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Comment by jakejake | Hacker News Reader

“It sounds selfish,” Helms said of the deception, “but the way it works is, I’m working poor, and the people making the drugs are filthy rich, and I need a job.”

This guy disgusts me. He acts as though it's just some me-vs-them thing. Drugs are being tested for people that really need them. Using deceit, purposely throwing up the drugs to avoid side effects, etc, this is all shit that some real, ill person is going to have to go through one day and he's skewing the results.

I sincerely hope someone here can "disrupt" the clinical testing industry and put this guy out of business.

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> He acts as though it's just some me-vs-them thing.

Well, he's a former union organizer, so that attitude isn't surprising: it's the same attitude one typically finds in union members, who don't view management and employees as a team trying to satisfy their customers, but instead as opponents trying to gain advantage over one another (and, as an incidental side-effect, perhaps deliver products to customers).

I don't think that is a fair characterization--though I'll readily agree that it is a common one in the anti-union propaganda we've been swimming in for the last few decades.

While it's true, in a general sense, that management and workers are all working toward a common goal, only one side in that partnerships holds all the power in that relationship, and it isn't the workers. Unions are a natural response to that imbalance of power.

Chalking this guy's bad attitude up to union involvement is an unwarranted anti-union slur, nothing more.

I agree! I tried to sign up for a malaria vaccine trial. Not because I need the money (I'm a software developer!), but because I see their fliers often in Seattle. I've got a background in biology so being infected with malaria doesn't freak me out. It simply seemed like a societally positive thing for me to do. And of course, I'd have an easy excuse not to donate blood ever again in my life. :)

It's simple. Guaranteed basic income would put a stop to that quite fast.

Really? You think if this guy got paid a few tens of thousands of dollars a year he'd no longer hold a grudge against drug companies "getting filthy rich"?

He would no longer have an incentive to provide incorrect results for medical research.

He might have less incentive, but that doesn't mean he would have no incentive. He might still choose to do this to get more money than basic income would provide. He already decided this is "easy money" compared to other work available to him. He might decide to work less, but that doesn't mean he would quit entirely.

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