My stream of consciousness liberal rant...

I was trying to explain to one of my all time favorite republicans why a free market isn't free without regulation.

If you sell widgets and I want some and you charge too much, then I can buy my widget from someone else. If I don't want to pay enough, then you can choose not to sell me the widget. It's a free market because there is consideration and choice on both sides.

If, on the other hand, you are selling cancer medication and I'll die without it and you're the only one who has it --then that's not a free exchange. I don't have a choice.

The first responce was "Well you can choose not to buy it..." but I can't accept that. If your life is on the line, you have no choice. I mean let's just say for the sake of argument that when there's a gun to your head it's not a free choice situation.

Does that mean that the person who worked hard and developed the medication is now obligated to give up the fruit of his labor and inginuity just because someone else needs it? No that's not what I'm saying...

We, as a society have decided that each member has certain rights. One of them is life. To me that means that if society can prevent me from dying it has an obligation via the social contract that I was born into to do what it can to prevent that from happening.

I'm not saying we are all entitled to a swimming pool, all you can eat crab at Red Lobster and an X box (though I do have a birthday coming up tomorrow). But I think I'd rather live in a society where the basics, should we need them, are reasonably taken care of. And I'm willing to pay a little extra to live in that kind of society. It's a big part of what separates us from third-world countries.

I have to pay a little extra for the Space Shuttle and the Hubble telescope. The center for the performing Arts. I have to pay a little extra to have police and fire protection whether I need it or not. And I have to pay a little extra so that if someone needs emergency care in a hospital and can't afford it, they can get it. And I'm OK with that. I don't understand people who aren't ok with that.

But back to the cancer medication. My original point was that in the case of cancer medication it isn't a free market exchange, because there is no choice on both sides --but the responce was something like, "why should the owner of the medication have to give it up just because someone else needs it?"

The idea that we could be robbing the industrious makers of the medication of the benefits of their ingenuity and hard work is largely based on the misconception that (especially in the case of cancer medication) the medicine is the result of free enterprise, when in fact it's mostly developed at universities with government grants. So we as a society are absolutely entitled to the benefits of the research because we all paid for it.

The pharmicutical companies have a bunch of money and an army of lobyists and in pocket government officials to shape policy (or poke and prod the market) more than any grass roots liberal organization could. That's what they are better at. No one regulates free enterprise like a giant corporation.