McGoogle MacGoogle Schmoogle bloogle

Another post to test Google's search engine.  Are they, they being Google, censoring my posts due to my posts anti-capitalism themes? McGoogle MacGoogle Schmoogle bloogle ; searching those string of words in quotes in Google returned 'no results'.  Since Blogspot is owned by Google there may be more of a direct conduit of censorship possible there.  Let's see.

Another example of how the medical field mindset is stuck on capitalism to its own peril

Medium article about metformin as an anti aging drug

I highlighted the following passage from the article and then commented on it below the quote

Once metformin has the official labeling language to back up scientists’ anti-aging claims for the drug, the theory goes, pharmaceutical companies will be inspired to invest in more daring ventures — and then the truly miraculous drugs, the ones that could have us living healthily to 115 and beyond, might begin to flow through the pipeline.

The following is my response to the above quote from the article:

by Glen Wallace

 This mindset of looking to pharmaceutical companies to bring us our cures and treatments still depends on the capitalist market to get a medicine to patients. Time and again I see the research community struggling to find ways to get a promising drug or medical device to the market just so the product can get to the patient that needs the product. I like to call it the Rube Goldberg method of healthcare delivery. The clear solution is to cut out the capitalist middle man and socialize medicine from initial research to manufacture and distribution to patients. The federal government and other public entities has the ability to research, manufacture & distribute medicines and medical devices at cost or no cost to the patients according to their need. Clearly there is a need for an anti aging medicine for all the associated maladies of old age, therefore the government should respond by first engaging in researching such medicine, then manufacturing and distributing the medicine that has been shown safe and effective for the condition. No need to woo, beg or plead drug companies into researching & developing such drugs. If the public has a need then the public should exercise its prerogative to satisfy that need through their own government.

Capitalism is failing medical field -- Need to nationalize or make public medicine

The following is my comment in response to above video:

By Glen Wallace

It wouldn't have to be a public company. I often compare the idea of public manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals to the longstanding US Government Printing Office, AKA Government Publishing Office, that for many decades has manufactured and sold printed materials from pamphlets to books and sells those materials to the public. So we could potentially open a US Government Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Office that researches, develops, manufactures and distributes meds and medical devices at cost or no cost to patients according to need. But yes, regardless of what it is called, we need a public pharma that is patient need based instead of the current Big Pharma medical system that is market profit based. The current US medical system relies on the unsafe assumption that what is good for the corporation is also going to be good for the patient and the general public. We need only look at the price gouging with insulin to prove wrong that assumption of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. Insulin prices show there is often an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. And yet most of the medical field mindset is in the monkey trap that traps the monkey by putting a sweet nut inside a cage, monkey puts its hand into a small hole to grab the nut but finds it can't get its hand out while its hand is clenched on the nut and is thus trapped by the cage tethered to the ground because it doesn't occur to the monkey to just let go of the nut. Similarly it doesn't occur to the vast majority of the members of the U.S. medical field and the politicians governing the field to just let go of the nut requiring meds and medical devices only be delivered by way of the capitalist market -- they remain fixated on the idea that they must have med products go through this Rube Goldberg device of capitalism first before the products can possibly get to the patients. And a public pharma shouldn't have to limit itself to just generic drugs. Laws could be passed exempting the public sector from patent restrictions for meds and medical devices. Any complaint that such an exemption would disincentivise research & development with private pharma, could be countered by nationalizing the research & development of medicine and medical devices also. Most of the scientists go into the field with the goal of finding cures and helping people anyways; making their research part of the public sphere would just give them the resources to find those cures along with allowing them to better direct the research according to public need instead of current private for-profit research that is directed by the corporate bean counters that will veto any research if it doesn't have good promise of big profits regardless of how much promise the research may have at finding a cure.

Austerity or Communism

by Glen Wallace

If we don't transform into more of a resource based economy in the form of a libertarian communist, socialist system, we will inevitably, gradually, slump into a global recession of austerity where the masses will be spending the bulk of their monetary funds in paying off debts to the rentier class. 

People are constantly working for free.  In fact, it could be argued that the new internet economy is largely built on the backs of individuals gladly toiling without remuneration.  It is through the efforts of the so-called users of Facebook with their millions of updates from millions of unremunerated man-hours of labor writing status update posts and uploading photos and videos that has drawn visitors to view the ads that generate the ad revenue that has made Zuckerberg one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet.  It is also difficult to calculate the massive amount of value added to Amazon through all the in depth product reviews provided by the site visitors -- also without remuneration.  Many of the top rated product reviews on Amazon read like something a professional writer might post as a magazine article.  But I don't think those reviewers are secretly professional reviewers, rather, I think they really enjoy the ideal of sharing their insights and helping their fellow humans.  I have written a couple of in depth product reviews myself without any remuneration just because I wanted to help other consumers. 

We need  to look into how we can build an economy that harnesses that innate desire to create and help the world.  The collectivism could be used to pool the resources necessary for the makers of stuff to make and invent. 

Hoarding for the purposes of financial gain and hedging could become a thing of the past.  There are whole warehouses around the world used for the sole purpose of storing copper in pallet sized sheets that are stacked on pallets.  The copper is stored as financial investment in the form of physical copper -- it is treated as investment just like many people invest in gold or silver by owning physical gold or silver.  I'm not necessarily disparaging the practice of hoarding metals, precious or otherwise, on the contrary, doing so is very understandable.  In the current world of economics there is all sorts of volatility that could threaten the value of traditional national currencies.  Ownership of metals can provide a hedge against such volatility.  The problem is that our current global economic model creates a demand for the hoarding of natural resources.  In a resource based economy, those resources, like copper, could be put to good uses instead of sitting in some remote warehouse.  We need an economy where there is no demand to hoard the supply.

The need to reenact Glass Steagall

by Glen Wallace

If traditional banking is to be considered a vital national utility, then safeguards need to be in place to protect that utility from harm. As it is, we the people are acting as the de facto insurance company backing the banking industry.  Unfortunately, those financial institutions don't have to pay any premiums for what is effectively the world's largest insurance policy.  We the people pay out when times are bad for those banks, but we get bupkis when times are bountiful for them.  So, we should either be getting regular dividend checks or the casino side of banking and the traditional saving and lending side should be clearly and cleanly separated through the reenactment of Glass Steagall.  Another option is to start a national bank for traditional banking either as the only option or a public option.

The problem with a lack of separation between casino or investment banking and traditional banking is that there is no signs or symptoms for a long time leading up to a financial disaster caused by the lack of separation.  For instance, while there are plenty of problems faced by the general public from our private health insurance system such as high rates and poor coverage that leads the constituents to clamor for a single payer plan, there are no such problems that the general public has to face and deal with in terms of  the lack of separation between the casino and traditional side of banking -- everything seems to be going along swimmingly until disaster strikes and banks start closing and banking holidays are declared.  The lack of a Glass Steagall type legislation is not a problem until it is a huge problem.  But despite all the glaring problems with our private insurance systems, the difficulty in trying to enact something like Medicare for All leads me to think it will be nearly impossible to reenact Glass Steagall until the next banking crisis -- although I am wondering why that wasn't the first thing attempted after the fall of some big banks in 2008, instead of passing the critically weak Dodd Frank bill. 

The US Government could just start making drugs like insulin and devices like the epipen as a solution to price spikes

The following is a comment I posted in response to the above Richard Wolff video essay:

There is a third way of lowering drug prices: make it ourselves.  By 'ourselves' I mean the US Government owning and operating the means of production of medical drugs and medical devices and distributing those products according to need.  The Government Printing Office has for decades manufactured and sold their own published products.  So there is precedent there and if anyone wants to they can go to their website and browse and maybe buy one of their books:

If they can own the means of production for one type of product, books and other publications, why can't the US Government also own the means of production for other types of products; namely medicines and medical devices?  I think they can and should start to manufacture drugs and medical devices -- especially those products that have fallen outside of patent protection.  And the two products that have gotten the most press recently for price spikes are outside of patent protection; insulin and epipen type devices.

But even for those products that are under patent protection the government should intervene and manufacture those products if the patent owner refuses to lower the price to a much more reasonable level.  The drug company may balk at the idea and complain that they wont be motivated to invest in research if they think the government might preempt any patent rights they might gain from a newly developed medicine -- We can respond that if that is the result then the government can start doing all the research, but doing it for the right reasons; patient health rather than profitability and shareholder value.  Because as it currently stands, the only reason drug companies develop any drug is if and only if they think it will be profitable -- and meanwhile much of the rest of society keeps working under the unsafe assumption that what is best for Big Pharma is also going to be best for patients.

I've written Senator Klobuchar a couple times with my suggestion and she just replies with her explaining her proposed solutions.  One of the main solutions she wants to enact is a bill she introduced that would make it quicker and easier to get generics onto the market and let competition drive down the prices.  My response is that, for one thing, there is nothing mutually exclusive about trying to achieve both my idea and her idea simultaneously.  For another thing, her generics to the market idea seems like just another futile attempt to depend on free enterprise and capitalism to solve are most pressing problems even though a non-capitalist solution is staring at her straight in the face.  I keep thinking about  the movie Jurassic Park near the ending (I'm assuming anyone reading this has seen the movie and thus doesn't need a spoiler alert)  where the park visionary Hammond, even after all the damage and carnage wrought by the dinosaurs, instead of giving up, still is trying desperately to come  up with a way to make it work.  Now, even amidst the aftermath of all the carnage wrought by the involvement of predatory capitalist sharts in the field of medicine, Klobuchar is still trying to figure out ways leave our medical well being in the jaws of those sharks without us getting hurt.  I think it is time to give up on that route and realize that under the exigent circumstances, we need to get started as soon as possible manufacturing and distributing, according to need, those medicines and medical devices.     

List of federal laws that should be repealed or enacted or reenacted.

Repeal:

Taft-Hartley
Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978

the DMCA

NAFTA

Reenact: Glass-Steagall 

Historical 30 year stock market slumps -- 2 happened in the 1900's

by Glen Wallace

I've found on two occasions in the 1900's when adjusting for inflation, but not accounting for dividends, it took 30 years to recover just the principle in the stock market.  The first time was the peak in 1929 when a stock market investor who bought a theoretical index fund at the peak would've had to wait until 1959 to see the fund's value return.  The next such 30 year gap was from the peak in 1966, then a long slump until those 1966 values returned in 1996.  Yes, I didn't account for dividends and it is because of those historical three decade slumps that I really like dividends.  But also keep in mind that two of the bigger drivers of the current market pay absolutely no dividend and if they did it would be very small due to their very large PE ratio -- Amazon and Netflix.

I also think a potential parallel could be found between the current rise of Amazon and the pre-'29 crash rise of the Radio Corporation of America which also had a high PE (although not nearly as high as Amazon) and paid no dividends prior to the crash.  Additionally,  RCA was, like AMZN, a darling of the stock market that rose in a very similarly precipitous manner as AMZN and, prior to the '29 crash, everyone was gushing about RCA and its stock.   

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dow-may-already-bear-market-185419194.html

The Government Redistribution Fund

The following is  a comment I posted in response an article by John Mauldin

By Glen Wallace

As a partial solution, let me suggest a whole new type of stock market fund: The Government Redistribution Fund or GRF. The GRF will be the result of a hefty asset tax on the ultra wealthy -- those with assets ranging from ~100 million dollars on up. The tax rate will be progressive with those with, for instance, 100 million in assets might only face a one percent rate, while those with close to 100 billion in assets would face more like a 99 percent tax rate.

The potential problem with such an asset tax is that many of those in such a tax bracket have much of their wealth tied up in the stock of the corporations they head or used to head.

If they all sold their stock all at once to pay such a tax, that would flood the markets with a huge supply, potentially crashing the price of not only the stock being sold but could have a negative knock-on sell-off effect on the market as a whole. The solution I came up with is to set up a fund where the payment of the asset tax would be in the form of stock being transferred into the fund, the GRF.

Initially, the only revenue the government would derive from the GRF would be in the form of dividends. But it would also be an open fund where the general public and institutional investors could buy shares. Once an investor bought a share, the share purchase price would be revenue for the government, but then of course the investor would enjoy any dividends entitled to the shares purchased and could also turn around and sell the shares to someone else, just as they could with shares owned in any other stock market fund.

Societal economic planning decision making protocol

by Glen Wallace

I would categorize a decision making tree, regarding economic systems, into three main parts.  Each part should be addressed in order, however, there may be some overlap between each adjoining category.

The three categories or phases to be addressed in order are:

1.) The Ethical Question -- Is the plan ethical?
2.) The Utilitarian Question -- Will the plan work if implemented?
3.) Political Feasibility -- Can the public & politicians be convinced to go along with  the plan?

The first category that needs to be addressed is the ethical question -- this is where we ask if enacting a specific plan is ethically acceptable for everyone impacted by the plan.  As an example of an ethically unacceptable plan or protocol, I would refer to the instance I remember reading about some 20 years or so ago about the Chinese government executing a number of business managers due to poor performance (I'm hoping they don't perform those kind of executions anymore but I don't know).
 
This brings us to the second category, the utility or utilitarian question.  The utilitarian question asks whether the plan to be implemented will be effective in terms of improving the prosperity of the citizens of the nation or state that they will reside in.  But it is important that we don't skip the first category before addressing the second.  It doesn't matter how much executing or threatening to execute the business managers due to poor business performance may or may not improve the overall prosperity of the rest of the nation (I highly doubt it would help, more likely to hurt the economy) the executions are ethically unacceptable and therefore should never have gotten past the ethical consideration phase and entered into the utilitarian consideration phase. 

If the ethical category had been addressed in the first place, as it should have been, then the planning stage for the Chinese execution plan wouldn't even have gotten to the second, utilitarian addressing stage and would have instead been tossed into the planning waste bin where it belongs early on.  But if a plan does pass the ethical test, then we go on to ask if the plan will work -- the utilitarian question stage.

The third stage to address is the political feasibility addressing stage.  In this stage we look at how or if we can go about convincing the electorate and their representatives to ascend to a given plan.

But once again it is important that we don't just jump to this stage before addressing the first two stages.  That is because once the first two questions have been answered to a satisfactory extent that they pass muster, then it will be that much easier to convince the constituents and politicians of the benevolence of the plan.  For it is the answers to the first two categories of questions where the arguments can be found that will convince the populace and politicians to accept the plan.

I was watching on the local public television channel a presentation by Sheila Bair, former Chair of the FDIC.  And following her presentation was a Q&A session.  One of the questions she was asked was whether or not the Glass-Steagall act should be reinstated.  Now I'm going by memory, but I believe her answer was something to the extent that she didn't know if it was politically feasible given the current political environment.  I would argue that her answer then skipped the first two categorical questions that should have been answered first regarding Glass-Steagall before addressing the political feasibility question. 

There is nothing overtly unethical about the reinstating the Glass-Steagall act -- first categorical test passed.  I don't think a whole lot of attention needs to be paid here towards arguing for the ethical acceptability of reenacting Glass-Steagall.  I don't believe, for instance, that many people would contend that bankers have some inalienable right to engage in both traditional banking and speculative investing within the same company.  I believe the strongest case is for a moral imperative that those two areas be handled by separate financial institutions as was required by Glass-Steagall.  Without such separation, the systemic risk to the economic infrastructure of the nation is put at risk by the speculative bets of traders.  We have come to a point where the traditional banking system of savings and lending is regarded as a necessary utility.  When the ability of a bank to lend to businesses or meet the withdrawal requests of savers is undermined by the speculative division of the bank that made some bad bets, the entire economic infrastructure as a necessary utility can be put at risk.  Thus, the so-called 'too big to fail' that really mean 'too important to be allowed to fail' protections may be required that call on public resources to bail out the failing bank. 

For the second category, in addressing the utility question we need to look at the possibility that repealing Glass-Steagall created a financial environment that either directly led to the great recession or helped bring it about or made it that much worse.  If a case can be made linking the repeal causally to the economic meltdown and great recession and that causal link were presented to the public then the third step of passing the political feasibility phase, regarding the reenacting of Glass-Steagall, would be greatly enhanced.  Nobody is going to want another financial crisis; especially since we haven't even recovered fully from this most recent great recession. If the public can be convinced that reenacting Glass-Steagall will have the utilitarian value of preventing another financial crisis like we saw in 2008, then passing political feasibility will be that much easier.