Jimmy

Mark. Do you hear yourself? You say government doesn't have to make a profit, and that is true. It is the whole problem. Profit is the signal that tells a producer he created more value than he consumed. Government has no such signal, which is why it cannot know whether anything it does is worth doing. That is not a friction AI removes. It is the absence of the one piece of information AI would need. And everyone else in your plan does have to make a profit. The researcher who spends ten years on a molecule that may never get through the FDA. The engineer who designs the scanner. The company that risks capital on a manufacturing line. The doctor who borrowed three hundred thousand dollars for the right to work ninety hour weeks. The nurse. The hospital that has to keep the lights on. Every one of them has to take in more than they put out or they stop, and when they stop, the care stops with them. Government not needing a profit means nothing if the people who make the thing still do. Then there are the people whose money you intend to run through the Treasury. They earned it. They need it. And they have a right to it that does not depend on whether your commission has a good use in mind. A government that doesn't have to make a profit is a government that only has to take, and the taking is the part you keep leaving out of the pitch. You know all of this. You built Cost Plus on exactly these premises. Publish a price, earn a margin, let the customer decide. You just refuse to grant the people who make medicine the same thing you granted yourself.