It backs up what I referred to earlier about their lack of interest in money and power for its own sake.

http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/pdf/Publications_2005_PDF/Commentary_on_D.Everett_05.pdf

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090121/wr_nm/us_usa_internet_pornography_2

||The law was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, booksellers, online magazine publishers and others. ACLU lawyers said the law criminalizes a large amount of valuable online speech that adults are entitled to communicate and receive.||

Booksellers, I would imagine, fought this restrictive law because it would mean less profit. The classic argument goes a bookseller would have to carefully examine every book on the shelf, which means a bookseller would not stock many books and then could not sell very many books. Now certainly many booksellers are concerned with civil rights. But most booksellers did not go into the biz to fight for civil rights. They want to make a living. A profit.

Now, notice for-profit booksellers are not the ONLY ones. They are one voice in a many headed attack on a clearly restrictive law. And this is exactly what I’m talking about.

Another straw man. Where have I been arguing this?

||You can keep making up fantasies about what you think would happen if a doctor thought abortion should be legal and fought for it because they believe they can get rich performing abortions but it means nothing. The reality is that someone driven by profit/greed would simply move onto all the many more lucrative and easy ways for a Dr to make oodles of cash. ||

In your opinion. But clearly profit can be a powerful motivator to suffer slings and arrows. Did Columbus risk his life on a science mission or a profit mission?

||Besides, corporations defining what is and isn’t a human right worth fighting for seems a little counterproductive to human rights in many areas. ||

I wish I could make you understand that’s not what I’m arguing. You can keep building up this straw man. I’ll say it again. Maybe you will understand this time:

Regulation is not perfect. It can go too far. It has gone too far in the past (e.g., restricting abortion rights). (I keep asking you if this is a reasonable claim and you keep avoiding answering, so at this point I will just assume you agree.). You and I agree to this, right? Those with a profit motive can, in a multi pronged fight, be an ally. I gave you a small thought experiment where anti vaxxers win the political fight and how drug companies would be a powerful ally.

||You have yet to give one example of real human rights being advanced by corporations||

But I have. You just hand wave it away. The right to plug a modem into a phone line. The right to work on a day of your choosing. These appear to be rights.

||and I’ve given you examples of the kinds of damage that corporations have done to the practice of medicine but you’ve yet to address one of them. ||

Err because we both agree corporations have done damage and government needs to be the watchdog.

||Somehow I don’t think Sunday shopping for those who are privileged enough to choose their work hours balances out the damage done to the doctor/patient relationship by direct-to-consumer advertising, faking and hiding results of clinical research on pharmaceuticals, and continual corporate and industry attacks on science-based medicine, not to mention selling unregulated and sometimes deadly supplements and treatments to unwary consumers).||

Right. Because I’ve not once argued the above.

||Seriously, you’re clearly a privatizer ||

No. I’m not. You make a lot of assumptions.

I’m not talking about psychology or “a science” (nice of you to try to fluff of what I was writing about in that way though), I’m talking about cognitive science (you may want to look into game theory as well)…kind of what this blog is partly geared towards. Are you seriously here with absolutely no interest in brain science and how the mind works? Have you not even looked at the research into reward, punishment, empathy and so on over the past decade or so? You spoke about “human nature” (in a particularly pseudo-Darwinian way that’s often called upon to justify certain economic philosophies) but you don’t actually follow the science regarding human nature and consider your subjective feelings about people to be evidence?

I know lots of people who work for free, it’s called “volunteering” – then there’s all kinds of work that done and given away for free under the auspices of creative commons, not to mention all the open source software being created. You’d be surprised by how many young people are more interested in creative fulfilling work that is meaningful – though if you’re driven by money yourself you may not meet many of the community oriented folk of any age. Do you think the bloggers here are in it for the money or a profit motive even though they write for free? Or do you think they have genuine ethical reasons that have nothing to do with making more money for themselves?

You can keep making up fantasies about what you think would happen if a doctor thought abortion should be legal and fought for it because they believe they can get rich performing abortions but it means nothing. The reality is that someone driven by profit/greed would simply move onto all the many more lucrative and easy ways for a Dr to make oodles of cash. Besides, corporations defining what is and isn’t a human right worth fighting for seems a little counterproductive to human rights in many areas. You have yet to give one example of real human rights being advanced by corporations and I’ve given you examples of the kinds of damage that corporations have done to the practice of medicine but you’ve yet to address one of them. Somehow I don’t think Sunday shopping for those who are privileged enough to choose their work hours balances out the damage done to the doctor/patient relationship by direct-to-consumer advertising, faking and hiding results of clinical research on pharmaceuticals, and continual corporate and industry attacks on science-based medicine, not to mention selling unregulated and sometimes deadly supplements and treatments to unwary consumers).

Seriously, you’re clearly a privatizer who uses exactly the same logic and rhetoric as http://www.healthfreedomusa.org Not surprisingly, those interested in privatizing medicine in Canada have payed politicians like PM Stephen Harper big fat lobbying fees to try to corrupt the national and provincial political processes for the benefit of international corporations. Corporate lobbyists also made sure that there are no regulations on supplements.

When I was in high school and university and worked a retail job, I did not judge it as “crappy”. I was happy to have the work and seeing I could do a good job instilled the young person I was with a sense of pride. I don’t think you should be so quick to pass judgment. Some people clearly are happy for the work. Do you really believe the high school students working at Hollister on Sunday are miserable?

||and can afford to say “no” to their boss (and they’re all filled with kids eager to make pocket money). You really do live in some fantasy world, don’t you? Whatever the case, it’s hardly some sort of civil and social freedom, let alone a human right, won for the people by corporations. ||

A chance to work on any day of your choosing without having one person’s religion dictate when you can’t work? That sounds like freedom to me. Anyone aside from fifi think that doesn’t sound like a freedom?

||What was “won” was the right of corporations to sell on Sundays, it wasn’t a public “right”. (What was lost for workers was guaranteed one day a week off on the weekends to spend with their spouse and kids.) Trying to spin it as a human/social right just shows how desperate you are to find something, anything, good that corporations trying to get rid of regulations has done for people. ||

Again I disagree. I’ve challenged your notion that workers in Ontario have been robbed of appropriate and guaranteed time off. You’ve not supported it.

||Please, your claims about Big Pharma protecting medicine are laughable – do you even read this blog? ||

Another straw man. You really need to start reading what I actually write.

||If governments didn’t regulate there wouldn’t be vaccination programs or affordable drugs. ||

Again, I’ve never argued government shouldn’t regulate. We both agree government regulation can be a good thing.

||What fight do you think drug companies are the only dogs fighting? Anti-vaxxers? Hardly, the biggest push back against the anti-vaxxers I’ve seen is by people doing it because they give a crap about people and public health (the biggest support anti-vaxxers have got is from corporations who love promoting Jenny McCarthy…haven’t seen a single corporation try to take her down yet||
Where have I been claiming this?

||No, if Dr Morgentaler were driven by dollar signs he wouldn’t have gone through the struggle which included losing his license, having his life threatened (while other doctors were being murdered) and all the other very unprofitable things with no guarantee of a happy or profitable ending.||

Let me again return to this. My claim is whether the doctor had dollar signs in his eyes or the best interests of women and their reproductive rights, the end result would have been the same. The law would have been over turned. Threats to one’s life and legal threats don’t necessarily stop one driven by a profit motive. Larry Flynt is evidence of that.

It is not inconceivable to me a person could think there was great profit in private abortion clinics and think they had a reasonable chance of over turning Canadian law. The person would have suffered all the slings and arrows Morgentaler suffered. Would those slings and arrows cause a profit driven person to give up the fight? You’re not suggesting that are you?

People do take great risks for great profits imagined.

Let me again repeat my questions to you. I’m going to add a few more you’ve been dodging:

- “I think we all pursue what’s in our best interest *at times*. That’s not a bad thing *necessarily*. When it becomes a bad thing there are ways to control it: social and legal pressure. Would you agree in principle?”

- Drug companies and CAM should not be able to market anything they want. They need to be balanced by an FDA or similar public body. But I also recognize not all regulation is good regulation and can be restrictive. Would you agree to that last sentence?

- And whether or not a doctor is funded out of pocket or by the state, the doctor is a private business (or he can run his office as one) and he tries to make a profit delivering health care. Do you agree doctors should be able to make a reasonable profit delivering health care?

- You’ve claimed *most* innovations come out of academia and military research. Other than a statement of faith, can you support this claim with empirical evidence?

- I keep talking about people wanting a profit. You keep switching in the word “greed”. Do you believe wanting a reasonable profit is greed? You don’t charge your clients at cost, right? When does a desire for profit become greed?

- *A right to time off* can be protected in law but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of those who want a *right to work* on the day of *their choosing*. Would you agree to this sentence?

- The carterphone ended the American Bell monopoly on what people could attach to the Bell system. This paved the way for people being able to attach modems and set up BBSes and access the Internet from home. That sure seems like a right (even if it is a consumer right) won for all by a company pursuing a profit motive.

But fifi, a word of advice. We’re no doubt on the same side on most of the issues here. We both want to get from X to Y. We have a different opinion on the best path. Do not take a difference in opinion as to the best path as evidence I don’t want to get to Y. Your path is not the only valid path. I hope you can consider that.