vaccine shows the public sector can and in fact does do far more in important instances."

How it all started

The Ebola vaccine research had a serendipitous start in Canada more than two decades ago. German scientist Heinz Feldmann had already been studying hemorrhagic fevers when he joined the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), which had recently opened in Winnipeg.

Once settled in the high security lab, he designed an experiment trying to identify the key protein that made Ebola so deadly. He didn't get the answer he expected. What he discovered instead was that the experimental mice were protected against the Ebola virus. It was the first evidence that an Ebola vaccine was possible.

At the time, the world had not yet experienced the full terror of an Ebola epidemic. That changed in 2014, when the virus ravaged West Africa, killing more than 11,000 people. Today, Congo is still struggling to control an outbreak that has killed more than 2,200 people.

But in the early 2000s, the Ebola researchers in Canada had difficulty securing the funding they needed as they competed for money with other public health priorities.

Still, they managed to scrounge enough resources to conduct preliminary animal and toxicology studies as they tried to find a drug company interested in taking their promising vaccine research to market.

But the documents reveal there was little commercial interest in an Ebola vaccine, especially in the years before the first major outbreak.

So the scientists pushed onward, struggling to find funding and doing much of the development work normally done by industry. That included getting more than 1,000 doses of vaccine manufactured for use in human clinical trials.

Herder points to that as proof that governments can, under certain circumstances, make life-saving medicines that have little commercial appeal.

"It provides evidence that a lot of that later-stage drug development or vaccine development can happen within the public sector," said Herder.

A small biotechnology company in Iowa called BioProtection Systems Inc., which later became NewLink Genetics, eventually stepped forward in 2006 offering to take the discovery to market.

Herder said he examined a copy of the agreement between the Public Health Agency of Canada and NewLink and discovered that the company failed to deliver on commitments it made in exchange for the patent.

"There's very little evidence in the documents that they were doing anything beyond taking part in meetings," Herder said.

NewLink Genetics did not respond to CBC's request for comment.

Lab 'thought seriously about stopping' work

The documents also reveal that, by 2010, the vaccine project was at risk of being shelved due to lack of funding and the fact the lead researchers had left the NML for positions at other research institutions.

"We have evidence in the records that we obtained that the lab in Winnipeg thought seriously about stopping this work," Herder said.

But one dedicated researcher managed to keep the project going.

Judie Alimonti was a contract scientist at the NML. Despite her precarious position, she volunteered to take over the floundering Ebola vaccine file.

Herder said she played a pivotal role. Without Alimonti's perseverance, the vaccine might never have been available for emergency use when Ebola ravaged West Africa in 2014.

"And so by virtue of it being ready, I'm sure she helped save lives in the middle of that epidemic."

Despite her commitment to developing the Ebola vaccine, Alimonti's contract was not renewed and she left the NML in 2015. She died of cancer two years later at age 57.

Ebola vaccine 'sitting on shelf'

Herder's research suggests that it was only after Ebola began spreading in West Africa and threatening the world that the vaccine project was treated with more urgency.

"Questions began to be raised publicly about the delay in development of a vaccine that had been shown to be 100% effective in animal models as early as 2004," Herder writes, citing a 2014 New York Times article with the headline: "Ebola Vaccine, Ready for Test, Sat on the Shelf."

Canada donated 800 doses of its experimental vaccine for use during the outbreak. The federal government also continued to provide support for the clinical trials, including a Phase 1 trial at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology in Halifax.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the 2014 outbreak, NewLink transferred the Ebola vaccine patent to Merck for $50 million US.

At the same time, funding for the research continued to be provided by public sector sources with more than $120 million from the Canadian and U.S. governments and the World Health Organization to support clinical trials during the epidemic, according to the paper.

Herder was unable to access the pharmaceutical industry documents, leaving him with questions about Merck's role.

"What the record does establish is that it was the public sector, not Merck, that provided all of the financing, including for clinical trials, during the West African epidemic, in addition to providing the technical expertise, human resources, and infrastructure that was necessary to carry out the trials," Herder writes.

Merck spokesperson Elise Giasson told CBC News in an email that after acquiring the licence from NewLink in 2014, the companies "worked together on moving it into additional Phase 1 trials as well as Phase 2/3 clinical trials."

"Merck is proud to be part of the unprecedented global collaborations to aid in the fight against Ebola."

The vaccine, now known as Ervebo, was approved for commercial sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency over the past two months.

It's a milestone that took too long, Herder suggests in his paper.

"Instead of celebrating this milestone, our analysis raises the question as to whether [the Ebola vaccine] could have been available earlier if public laboratories had taken a different approach to the vaccine's development."

Is the market actually better?

[ckaihatsu]

Yes, stock prices should find their level naturally. The impact of coronavirus on international trade and really any trade needs to be priced in, and it will be priced in eventually no matter what shenanigans the Fed pulls. At the end of the day if you allow anyone a monopoly on fake money production then they will end up owing everything to the detriment of all. If the Fed goes on a stock shopping spree while the prices are tanking they are not saving anyone but taking advantage of a crisis to line their own pockets.

In the long run the Fed is cancer and should be abolished. I might even go as far as to suggest we should bring back hanging as a punishment for currency counterfeiting.

Okay, thanks for being honest.

You realize, of course, that without a government bailout the entire capitalist economy would crash and shudder to a halt, then in 2008-2009, and now. To my politics that would be 'accelerationism', though it would be a *deleterious* event for most in the short-term, which is why deficit-spending / bailouts is *preferred*, within the context of capitalism.

What do you think about Bitcoin -- is *that* 'currency counterfeiting'? Who would / should have authority over what is to be legitimate currency, and what is not, if not The Fed?

[ckaihatsu]

If you've read my responses you can clearly see that i'm not at all for "free markets". I'm for a mix of capitalism with strong government regulation and a healthy dose of socialism. This has led to countries in Europe, Canada, New Zealand etc. do wonderfully. Not perfect, but the best we've seen in human history. You need a balance. Laissez-faire capitalism is dangerous too.

What do you think of present-day *corporations* and the legal standard of 'corporate personhood'?

Should nations be allowed to *colonize* lesser-developed countries, for the sake of exploiting their natural resources and labor? Can those imperialist countries use militaristic violence and killings for the same?

[Donna]

When the government owns the means of production and it works better than capitalism i'll change my tune. Until then, the proof is in the pudding. The markets keep going up. They've been going up for hundreds of years. Marx has predicted capitalism's collapse since 1848. We're still waiting.

Markets keep going up, but at what cost (especially when much of it is driven of algorithms, speculation, fabrication, and government intervention)? At a certain point the effects of climate change and long-term divergence and inequality will force the largest capitalist firms to collaborate more and more closely in the management of society. Gradually they will make themselves more distinct as a class whose interests are destroying the planet.

[Unthinking Majority]

What do you think of present-day *corporations* and the legal standard of 'corporate personhood'?

Corporations aren't people.

Should nations be allowed to *colonize* lesser-developed countries, for the sake of exploiting their natural resources and labor? Can those imperialist countries use militaristic violence and killings for the same?

No.

But capitalism isn't necessary for colonialism and exploitation. People have always and will always want more stuff.

[Truth To Power]

@Truth To Power
Are you conceding that you have no evidence to support your claims?

Which ones do you dispute?

Do you dispute the fact that climate has always changed?

If not, then why would you require me to post "links" as evidence for that statement, other than as a method of evading the fact that you are aware it is correct as a matter of objective physical fact?

Do you dispute the fact that private commercial banks create money de novo?

If not, then why would you require me to post "links" as evidence for that statement, other than as a method of evading the fact that you are aware it is correct as a matter of objective physical fact?

Do you dispute that government-issued and -enforced monopoly privileges cannot be part of a free market?

If not, then why would you require me to post "links" as evidence for that statement, other than as a method of evading the fact that you are aware it is correct as a matter of objective physical fact?

You are such a waste of valuable electricity.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Truth To Power

Pick a claim that has to do with socialism.

State it clearly.

Then provide a link.

Then quote the text from the link that deals with your claim.

Bold the relevant phrase(s).

Then I will address your argument.

[ckaihatsu]

Corporations aren't people.

Okay, good to hear. So what do you think should be done about this:

Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons.[1] In the United States and most countries, corporations, as legal persons, have a right to enter into contracts with other parties and to sue or be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. In a U.S. historical context, the phrase 'Corporate Personhood' refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to corporations. A headnote issued by the Court Reporter in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point.[2] This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although numerous other cases, since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), the Court found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 exempted Hobby Lobby from aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because those aspects placed a substantial burden on the company's owners' free exercise of closely held religious beliefs.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

---

Should nations be allowed to *colonize* lesser-developed countries, for the sake of exploiting their natural resources and labor? Can those imperialist countries use militaristic violence and killings for the same?

No.

Okay -- so what should be done about *Iraq* these days, for example, particularly regarding the remaining U.S. military presence there?

On 30 April 2016, thousands of protesters entered the Green Zone in Baghdad and occupied the Iraqi parliament building. This happened after the Iraqi parliament did not approve new government ministers. The protesters included supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr. Although Iraqi security forces were present, they did not attempt to stop the protesters from entering the parliament building.[44]

By 2018, violence in Iraq was at its lowest level in ten years.[45]

Protests over deteriorating economic conditions and state corruption started in July 2018 in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, mainly in the central and southern provinces. The latest nationwide protests, erupting in October 2019, had a death toll of at least 93 people, including police.[46]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... %93present)

---

But capitalism isn't necessary for colonialism and exploitation. People have always and will always want more stuff.

Well, what do you think about Marx's 'alienation' / exploitation, and about the *actual history* -- ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_ ... alienation

A "social-democratic" theory says that imperialistic U.S. policies are the products of the excessive influence of certain sectors of U.S. business and government—the arms industry in alliance with military and political bureaucracies and sometimes other industries such as oil and finance, a combination often referred to as the "military–industrial complex." The complex is said to benefit from war profiteering and looting natural resources, often at the expense of the public interest.[87] The proposed solution is typically unceasing popular vigilance in order to apply counter-pressure.[88] Chalmers Johnson holds a version of this view.[89]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ ... mperialism