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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24780)	8/24/2001 10:16:25 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

That's a fair argument, but there's a missing link in your analysis. (I'm not sure I agree with your basic presumption, but I'll go with it for the sake of argument.) If a thousand students rip off Excel, Microsoft can be fairly confident that in the end it's Excel most of them will buy. So the dollars eventually come back to the same company. But of Roche lets them rip off an Aids drug, there's no knowing what drugs they will come back to buy in thirty years. Will they buy more Merck drugs, and has Roche merely made Merck customers? If the benefits are more widespread, then either cartels or governments should be bearing the burden, not a drug company which happens now to have a drug they need but may not in 20 years. That's one of the few legitimate uses of government -- to spread costs.