I have a weakly held opinion that recent advances in medicine and healthcare wouldn’t have happened as fast without fiat financing and our whacky insurance based system.
But it was essentially a faustian bargain where we gained miraculous powers of healing in exchange for consumerist society, globalization of key resources, and inflation.
As a species we chose to become lich kings.
Yeah trade off isn't worth it in the long run
For sure, I think almost everyone “feels” it now even if they haven’t reasoned it out.
But I think many in our circle disagree with the first part
I’m curious, genuinely, about what portion of health tech / pharma innovation comes from and is funded by the American system vs the rest of the world. The US system is so radically different from everywhere else. Does the American system disproportionally fund the rest of the world or vice versa? Everywhere else is very tightly state managed and to a large part funded through the tax system. Where as basic research is publicly funded in the US but after that it’s coming from fiat markets and private companies.
I’m sure it fluctuates over time. But I feel safe saying that over the last 50 years, a disproportionate number of medical advances have come out of US based or adjacent private companies
I disagree. Do you know how many medicines never got out there since they made the FDA? The ratio of thalidomides to peniccillins nearly tripled thanks to fiat medicine. You are suffering from survivorship bias. What about all those years people couldn't smoke weed for things weed helped? Ah yeah, fiat medicine.
Technological deflation is actually the result of LESS government interference and LESS monetary tampering. Computers are a funny one because of how they can be used to build computers easier. That has been the backbone of it all for some time.
Nothing to do with inflating currency and giving the new tokens to your mates.
Not saying there weren’t a lot of negative consequences.
My argument is:
Capital markets increase the rate of medical advancements >>
Fiat games “juice” capital markets (with bad consequences, sure) >>
Pharma/biomed is uniquely sensitive to “juicing” because it would otherwise be unattractive to investors (high failure rate, astronomically expensive research costs >>
Insurance model decreases consumer price sensitivity and obscures money allocation, which allowed healthcare to be inordinately profitable. Proceeds from this can then rotate back into research.
Of course, eventually this destroys price signals and feedback loops, but initially it supercharges things. Thus the faustian bargain
