Yes, but I still bet you get a kick from making something useful. It's that win-win situation again. Make medecine, sell at the right price and you're in business. It's what creates that wonderful thing called motivation.
Contrast this with typical approach of *cough* GSK or *cough* Pfizer *cough* to making super-patented medecine that people depend on to live and making it expensive. I bet tri-therary that is used to treat aids still costs a lot (so much for the people who have AIDS in Africa). That's a win-lose situation. The pharmaceutics company and it's investors win and the patient loses, or whatever insurance is backing them up.
Oh yeah, I know that developping new molecules is expensive. However, I don't see how the pharmaceutical industry agreed to expiring patents and generic medecine if it was totally unprofitable. In fact, it's become quite a sport for the pharmaceutical people to convince doctors to overprescribe medecines in exchange for holidays. This hasn't gone unnoticed since this is putting a heavy drain on public health insurance and patients are asked to request the generic equivalent of whatever medicine they need. The "Kiwi" system (in New Zealand ?) has taken this a step further by only refunding the cheapest brand on the market.
Selfishness in itself is good. Everyone has to learn how to be selfish to some degree. It's all about doing what has to be done to reach your goals. But walking on the heads of other people is not a good way to win popularity marks.
How about leaving stocks and finance alone and placing the rules elsewhere ? Leave finance to do it's job and but the safeguards on the economy itself. It's either that or you acknowledge the idea that some people risk leading very, very miserable lives through no fault of their on because they listened to the wrong advice. Those investment people can be pretty convincing when they want to even when you have little to spare.
I can agree with this and a nanny state sounds like a horrible thing. It's not a governments role. It is however a government's role to act in the best of interest of a population. So where is the middle line ? In other words, do you think a government should one take a step back before the interests of multinationals ?
Why is the stock market weak in the first place ? It's a reflection of people's trust and how on earth do you expect people to give their trust after the huge mess of an iceberg that popped up at the end of the last year ?
Ok, it's a bad idea to touch stocks. On the other hand, are you prepared to let public spending money go if the finance people haven't learned their lesson and things don't clear up ?
Look, I don't know how employees are treated in the US. For all I know, you've still got something to be proud off. I'm just saying that human beings as part of the business equation have less and less value.
Long-term contracts are turned into temp jobs because it's cheaper. Nobody cares about individual interests or people's future. Students who get a bachelor's sometimes have to wait more than a year to find a job, sometimes crying all the tears out of their body because noone wants them. And it's pretty pathetic to hear that there's a handful of people that have been unemployed for +30 years.
Maybe you're right. That's still a lot of money disappearing into thin air and far more than anything the general public can muster. I won't mention it again except just by adding that's it more widespread than most people think. Bono of U2 does it
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