22 May 04
1 edit
Originally posted by StarValleyWyNonsense! Capitalism has its place, but lots of things have been achieved for reasons other than greed. For starters, most really innovative, early stage science is done by charity and government funded bodies, with companies then taking on the best ideas and developing them for wider consumption. The whole pharmaceutical industry works on that basis and the early research on genetic modification was done in public labs too. Then there was antibiotic development (part of the war effort), mass immunisation and various other public health initatives which were driven by public bodies like, dare I say it, the UN.
What a croc! In history, only capitalism has accomplished anything. All progress to date is allowed to it. Name a single contribution to civilization that is not directly an offshoot of capitalism? Think hard. Can you name a single adv ...[text shortened]... ow a brain stem and work your way up to partial consciousness.
Looking further back, there are certainly examples of innovation through purely capitalist motives (the whole of the industrial revolution for instance) but many of the great scientific advances were funded by patronage from the great and the good of the time, and were made for the pleasure of discovery rather than for financial reward. Darwin, Newton and Gallileo are all examples.
I also think it's bizarre to try and make out that everything's a straight choice between capitalism and communism. Publicly funded scientsts have the freedom to wander off down blind alleys if they please, which gives them more of a chance of stumbling on something genuinely new. But the private sector brings the ways, means and motivation to make things happen. You need both.
Rich.