The Free Market and Cancer: A Brief Primer
Or how to stop enslaving, thieving from, and coercing people in one easy lesson.
It’s the Internet. I gave up on believing that I could truly be persuasive in a way that changed anyone’s minds years ago.
If I want to persuade people, in a context in which I believe that could happen, I build games. I write stories. Sometimes I actually go write things about stuff that’s actually happening, and I bother to get my facts right, or try to.
I don’t pull out my soapbox and set it on the corner before hopping up on top and ranting at the crowd with the expectation of persuading anyone. I know better. I’ve met people. I have no delusion that people have a desire to have their minds changed or really want to understand my particular understanding of the world.
It’s really just a vestigial bad habit that I haven’t managed to shake yet.
But I will answer your question, because I find it interesting and I’m going to give you an answer that you both won’t like and other people won’t be willing to tell you:
How can the free market serve expensive, low profit sectors like cancer research?
By making them more expensive.
If it is so — which other respondents have reinforced — that cancer research is expensive to produce, develop, research, to go through the number of medical trials most of which will end in failure, bring a treatment to the public, and then deliver it, and if we likewise observe that there are people who really, really want cancer research and more importantly cancer treatment, why should we not demand that individuals be responsible for paying what it takes to develop and deliver those treatments?
Really. Why should we not demand that?
As I understand it, it’s because people feel that those treatments are too important, too valuable, too vital to be priced. They believe, as far as we can determine by observation, that any human life at any point is worth more than any amount of human work at every point. Without question. (And by extension, their own more so.)
This is inherently a contradiction. Anyone that thinks about it for 30 seconds knows and understands that it’s a complete contradiction. In part that contradiction comes from the assumption that human lives are valuable and that considering the value of human life is a horrible thing to do.
And yet…
Some lives are more valuable than others. If a child dies in infancy they really didn’t have much value beyond potential and sentimental value to their family. In a real sense, they aren’t valuable. They’re cheap to make, anyone can do it, and frankly they’re an abundant resource. Consider that compared to an adult in the prime of their life, who has a long investment toward advancing society, culture, and their own families. Part of their value is potential, but a good chunk of that potential value is based on past success, and while that’s not a good way to gauge the value of a stock, it’s a pretty good way to gauge the value of a living thing. It is worth more to keep an adult functional and effective in the context of our society.
“What’s it worth to do so?” is the real question.
We can’t start to even consider that question if we take the common belief that a human life at any point is worth any amount of human labor. We just can’t. Aside from the fact that it’s patently not true, it demands an absolute. There can be no choice. There can be no dissension. Everyone must agree the same thing and to the same degree.
That’s just not talking about the real world.
So what do we do? If we demand that low profit activities be delivered for free or for even less than some believe they’re worth, you get reasonable people making reasonable decisions deciding to invest their limited amount of research, personnel, and money and other things. We have intervened in the free market to get a thing, and ultimately received less of that thing.
That’s pretty much a running theme throughout manipulating free markets.
But what if we don’t? What if we let the market decide what treatments are worth? What if it costs a metric ass-tonne to treat a baby for cancer? Isn’t that baby worth a metric ass-tonne? That’s what I’m told.
As a result, only people who can bring enough money to be worth that treatment to be developed, researched, distributed, and delivered will receive that treatment. Yes, that means primarily rich people will be able to afford getting cancer treatment for their baby. Yes, that means some people won’t be able to afford getting cancer treatment for their baby.
We already know, however, that not everyone could get cancer treatment for their baby even if it were free. There are a limited number of people to deliver that treatment. There are limited number of places to deliver that treatment. There are a limited number of medicines and machines able to deliver that treatment.
We know exactly how to get more of all of those things — we pay for them! And things that we pay for, society tends to get more of, up to the level of people who want the product at a given price.
So if we want the free market to serve expensive, low profit sectors like cancer research, we have to get over the aversion of allowing them to make a profit. To do that we have to accept that those treatments are going to be ridiculously expensive, and that some people will not be able to afford them. We also have to accept that not all lives are equal, not all lives are equally valuable, and when you really look at it and consider it — we are not willing to pay as much to maintain some lives as other lives.
So — let the prices go up.
Now, this creates an interesting situation. Some people care a lot about whether or not someone else receives a cancer treatment. Some people feel that it is worth their own personal blood and treasure to make sure that other people receive that cancer treatment.
Some people don’t really care. They have different priorities. Maybe they care about whether kids in Third World countries get adequate nutrition from varieties of wheat which have been genetically modified to actually grow in their soils. Maybe they care about housing availability in rural America, making sure that low income families can keep a roof over their heads and running water. Maybe they don’t care about any of those things — maybe they have their own concerns, some of which you would probably find distasteful or undesirable.
In a free market, in a truly free market, we accept that other people can do with their money, time, sweat, and tears whatever they want. We cannot and should not compel them. Doing so distorts the market and inevitably pushes prices out of true and gets us less of what we want. That said, we also accept that other people can do with their money, time, sweat, and tears whatever they want — meaning that they can pay more for a product than what the seller demands, or that they can pay for someone else receiving a product. We allow that because a market allows for anyone to pay for something. We don’t care who pays for something as long as they do so voluntarily and to the level that the seller wants to engage.
Thus insurance companies, which allow concerned individuals to pool their money over time and set conditions on how those monies can be spent, to whom, and how, under what conditions — with all members taking on those conditions voluntarily.
And this covers a vast array of different types of monetary pools and organizations, not just insurance companies. There’s no reason that you as an individual couldn’t organize a fund where volunteers put $10 a month at least and once a year pick someone who has received cancer treatment at your local hospital and give them the bundle to pay for their treatment. Hell, you don’t even need an organization to do that — if you don’t think that you have spent enough on cancer treatments this year and would like to encourage the growth of the field, feel free to write out a check — right now! — to your local hospital, go down to their administration wing, and talk to somebody about donating it to the hospital to cover a random baby’s cancer treatment. You can do that today. They’ll take your money.
The key being that all of it’s voluntary. That’s a market at work. You can do that.
If you really care about making a difference in people’s lives — that’s the way to go.
However, that’s not usually what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is the power to take someone else’s blood, sweat, tears, and treasure to make them give it to a third-party because you think they deserve it.
- If you do it to a doctor by setting what he can charge for services, and that value is less than what he would otherwise choose, then you’re engaging in slavery. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that — it’s slavery.
- If you do it to a company (which, as we all know, is made out of people) by demanding the product of their research and compliance with regulatory oversight for a value less than that which that organization as a whole believes their work to be worth, that’s theft. You’re stealing from them. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that — it’s theft.
- If you do it to a citizenry by taking taxes (and taxes are coercive, which you’ll find out really fast if you decide not to pay them to the guys with guns who come around once in a while) and spend it in ways that that citizenry has no way to make a choice about, that’s coercive theft. You have taken people’s things by force to do what you want with them, not what they want. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that — it’s coercive theft.
In the absence of these things which I think we can generally considered to be bad, how can a free market serve expensive, low profit sectors like cancer research?
- Firstly, stay the Hell out of it. Let the people researching that cancer research, producing that cancer research, and delivering that cancer research decide what they believe their work to be worth.
- Secondly, if you can’t stay the Hell out of it, do whatever you wish voluntarily. If if researchers are companies look at the market and decide that it’s simply not worth it to even start to engage in what you believe they should be doing, encourage them with your own blood and treasure. Feel free to persuade other people to help out and go along, voluntarily. Start with the assumption that other people have different priorities and interests and that agreeing with you to the point that they wish to give you their resources is not something that you deserve simply for being or for feeling or for acting, but something that reasonable people can choose otherwise.
- Thirdly, and this one might be the hardest for some people, accept that we don’t live in a world of magic but instead one where resources, time, and therapies are limited. Just because you want a thing does not entitle you to a thing. Just because you’re alive, or someone else is alive, does not entitle you to the ability to continue to be so. If there’s a problem keeping you from doing so, then one might rightly think it’s extremely valuable to you to acquire the service or material to keep you alive. Act like it. And ultimately be willing to accept that some things you cannot afford, even if it means your life. Even if it means the life of a baby. Even if it means the life of your husband, or daughter, or the kid down the street, or any of the other thousands upon thousands of people who die for one reason or another.
You’re not persuaded.
See, I knew when I started that when I got to the end you would not be persuaded. Persuasion is not about rational presentation and it never has been. Persuasion is not about answering questions, explaining, talking things through; persuasion is about your emotional state being in line with the emotional state I want you to have — and that’s simply never going to happen. Not on subjects as trivial as videogame design, not on subjects as weighty as the value of life, nothing at all. Nothing I say to you will persuade you to understanding the world as I do, because ultimately you don’t want to.
And that’s fine with me, because I believe in open markets not just economically but ideologically. I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to make choices, good or bad. If they make good choices, excellent — that’s entertaining. If they make bad choices, excellent — I love schadenfreude. Either way, good with me.
You wanted to know how the free market can serve expensive, low profit sectors like cancer research. I’ve told you. It won’t make a difference to how you think about free markets in cancer research. I doubt it will make a difference to anyone, anywhere at all.
I guess I just felt like someone, somewhere, needed to say it.
That was me this week.
