I totally agree with you on (not) taking pills. Modern medicine was presumably a GREAT thing at one time, when it was designed to treat illness. What we have inherited from the past is still really useful - the ability to fix rotten teeth, deal with medical emergencies, antibiotics, etc. But in my view, the current health care system is, as you say, designed to maximise profits for pharmaceutical companies etc. It's the same thing with things like white goods (refrigerators, washing machines, etc), as I mentioned on another thread somewhere. We had the problem of making a washing machine that lasts 20 years licked in the 1970s. Now they (deliberately) don't last more than 5 or 6 years if you are lucky. There is an epidemic of diseases like diabetes in the West. The cause is obvious, and yet we have things like low-fat yoghurt on sale (which is still full of sugar), and mainstream doctors seem to have no idea of the cause. This is the problem of profit maximisation coupled with absolutely no ethics. Scientology is suffering exactly the same "dwindling spiral".
It's a very clever trick that manufacturers pull. They make it so that people are more concerned about the aesthetics of a product than its durability. With a little bit of reading and experimentation, I bet you could make a washing machine that would last for decades, and would be easy to repair. But making it look aesthetically pleasing is quite another problem, probably beyond the budgets of most people with a workshop in their back yard.
You see the same phenomenon with buildings. Look at any local government building or university or college, and the newly built buildings are all glass and plastic. Don't last five minutes, but look nice for a while. New-build houses use the poorest quality materials they can get away with. It's a very interesting (but tedious) phenomenon to watch unfold.
W.
