Bargaining our way into morality?

Thomas Pogge weaves in concepts from philosophers we have studied throughout our course to make a pragmatic argument for a GBD patent system.  Becca mentioned how Pogge evokes notions from Robert H. Frank, and I believe she is correct that Pogge’s argument does include some of Frank’s thinking.  In a similar way, I think his argument pulls in significant Gauthier rhetoric.  In our current patent system, companies selfishly try to maximize their own wealth by creating short-term solutions to problems that end up creating long-term destruction.  Pogge explains that a pharmaceutical company will try to maximize its profits by 1) making sure the “medicine is effecting in protecting paying patients” and; 2) making sure “their target disease must continue to thrive and spread and, in particular, must not be decimated or eradicated by the patented medicine” (28).  Besides this latter part being “perverse” in its treatment of individuals that are not ‘paying patients,’ eventually, we can see this lack of incentive to eradicate the disease will eventually disadvantageous to everyone (28).  This collective action problem could even reach a global scale as diseases which affect a portion of the population could either affect our global economy or could spread into other parts of the planet (i.e. Zika, Ebola, etc.).  In this way, not treating diseases that affect only impoverished nations may not appear to be in our immediate self-interest, but eventually this lack of attention ends up constraining all of our wellbeing. 

Yet, despite this evident collective action problem, as Frank might point out and as Pogge does point out, “there is not much each pharmaceutical company can do on its own” to combat this problem (31).  As Pogge shows, “any company acting ‘nicely’ in more than marginal ways would lose ground against the others and ultimately be driven out of the market” (31).   Thus, due to this positional arms race, our lack of action “causes tens of millions of premature deaths and unimaginable human misery” (31).

Thus, Pogge illustrates that the way to avoid this collective action problem is by reforming our rules.  If we were able to reform our rules, such that all agree upon addressing these diseases, then we will create more moral ends. Pogge's proposal may be different than Gauthier's in that Pogge lines up incentives for pharmaceutical companies such that pharmaceutical companies' short-term self-interest and long-term self-interest would both be to work to reduce GBD.  In both the short-term and long-term this would maximize profits.  Yet, even if pharmaceutical companies are not constraining their self-interest in the same way that the factories were in Gauthier's example, these pharmaceutical companies are following rules which allow for more moral ends.  Thus, by altering the incentives cemented in our laws and paying more taxes to care for others, aren't we kind of bargaining our way into morality?