Does competition, a mainstay of markets and Capitalism, hinder progress?

OVER THE PAST HALF CENTURY, deaths from heart disease, stroke, and so many other killers have fallen dramatically. But cancer continues to kill with abandon. In 2013, despite a four-decade “war” against the disease that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 1.6 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer and nearly six hundred thousand will die from it.


A decade ago, Clifton Leaf, a celebrated journalist and a cancer survivor himself, began to investigate why we had made such limited progress fighting this terrifying disease. The result is a gripping narrative that reveals why the public’s immense investment in research has been badly misspent, why scientists seldom collaborate and share their data, why new drugs are so expensive yet routinely fail, and why our best hope for progress—brilliant young scientists— are now abandoning the search for a cure. The Truth in Small Doses is that rare tale that will both outrage readers and inspire conversation and change.

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Small-D...9772&sr=8-1&keywords=the+truth+in+small+doses

 

Wait till a couple decades of eating Monsanto kicks in.

 

You've got to die of something, can't live forever.

Competition increases collaboration, it does not hinder progress.

Example: AT&T had a monopoly for almost 100 years. The way phone service was delivered in 1885 was the same way it was delivered in 1980. Over a telephone pole. 1983 was when AT&T got some competition from MCI and thats when everything changed. Suddenly we have fiber optics networks and we have wireless. AT&T would never have spent money to try out new technologies if the old ones were working just fine. The person who builds a better mousetrap makes the money so competition is the engine of collaboration.

 

you are some misguided soul. People live now less than 100 years ago. Go to local cementery and see for yourself. Don't read it in health magazine.

Cancer research is successful. Concentrates on how to inflict disease and not how cure it. Curing is not possible.

 

Does nitro post too many polls?

 

You're right. More money in treating the disease, rather than curing it.

Pharma won't invest in natural cures, because they aren't patentable.

Xprize everything.

 

there are not enough polls on ET. there is also the issue that some polls are poorly created. perhaps, james, you want to create a poll on polls.

 

Well that would just feed into your poorly created poll thesis.

 

"Competition is a sin." - John D. Rockefeller

Rockefellers solution: Drive the competition out of business. If that fails, then join the competition in forming a Cartel. Capitalism attained perfection under Rockefeller.

When a competent capitalist says "free enterprise," freedom to enter the market place and compete with them is the furthest thing from their mind. They interpret "free enterprise" to mean a laissez faire government policy; thus they enthusiastically extoll the virtues of "free enterprise" while meaning something entirely different from the public perception of what "free enterprise" means.

The proper role of government is to protect the publicly perceived notion of free enterprise from the capitalists. When government fails to play this role, the result is what some call "corporatism," and others "fascism."

Technically speaking, "capitalism" is just an economic system where capital and the means of production are in private hands. Thus capitalism may take a variety of forms, from the form that stimulates risk taking, innovation, respect for labor, and lifts all to a higher standards of living, to the pernicious form that celebrates the basest instincts of human vanity and greed, and results in concentration of wealth and a society sharply divided between rich and poor.

Does this have anything to do with fighting cancer, and how we approach development of new medical treatments for disease. I would think a great deal!