Profit motive and patent protection are the very keys to innovation.
Even if the government hadn't paid for the vaccine, even if the inventions weren't the product of public investment over many years, in light of the pandemic, we should still say we cannot tolerate patent monopolies conferring on corporations the power to control who can make the vaccine and how it's going to be supplied.
According to his BAD logic, the profit motive and patent protection of intellectual property are inappropriate if beneficence is involved.
A primary function of certain federal agencies is to support pre-commercial research without any consideration of practical application, let alone profit.
In effect, we are seeing an analogous situation with the COVID vaccine - the federal government's Operation Warp Speed offered guaranteed purchases and/or subsidized the construction of bricks-and-mortar facilities to produce large amounts of vaccine long before there was evidence of safety, efficacy, and regulatory approval.
Any hint of the government proscribing profits by denying patents or other interventions would have been the kiss of death.
The idea of removing profit as a mechanism for price controls is Marxist at its core and would surely result in far less innovation and supply.
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/21/profit-is-not-a-four-letter-word/
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