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My post was not out of malice, nor in any way intended to be a jab at you or any other posters.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

I approve of how the system is set up now. The company that invents/discovers the drug should have an exclusive patent for a number of years where they can make all their investment back (and then some). Then it goes generic so the price falls and the consumer ultimately benefits.

We need that patent protection to keep pharma companies focused on researching and developing new drugs.

s^ | Kay

Forbes is not a credible source on anything least of all that they blame the FDA and claim that big drug companies are the answer.

Arguing that "well, they produced drugs that we use now" is to establish that there were no possible alternatives that could have been cheaper or more productive. This is provably false.

I would ask what role monied interests had in developing pasteurization, penicillin, any other antibiotic, any extant vaccine, most painkillers, any radiological procedure or any surgical technique.

The fact of the matter is that the pharmaceutical industry is horribly inefficient and produces very little of value at very great cost. We got objectively better results back when the govt gave no-strings-attached research grants to institutions.

Consider how far fields such as aerospace, computing, materials engineering and general biology have advanced since the 1960s. Then look at how far medicine has come and the difference in cost. No other field has been so privatized - nor seen so little progress at such great cost.

The implication of all Forbes' claims is that everyone is as driven by greed as the greediest people in the world. This is false though: the truth is, the most creative and productive research scientists truly enjoy what they do and see the profit motive as an impediment to useful discoveries. Nor is the profit motive more useful at producing useful applications than just letting researchers do their own thing.

Go read Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis.

So no...we do not need pharmaceutical companies to keep producing more drugs.

We should just go back to what worked. Fund public institutions and offer research tenures.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Big pharmaceuticals are some of the greediest corporations on the planet (and a lot of them are based in NJ) and the only reason their practices are tolerated is because we venerate money.

Middle ground is exceedingly difficult to find in the patent discussion. A patent system needs to exist, because without protection of new inventions, the incentive to innovate is gone. However, a patent is effectively a governmentally-backed monopoly; a right to exclude others from producing your product for two decades. This is really easy to exploit. When you compound that with the notion of trade secrets, one organization can sit on a brilliant and helpful discovery for dozens of years and keep milking everyone for it, long after the team of researchers/developers who were responsible for the product in the first place have moved on/retired/died/etc and the product never belonged to them in the first place since all the people who will ever be in any position to invent anything have to assign all their patents to the company they work for.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

Very interesting and deeply disturbing read:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 9dkrod.asp

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I basically skimmed your link Aestu, and I am in total agreement with you based on what I did read.

Blue collar jobs also retain a stigmatic view by the general public. Some of them pay very well, and also require high levels of skill and expertise. I think it speaks for itself that we (as a society) respect someone who makes 10 grand in the time it takes me to drop a deuce more than we respect people who work 40, 50, 60+ hour work weeks.

On that note, I'm fucking tired and I need to get to sleep (which is why I only skimmed, will read it fully later).

I worked 13 hour shift Sunday night, got another hour of OT last night and estimating 3+ hours of OT tonight, as well. Dat paycheck.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

I run a printing press for a local book manufacturer. There are basically 3 jobs in the pressroom, Pressman, Assistant Pressman, and Press Tenders. I jumped from Tender to Pressman and never held a spot as an Assistant. I'm proud of the work I do, I've been a pressman for a little over two years now and I still love going over the bindery and finding a bound book that I've printed. As a tender my main job was to ensure the presses weren't held up for want of materials. It was a very easy job after you've done it for a few weeks, a bit of physical labor but you could do two solid hours of work in the beginning of the shift and just hang out the rest of the day waiting for a press to run out of paper or finish a job.

I haven't had to in the last year, but I used to train all the new tenders that started. It was an entry-level position for rather poor pay, so most of the people I trained were just kids, 18-24. It's a union shop and starting at the bottom is the only real shot at being a pressman, which is the best paying non-management position in the plant. I went through so many trainees in the 3 years I was training that I didn't even bother learning their names until the second or third week. Most of them were simply too lazy. If a tender isn't doing their job a press sits idle, screwing both the company and the Pressman/Assistant. Granted it's an entry level position, but they had no pride in the work they did and no desire to make more money. A tender could learn the assistant's job and get upgraded for a day, earning 50% more, but no matter how many times you would tell them to pay attention and try to learn, they didn't give a shit.

I'm not saying that's all the modern of a problem, but it is getting worse.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Completely missed the point of the article

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Very interesting.

I definitely think the lack of work ethic is a modern problem, due largely to divorced parents and shitty educators.

A culture has come to be that regards lazy indifference as "cool" and unoffensive; men who have energy and drive are more often than not seen as something between an oddity, a nuisance and a threat. Given the choice, too many parents, educators and entry-level employers will take the banal, brainless idiot. This doesn't work so well when the nature of the task is ever so marginally beyond the capabilities of a team of untrained monkeys.

Honest question out of curiosity: where do you guys do your recruiting?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Divorced parents suck, but married parents can still be shit. If the family is broken, or bad, or whatever, it's going to raise a shitty kid.

We're becoming a nation of shitty kids growing up.

Completely assumed I'm not making an observation expanding on the thoughts of the writer.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

You said you agreed with what you read. If your "agreement" is that you think blue-collar jobs are neglected or do not receive sufficient respect then you did not internalize the writer's claims or position.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

My agreement was with the issues outlined in the article.

My observation expanding on the original article is in respect to personal experience as well as other articles that are related that I have read.

The issue at hand is multidimensional in nature. The article you linked is one aspect, my following post is another.


I'll also add that I see the 'laziness is cool' thing you described way too often.

When people work hard here, they are ridiculed for whatever reason. It's almost as if working hard is on par with kissing ass.

One guy refuses to put away freight we term as '99 boxes'. The 99 is some code term used by our regional distribution center. It is generally not considered our primary job responsibility.

However, on nights that we finish our main tasks, we are expected to remain productive, naturally.

I generally use the order picker and down stock large bulky items that our day shift would not typically be able to due to the need for equipment spotters, operator and aisle blocking. Plus, the shit is heavy.

This guy openly states he's gonna just 'stand around and bullshit, then down stock for 30 minutes till its time to go.'

I quote verbatim. He also has the gall to tell me 'man, you take this job too seriously..'

I'm sure he'd take it seriously if the company decided to just pay him for 30 minutes of work he did.

He's the kind of guy that knows every loophole, too. Workers comp, PTO exploiting, clocking in from lunch early, etc.

People like that piss me off.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

Like the laziness that results in you writing one post then another, much longer one, about what you presume the article is about rather than reading it?

The article is NOT ABOUT A SOCIAL ISSUE. It is about PUBLIC POLICY.

The issue the article talks about is not "multidimensional". It is black and white, good versus evil. This would be obvious to you if you had read it instead of talking in cliched generalizations.

This isn't me being mean or condescending. It's a statement of fact. Your statements betray you didn't read the article. Or prove me wrong. Summarize it.



Well - it depends - sometimes working hard is equal to kissing ass, if the relationship is an unfair one.

And that's all too common today. Businesses in America treat workers like condoms and make cynicism all too rational.

What exactly are these 99 boxes and why is putting them away not your "primary" job?
Who pays you and who owns those boxes?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.