Countering Spurious Claims

"I have already stated the market failure relating to aids i'll try it one more time.
If you reduced the aids rate in africa by 25% that would create a huge gain in GDP, more accurately though, it would be a huge net benefit to society there."


That doesn't show a market failure. If you reduced it to ZERO then that would create an even *bigger* gain in GDP! Reducing it by only 25% must be a market failure. A lightning bolt could strike every person on earth and make them all 200% smarter and nicer. That would be a huge net benefit to society. Since it doesn't happen, there must be a market failure.

While we're on the topic, though, note that "gain in GDP" does NOT necessarily equal "benefit to society".

First of all, we can see that GDP is (roughly) objective (discounting inaccuracies in measurements), while "benefit to society" is subjective, and unmesaurable anyway.

Further, we can easily show activity that increases GDP but does not benefit society (using taxes to pay someone to dig holes and then fill them up).






"
if something is a net benefit it has a net positive value. i think all the technology needed to execute something like exists in the market. at least to reduce the rate dramatically. but it is not happening, because its hard to capture the benefits associated reducing aids since so many of the benefits are external market to forces."




There are finite resources. There are lots of alternative uses for those finite resources. Your claim that the fact that this is "not happening" constitutes a market failure ignores what won't get done if this does.

Further, it ignores the *reason* that it's hard to "capture the benefits" in Africa specifically.