[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Sat Mar 6 09:21:59 PST 2010


Chris Doss: Also, I think there are 2 canards here. First, suffering is actually natural and excusable. It is "natural" in the sense that a certain amount of it is pretty much inevitable and "excusable" in the sense that without it, we would quickly die from walking into pointy sticks and fires

Somebody: In other words, a modicum of suffering is (currently) necessary to prevent still greater suffering. No disagreement there. The disagreement is that you're apparently more pessimistic about the prospects for medicine in the future to change that than I am. We're only a matter of centuries from the age of blood-letting and Bezoar stones. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves, the best days of humanity are probably ahead. Even in our lifetimes, I expect to win this bet.

In the meantime, we should be pushing governments to drastically increase public funding for basic research. There's this pernicious nonsense being spread in the U.S. currently that we're spending too much on health care, and that Medicare is unsustainable. We're simply spending too much for the health outcomes we're receiving. But on health generally? What *should* we be prioritizing instead? Real estate? Designer clothes? Video games?



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