@failedLyndonLaRouchite @DeanBaker13 @merz @jgordon i don’t think anyone is arguing pharma work should all be done by direct govt employees on the gs pay scale. if you did do that, some costs would go up and others would go down, but @merz concerns about institutional knowledge might be hard to address. 1/

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @DeanBaker13 @merz @jgordon there are lots of pharma reform ideas (lots just from @DeanBaker13), but even when the idea is “let the state fund the work and own the product”, the state can finance start-up labs and let operators of those labs allocate resources, just as private investors now do. how the state then incentivizes high-social-return work, under what form of competition if any, becomes a question to address. /fin

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @DeanBaker13 @merz @jgordon you can hire whoever’s available, but that includes ppl and institutions already here. there’s no debaathification. when incumbent institutions have competences they can provide best at good rates, you hire them. they may not like the more competitive environment, but the only thing that’d cut incumbents out wld be their choosing to attempt a kind of capital strike rather than participating.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @DeanBaker13 @merz @jgordon it’s worth noting that over the last few decades big pharma itself outsourced much of its basic drug development to China. that was the fate of the lab at which i once worked, the former Upjohn in Kalamazoo.

@merz @jgordon @DeanBaker13 okay! i’m not really arguing one way or another about that (but no, i’m not taking your word, and i think you are largely wrong), but using public action to undermine regulatory moats that prevent already developed drugs from being marketed was the Dean’s proposal, which i continue very much to endorse.

@merz @jgordon @DeanBaker13 (to be clear, i don’t dispute that drug development is very difficult. but i do dispute there’s something special about its difficulty that means only institutions not so different from status quo private sector monopolists could perform it.)

@bgawalt however nice the app, your private bank extracts a subsidy and imposes dangers the public should not tolerate. if we make deposits public, as we should, perhaps your bank can still provide the UI and administer them. (lots of proposals look like that!) so, enjoy the app. but your bank should have no actual access to the funds represented by your deposits. and that should not be optional.

@bgawalt 2008 was odd because they contorted themselves to save even shareholders of the big banks. but the bailouts were motivated by institutional private money-like assets, which have been much more strictly regulated since, and should (like private deposits) be regulated away. there must be private risk assets, and public credit-risk-free assets. any hybrid only exists because the private sector is extracting a subsidy from the public sector.

@jgordon @danwentzel What if (I know, so implausible) Musk is a hidden in plain sight part of an international right-wing conspiracy seeking to undermine liberal democracy as most of us understand it in the United States and other Western countries? 1/

@jgordon @danwentzel If the surveillance and control these platforms afford is dangerous in the hands of a foreign power, aren't they dangerous in the hands of factions, domestic or international, who may use them to usurp or undermine the democratic process domestically? /fin

@bgawalt in 2008 i think the concern was mostly that business’ banks would fail, or for big businesses that typically borrow cash in the commercial paper market, that market might dry up, leaving them illiquid. obviously in the ensuing recession lots of businesses failed, eventually running out of assets to sell or borrow against when revenues were depressed. but the fears about deposit access and commercial paper came first.

@bgawalt (i mostly renember the fear “the atms would stop working”. which already feels anachronistic.)