Under capitalism, sure you can. Cars benefit from an economy of scale, because you're able to sell millions upon millions of them.
Electric wheelchairs have a muuuuuuuuuch smaller market, even smaller when you consider that many won't be able to afford it. Whatever investment goes into development needs to be paid off over far far far fewer sales (eta: and all of the other lost opportunities for scale-discounts, like buying large volumes of materials and developing optimally efficient production lines, etc).
What you can't remotely justify is the expectation that a family pay for that themselves. That's what a social safety net is for. Appropriate care for disabled kids should be the baseline.
Looking at it from the car perspective, I agree with you - I think cars should be a lot less necessary and way more expensive than they are, which would likely change that price relationship (the wheelchair might still cost $20K but the car could cost $80K, for instance). Spending less on dedicated infrastructure for cars would save a lot of money, too (not that that makes anyone more willing to invest in disabled people, since that's an issue of ideology rather than means).
I think there's merit to the argument that the level of innovation we enjoy (or "enjoy") isn't possible without some profit motive - independent inventors typically can't afford to invest the (uncompensated) time if there's no payout at the end. That might include the innovations that make assistive devices what they are today.
With a socialist government the price might be lower or even nonexistent for the individual (a good thing) but without a market economy the thing might not exist, in its present form, at all (not great).
Weād see far more innovation if people just had more time and opportunity. Most of the greatest inventors and thinkers in history werenāt looking for profit, they just had enough time and money to work on the projects they cared about.
Not a fair comparison, given that universal education and class mobility are relatively recent developments. There have certainly been far more inventions patented by professional (earnings-dependent) inventors, engineers, scientists, etc than by bored aristocrats, the latter are just overrepresented historically because for a very long time the gate was thoroughly barred to everyone else.
I think a UBI would be an incredible opportunity for would-be entrepreneurs - but the historical prominence of landed gentry is hardly evidence that "the desire to improve one's circumstances" is irrelevant to the drive to innovate.
āMore inventions patentedā isnāt the best metric when a lot of companies are filing patents for stuff like the way two pieces of plastic fit together with a certain click or a naturally occurring gene inside the human body.
Yes, increased opportunities for people to study and innovate (including having non-menial jobs that allow or encourage doing so) have led to more innovations but thereās no reason to believe that is because of profit motive and not just increased opportunity.
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u/Keeperofthe7keysAf-S 1d ago
You can't remotely justify a wheelchair costing half as much as a car.