Hey you can combat the effects of ageing all you want- you can still be vaporized into nothingness somehow. Unless we figure out some way to re-assemble ourselves from even one atom that’s tagged with our information or something awesome like that.
Autolykos,
No. You explain why you care why I called the market “puny”, or else drop it.
I said nothing of what you attributed to me regarding the argument you think I’m making (I have not made an argument yet). Frankly, you seem defensive. I appreciate your honest at the end though. What would you say to a proposal to tax the use of antibiotics?
Rcder,
Don’t get so caught up in my tone.
Caley,
Why aren’t superbugs a problem?
You know, they only started mass-producing antibiotics in the middle of the last century. Before that, every bug was a “superbug”.
A free society will have to deal with disputes, hunger and sickness, but not war, famine and pestilence. Those are the province of governments.
Right–like I said, markets are threatening to bring us to a state of pre-penicillin.
Forcing people to refrain from the use of antibiotics is going to do that a hell of a lot faster…
Assuming, of course, that banning a product actually makes it disappear, which it doesn’t. You can’t ban antibiotics all over the world tomorrow by decree. If the superbugs are going to kill us all, we’re dead, that’s it, kiss your arse goodbye, no one can save us now. If we’re headed for a post-apocalyptic world with hardly any survivors, can we at least get rid of the goddamned government?
Tax, not ban.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110616193740.htm
problem solved already, move on 
Awesome. Gotta love that government-funded research.
But, for the sake of discussion, assume there is no kryptonite. What then?
i see no reason for this particular area to be strictly relegated to only government research. pharma loves new drugs.
Gotta love pharma and their government-protected monopoly profits.
which are unnecessary as according to new research regarding the cost of new drug treatments. its not a billion per pill or what ever crazy shit they have. patents are not the key to innovation either. many resources such as books like “against intellectual monopoly” here on this website to back up that claim.
What is that going to achieve?
There is another side to this…
There is a ‘superbug’ - an E. coli strain that is mysteriously mutatated to resist all major commercial applications of antibiotics.
Where did it most likely come from?
A: A head of lettuce in Belgium
B: Al-Qaeda
C: The devil
D: One of the many government bioweapons research labs, where they intentionally expose bugs to antibiotics in a controlled environment, specifically to create things like this…
Maybe we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place if the government didn’t have so much money to spend on our own good.
F. Externality created by antibiotics use.
If there are people building these things on purpose, then that’s a more likely scenario than it happening by accident, even if that’s not entirely impossible. It’s more likely that Shakespeare wrote his plays than a thousand monkey’s at a thousand typewriters.
Why tax antibiotics instead of ban them? You think the rich should be saved? You think it will discourage objectively ‘less important’ uses of antibiotics, like treating canine acne say, while allowing objectively ‘more important’ ones, like treating kids with pneumonia? It won’t. That’s not how economics works. It will kill people. The tax you’re proposing would be a form of murder.
It’s more likely that a group of people wrote Shakespeare’s plays than one guy =/
James,
Of course the tax will kill people. The whole point is to raise the cost of using antibiotics so that even more people don’t die.
Lol, so I’ve heard. Shakespeare Inc.
I think this is where the term “fatal conceit” comes from.
Yeah. Taxing negative externalities. Totally what Hayek was talking about.
Every murderer kills so that he and his friends may outnumber his enemies in future.
Thank you for the highly relevant and productive contribution, James.