Is it so easy to minimize the trauma of medical bankruptcies by reducing them to a percentage? 500,000 people dealing with physical and emotional struggles, also having to start their financial lives over? Every year?

If you think about the human experience of these people, I doubt you can dismiss them as a rounding error.

And again, most medical innovation is done with public money, or at the very least R&D tax rebates. The pharmaceutical companies often spend more on marketing elective drugs than they do developing treatments.

Publicly funded innovation should be provided at cost to patients.

Are you sure either of those situations are in conflict with my point?

While the COVID vaccine was free to the public, the pharmaceutical companies were paid by various governments, resulting in record profits. All while much of the work for developing the vaccines was made possible by public funding.

For cancer treatments, look at this release:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/01/21/2370991/0/en/Oncology-Market-Size-to-Hit-US-581-25-Billion-by-2030.html

Cancer is discussed like it's a natural resource the medical sector can mine for profits. And while ultimately it's a good thing that lives are being saved, the financial pressures to attain that salvation is devastating for many people. I'm sure you know that medical debt is the number two cause of bankruptcy (in the US at least).

Yeah, we certainly haven’t solved for that yet, unfortunately.

I think I get what you mean. But I’m not sure “the wisdom of the crowd” serves us well in situations like these. Popularity contests only reward the currently popular.

Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson? He (among others) sometimes writes about Ecological Economics. Tying capitalistic rewards to systems that benefit the planet (and us as one of its animals), could put our long term goals in alignment with our short-term baser instincts.

That’s a good point. I should put innovators in quotes throughout. Innovation is like the idea of progress. Progress towards what? What end? At what cost?

I think you’re right about the repeatable nature of innovation, but this isn’t just about individuals. It’s about the overall impact of innovation on society.

Look at medicine, which I think has clearly shown how innovation can benefit humankind. We lock it up behind capitalist roadblocks, and it’s become a carrot, driving us to exhaustion on low-wage treadmills.

The only innovation accessible, and unencumbered to the masses are useless distractions, driving alienation, and selling u healthy lifestyles.

Meanwhile, money flows upwards to innovators while the majority flounder.

Technology was supposed to democratize success. It seems more like it Feudalzed it.

Definitely. Though we don’t really know how it would work in free market capitalism. We’re so caught up in crony capitalism we can’t even see the corruption.

You’re 100% right. People disagreeing with you don’t understand the creative generative process.

And the reality is that AI will be coming for many jobs that used to be considered creative. If humans had meaningful work lined up to replace those jobs, it’d be one thing. But all we have is low wage commoditized service jobs that can’t yet be automated.

Bleak.

That is a great question. I would assume the “finance” interest on FB is people who work in the finance industry, while “personal finance” would be people interested in consumer finance targets. If that’s correct, I might think the spend should be reversed.

It could also be people are targeting ads badly, or somewhat randomly. People are not always great at their jobs.