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Capitalism prioritises investment based on profit, not based on good
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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A cure for a chronic illness could be plenty profitable if we had a free market.
Like, people can make money actually repairing cars. Even though a car that leaks oil could be a constant revenue center for someone selling oil, someone else can actually make a profit fixing oil leaks.
The fact that selling a continuous stream of oil to someone with a leaky engine does not automatically imply that fixing the leak isn’t profitable.
This sort of “X is more profitable so Y doesn’t happen” thing only actually causes Y to not happen when the market isn’t free.
If one company — via government-enforced monopoly — controls motor oil sales and oil leak fixing, then that one company can nix the permanent repair market in order to maximize profits from selling motor oil. But that’s not a free market.
It’s the fact our medical market is so tightly, centrally controlled that makes less-profitable things like preventing diabetes impossible. That kind of niche elimination is a property of a centrally-controlled market, not a property of an actually free market.
We have a free market for clothes. That means: (a) anyone who can sew cloth together can sell clothes, (b) anyone who can acquire clothes for cheap and sell them slightly higher can sell clothes, (c) anyone with money can buy clothes at any time from anyone. I can buy clothes from my neighbor if I want. I can donate old clothes to Goodwill and others can buy them cheaper than new. I can own 500 pairs of jeans if I feel like it, or wear nothing but sweatpants simply because I feel like it.
Imagine if you needed a prescription from a clothing consultant before you could buy a jacket, or a shirt. That’s not capitalism. That’s not a free market.
Just because money is exchanged for healthcare in the USA does not mean we have a free market for healthcare. We do have a market in healthcare; we do not have a free market in healthcare.
If we had a free market for healthcare, I’d be able to buy chemistry equipment and make whatever anti-cancer drugs people need and undercut other manufacturers. I’d be able to just go pay a hundred bucks to use an MRI machine or an x-ray machine, without needing to pay money to see a doctor first and get their okay for the scan. I’d be able to just go buy wellbutrin for $15 instead of paying my psychiatrist $100 every two weeks to check in and see if it’s still working.
We do not have anything even remotely resembling a free market for healthcare. We really, really need one though.