David Masten posted some brainstorming musings with regard to vaccines and drugs being produced and sold like computers. Then he finished up the exercise by discussing just the opposite, if computers were produced and sold like pharmaceuticals:
“Police raided a nerdy teen this morning - among the things found were soldering irons, oscilliscopes, compilers, and large numbers of first person shooter games and vehicle simulators…police estimate a street value of several billion dollars…�
While it is difficult to predict what the market would actually do (impossible even), David Skarbek had his own mental gymnastics earlier this month regarding a free-market in organs:
Many economists, such as William Barnett and David Kaserman, have suggested that a market in organs will save thousands of lives by creating an incentive for family members to part with a portion of their loved ones. Such policies are simple and sensible, such as one where people are allowed to sell the right to their organs after death for a price. This would increase the number of organs available thus saving lives. A logical extension of this idea is the right to sell your organs to needy patients when still alive. This will yield even more of the life saving products. Most of us would not sell a kidney for a mere $100 but perhaps for a $1,000,000 we would start thinking seriously. This benefits the seller, but even more importantly the buyer who has now literally had his life saved.
I think this is what van Gogh was trying to do back in the day, he just had poor presentation skills… lead by example.
