Suchergebnisse

Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Education, health-care, technology, and political participation are becoming ever more universal, empowering human beings everywhere to enjoy security, economic sufficiency, equal citizenship, and a life in dignity.

AbstractA free world is one in which human beings can live free, self-directed lives. A great obstacle to such a world is severe poverty, still blighting the lives of half of humankind. We have the resources, technologies, and administrative capacities to eradicate severe poverty, but doing so requires some restructuring of existing social arrangements. We might begin with the current regime governing innovation, which has monopoly markups as its key funding source. Such monopoly rents encourage the quest for innovations, but also greatly impede their diffusion. This headwind harms the poor, who cannot afford monopoly prices and whose specific needs innovators thus tend to ignore. It also works against potential innovations whose benefits would mostly go to third parties whom buyers care little about. Both problems can be much alleviated through a supplementary alternative reward mechanism that would enable innovators to exchange their monopoly privileges on any patentable technology for impact rewards based on the social benefits achieved with it. By promoting innovations and their diffusion together, international impact funds would bring substantial gains in justice and cost-effectiveness, especially in the pharmaceutical and green-technology sectors.

"Trotz eines hohen globalen Durchschnittseinkommens leben nach wie vor sehr viele Menschen in extremer Armut. Dass es sich dabei um ein anhaltendes Unrecht handelt, das den Armen der Welt zugefügt wird, erkennen nur wenige." (Autorenreferat)