Over on Mises Blog, I mentioned the taxpayer-funded “medical innovation prize fund” advocated by socialist Senator Bernie Sanders as a sort-of “substitute” for the patent system. And also advocated by libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok. As I noted there, there’s no logical reason to restrict this great way to increase national wealth to the field of medical innovation: hell, there’s ton’s of other types of innovation and “things-we-want-to-stimulate”. I estimate we would need to tack on another $3.5 trillion or so to the current $2.5 trillion federal budget, to really get our creative juices going.

Which leads me to this. I can appreciate a good, sincere, fellow minarchist. I understand their reasons. Really. But look, even if the minarchists are right that a minimal state is necessary or needful or justified–look, guys, isn’t it pretty clear that so long as we have a state, it’s gonna be abused… ? Used for mischief? It never ends. I mean here we have one of our own talking about raising federal spending by $80 billion a year, to try to reach the “optimal” Lafferian amount of medical patent and non-patent innovation. So it seems to me that even a minarchist ought to oppose the state, if only as a tactical, prophylactic measure, to keep the minimal state from being used as a tool of others to achieve non-liberal ends. Update: And get this: according to the text of socialist Sanders’s draft bill, the $80 billion+ taxpayer-funded “Fund for Medical Innovation Prizes” will be administed by a “Board of Trustees for the Fund for Medical Innovation Prizes,” composed of 13 members serving 4-year terms. The 13 members of the Board are:

(1) the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services;
(2) the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;
(3) the Director of the National Institutes of Health;
(4) the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and
(5) nine individuals to be appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, of which:
(A) three representatives of the business sector;
(B) three representatives of the private medical research and development sector, including at least one representative of the non-profit private medical research and development sector; and
(C) three representatives of consumer and patient interests, including at least one representative of patients suffering from orphan diseases.

Each Board member will be paid at the equivalent of an annual salary of about $140k for daily service. They’ll of course have expenses paid, and a staff, and budget to hire experts and consultants.

And every year, the Fund gets public funding equal to “0.6 percent of the gross 6 domestic product of the United States for the preceding fiscal year.”

Jesus, this is pure evil.

Update: I make a similar point in IP and Anarchy.

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