If I were surrounded by angels who were purely rational and had no inclinations at all, I couldn't do anything for them. I couldn't make them happy; I couldn't make them sad, I would be entirely useless as a moral agent.

Thomas Pogge

Categorized in : Angels Happy Sad Moral

We have this highly irrational system of incentivizing innovation for clean and green technologies, where we allow the innovator to have a temporary monopoly and then mark up the price of the product or sell licenses at high prices to those who want to use the kind of product that the innovator has invented. This system is collectively irrational because many people, to avoid the inflated prices of still-patented cleaner and greener technologies, opt for some older technology that is much more polluting.

innovation technology people

It's easy to complain that pharmaceutical companies place profits over people and apparently care more about hair loss than TB. However, many in the pharmaceutical industry would be glad for the opportunity to reorient their research toward medicines that are truly needed, provided only that such research is financially sustainable.

research hair opportunity people

Medicines are unusual commodities. Important drugs can save the lives and protect the health of millions. Their consumption can bring huge benefits, by helping patients to avoid infection and preventing serious damage to the economies of families, nations and even humanity at large.

health serious important humanity

The cost of research, development and testing of a new drug is vastly greater than the cost of each dose produced. How should we pay for new medicines? Innovators should be rewarded according to the impact of their medicine, and people should contribute to these rewards according to their ability to pay.

new medicine research people

We citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss our obligations toward the distant needy mainly in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution: How much of our wealth, if any, should we give away to the hungry abroad?

give how hungry wealth

By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents.

poverty historical problem process

The stunning thing about the world as it is, is that we have a tremendously large problem in it: namely, one-third of all human deaths, 80-million every year from poverty-related causes, trivial diseases and so on, and stunningly, nobody is really paying attention to it.

nobody problem attention world