(08-21-2019, 07:34 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(08-21-2019, 04:50 PM)mikesez Wrote: The free market would assign almost no reward without the protections of patent law.  The problem is that patent law seems to be giving to high of rewards, at too much cost to too many desperate, dying people.  

The cash prize idea would be basically the same as the statement of work you describe.  Statement of work: show that X cures Y in animal trials - get cash prize if it does.  Then get offered a new SOW - show that X cures Y in small human study - get a second cash prize if it does.  More complex than this of course, but not fundamentally different.

Sigh...  You just don't understand how government contracts work.  I do.  I have been a government contractor for the last 20 years and I can tell you that it doesn't get awarded or paid after the work is done.  That's a whole other topic.

What you are basically proposing is the government micro-managing an industry.  Again, it's not up to the government to pick winners and losers.  It's not up to the government to drive innovation.

We have gotten off-topic here and should steer back to the point of the thread... the weak bunch of loons that the democrats are fielding right now.  A few weeks ago I thought that Kamala Harris might be the new "chosen one" for the democrat party, but it looks like Pocahontas is doing very well right now.

Right most government contracts are paid in phases.
Some of the money comes at signing, and then the rest comes at certain milestones.
Sometimes there's an arbitrary reduction.
Sometimes scope is added.
The point is there's nothing wrong with the government spending money to pay private actors to do work that the government wants to be done.
Obviously, most economic activity should be private, but there's nothing inherently wrong with bits of it being public. Inevitably some of it will be public. Only a simpleton would think it's black and white or easy to determine which activities should always be private and which should sometimes be public. Times change, technologies change, enemies change, needs change.

As for you wanting to get back on topic, I suspect in the end it will come down to Warren and Biden. I think all the Democrats like Warren, they just doubt she can win. And Biden is the one that most of the people who worry about electability think is the most electable. So as candidates get eliminated, their supporters will go to Warren if they think any Democrat can win, and they will go to Biden if they worry that only a certain type can win.

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