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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Anybody deeply involved in the vaccine research should get, like, a “do whatever you want” pass from society for the rest of their lives. IMO, retire and open a cafe by the beach, but if he wants to keep running a lab give him tenure and free grants forever.

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That's how nobility and fiefdoms work. Not capitalism and democracy.

Capitalism does work like that, except being able to retire into a life of comfort is only defined by your ability to make a lot of money

Which is based not on your ability to produce value, but your ability to capture value and charge a cut of every unit, and is thus a massive disincentive to produce public goods.

It's often based on your ability to capture other people's value way more than creating value on your own.

And your ability to not get the value of your labour taken advantage of by entities with leverage, resources, and information vastly superior in all ways to your own position.

It is never pure. There is no need to appeal to communism or totalitarianism…

Well, this virologist is in Shanghai. Principles of capitalism and democracy are probably irrelevant.

People win lotteries and inherit great sums of money all the time, if we also give a “get out of the market free” card to people like this it shouldn’t cause too much of a perturbation.

But he is in China which is meant to be communism, isn't it? I used to believe communist governments would normally provide their senior scientists with at least a humble dorm room for free. What's the point of communism if they don't?

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