Is Martin Shkreli Such A Bad guy? Capitalism And Its Inevitable, Relentless Slide Towards Racketeering
Ill be updating this blog weekly with thoughts that occur in my head while I run — might start updating daily later on but that all depends on how much I have on plate; I will try though- doing this as well as training 5–6 hrs a day can get exhausting.
Martin Shkreli a.k.a Pharma Bro has been in the news recently for amongst thing buying the latest Wu-Tang album allegedly off the proceeds of raising rare HIV drug medication by 5500%. Making people with AIDS die so you can listen to Wu-Tang seems particularly despicable, but is it really?
If GlaxoSmithKline or Pfizer was doing the same thing would they be getting the same amount of coverage or outrage? They do and it doesn’t. Lest we forget, these companies refused to reduce the cost of drugs for over 5 millon South Africans with a low GDP per capita of $3100, when a years supply would have cost $10,000 even though a measly 1% of their revenue comes from Africa. They could have given these South Africans the drugs for free and it would have been an accounting error but they didn’t because, aaah, like fuck it, I guess?
Or Maybe its because they buy Picassos and art galleries with their proceeds and not music made by groups whose members have names like Old Dirty Bastard that we give them a pass — but really, what the difference does it make? I suspect it because someone, somewhere got paid–like Hilary Clinton.
See Hillary Clinton here bloviating about Skareli rather than the bigger culprits- Pfizer, Glaxo and co because she received more money than anyone else from these companies. Wasn’t Bill president when the soUTH African fiasco happened? Could she have reached across the table (no need for the aisle her) and told Bill, Honey, as the leader of the free world to give a break to these poor people who really need your help?- she could’ve but she didnt.
Please take a sit, preferably in the corner, Hillary.
These large companies price gouge just as much as Parma Bro- they claim this because they spend most of their revenue on R&D when in reality they spend most of it on marketing– in fact profits are a larger share of revenue than R & D. These companies blame this all on their seemingly sacrilegious responsibility to the shareholder on one hand, while collecting billions in subsidies direct and indirectly in the form of a government protected monopoly (read: racket), granted whenever the FDA approves a drug they get competition free cash for 6 years, on the other hand. Shouldn’t the taxpayer be also considered a stakeholder? These companies have even higher profit than banks. Pfizer alone in 2013 made a profit margin of 42% and still tax dodges, of course.
The free market is a joke.
Pharma Bro is a convenient outlet to channel popular rage against much larger pharmaceutical companies about the prices of pharmaceuticals that mainstream media just will not do. Why? Probably a deadly combination of reduced future career prospects for the writer, a loss in revenue for the publishing outlet in the form of advertisements, and the ever present fear of being sued out the ass.
[This phenomenon is so prevalent in everyday life that I will coin it- Career Advertising Lawsuit (CAL) for ease of discussion and also because using coin as a verb is an extremely groovy thing to do.]
What Pharma bro does is what every drug company on earth does- charges way more for the drug than what it cost but the naked exploitation of it all is invisible between all the super slick advertisement s and the occasional “community service”- but every single person who derides Martin Shkreli brave?
Lol.
The real enemies are the giant drug companies that do much of what Shkreli does but act out of the purview of the law.
Take Steven Johnson’s Syndrome– it is an allergic reaction to medication, which drug companies seemingly choose not to investigate because they basically see it as “the cost of doing business”. Like they did in the case of Samantha Reckis– a young girl who contracted Stevens-Johnson Syndrome after ingesting some Children’s Motrin- a jury gave her $63 million dollars and you’ve probably never even heard of it. Why? Because there is so much money in overcharging for drugs that what is $63 million in deferred loses in the form of a life, when you’re making $45 billion in revenue?
What is the alternative, Fadesola? Nationalize health care companies so that the government can provide the drugs? You must be a communist!…drivel, drivel, drivel…..
These giant corporations are given tax subsidies right? Well isn’t that tax subsidy a direct government handout to an entity that bypasses the “free market”? After all the government, at least in Canada, has a factor of control over the price of most other inputs in the health care system- doctors, nurses etc. Why not the pharmaceutical companies?
The reason seems to be the inherent flaw in capitalism and the free markets–the unrelenting and tedious march towards racketeering in all markets at all times. Marketers such as Reiss and co, will call it the “law of duality” or some other play on words — it really should be called the “law of racketeering” but it isn’t because, CAL. In most markets, I have hypothesize that once 2 companies reach a certain size they immediately tend to racket because of the inherently unstable nature of the markets and the tendency of human beings to seek stability. The tendency towards racketeering is so strong that even when erstwhile sworn enemies will protect each other if an outsider threatens the stability of their duality.
The racketeering of the drug industry is a serious issue which showcase the duality in the economy and government- fail proof capitalism for large corporations in the form of large subsidies and “too big too fail”-itis and ruthless, globalized free flow of capital, where the “too small to succeed” live in a dog eat dog capitalistic age while being increasingly preyed on by parasitic web 2.0 companies that disrupt markets, and no, that a terrible thing, since it has tended to drive wages down under the guise of the “sharing economy” (aka the “you don’t own shit” economy).
They’ll trot out study after study claiming how this new state of high volatility it better for everyone, because now we’’re all now entrepreneurs!! (a profession unsuitable to 99% most of the population due to its inherent instability)
Remember they also claimed that globalization would be the tide they would raise all boats when in actuality it only raised the yatches. Special shoutout goes to Freidman and his terribly wrong The World Is Flat.
[The concept of economics as a hard science is one of the most enduring lies of our times. When a Nobel prize winning Princeton economist, Krugman and the Bank of England, the oldest bank in the world, disagree on where money comes from you know they lack credibility –would you trust a heart surgeon who couldn’t tell you where blood comes from? But I digress]
Welcome to the Gilded Age 2.0. Don’t worry though, there’s free wifi.
-Follow my journey at 17in17.org
-I’ll be on CBC radio Metro Morning at 7:40am today talking about the run- tune in!
