|
nice answer to Ty
This is my kinder answer: Ty said
"but there are short-run monopolies. You and club do not want to think of pharma companies as having this characteristic, so you keep fighting off the obvious truth that patent rights are about bestowing this sort of limited monopoly power. If you accept this -- at this point, I understand that this is a highly counterfactual hypothetical -- then it follows from very basic economic principles that net social utility is maximized by some sort of price regulation."
What you say here ignores the fact that there are almost always alternatives to a patent right. more importanly, you question the basic underpinning of why the country benefits from patents.
Orville and Wilbur had to tell every one how to make an airplane, then thery got a patent for 17 years. now, because they explained how to make an airplane other companies do make them. now there are no patents that can block flight- and there are no patent that block any treatment. maybe Z-pack is patented but you can take tetra-cycline.
patents are an exception to basic economic principals that helped us beat the USSR and become the worlds only superpower.
|
