The Truth about “Free Markets”
The biggest underlying truth is that the so-called free market, is not free at all. It never was.
In the United States especially, it is gamed at the highest levels, not only by Pharmaceutical companies but by banks, telecoms, insurance companies and energy companies. A truly free market is free not only from over-regulation but also free from government favors. I wonder why all those interviews with CEOs and the “small business man hurting from Obama’s regulations” never mention the other side of the coin. Oh yeah, because the news media is directly involved in the gaming of their own markets — why report something truthful if might hurt your own bottom line / get you fired by your producer or station director?
You want a truly free market?? No more news media mega-mergers. No more subsidies for oil companies that often make billions in profit per quarter, no more drug patents that effectively give a company monopoly power to charge obscene amounts per dose (regardless of health impacts), no more collusion between Comcast and Verizon to stay out of each other’s broadband markets without Congressional interference, no more rulings that only big telecoms can bring broadband to your local town, no more subsidies for massive agribusiness while the little farmer gets his f-ing ass kicked because he can’t “scale properly.”
Free market my ass. Not in my lifetime! What planet are you living on because the one where I live has no free markets.
Most American markets have been anything but free, for many decades. It has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat as political ideals and everything to do with lobbyists, dark campaign funding, and the people who write our laws caring more about their re-election prospects than fixing problems. Ultimately, the markets are not free because that’s what the people running big businesses want — a competitive advantage, implicitly approved or officially mandated by Congress or court rulings.
It’s never a question of “free” and always a question of who is getting more favors: consumers or corporations. While over-regulation is not good, the alternative is far, far worse.
Common example: imagine if airlines and airports were allowed to police themselves and make their own safety standards, all influenced by profit. Imagine if drug makers could define their own version of a “fast-track” trial, while still getting a patent with zero pricing guidelines as they can today. You better believe every big business out there would put their profits before yours and my well-being, because we’re not people to them. We’re anonymous — numbers in a spreadsheet. Until they’re standing at our bedside in the hospital, watching us die, they are utterly unaffected. “Hey Bob, when’s our tee-time tomorrow?” They only see us as being “human like them” when they stand before us and are forced to acknowledge it. Then and only then would they question their own motives and practices.
Want another great example from Pharmaceutical scumbags? Ursodiol. It’s a drug that helps people with liver and gal bladder issues (and animals too). Past its patent there were at one time about 6 or 7 companies that made it, and the prices were a little high but tolerable. You could buy a month’s worth for $60 or something close, most of which insurance would pay if you had it. Then one of the makers dropped out. The others colluded and raised the price about 50%. Then another dropped out. The others colluded and raised the price a full 100%. And it kept on going (all in the span of maybe 6 months or so) until the price had increased ~ 300–350% by my estimates, and no one blinked an eye. We just had to pay it or watch a loved one get sick and die. Think there are any legal structures in this “free market” to protect you and me from price gouging?
Pharmaceutical companies are cut-throats. Their biggest priority is not our collective health; it is inventing a drug that will allow them to corner a big market (not necessarily the most pressing health problem), and then gouge people with obscene prices that has little to do with covering “development costs” (their long-running, tired excuse) and everything to do with massive profit.
Pharmaceutical companies are the perfect example of an industry where it is not ideal to let so-called free market behavior dictate business policy. You could say the same thing about many hospitals. Really? It cost you $12,000 to let me stay overnight in your shitty hospital bed and eat a bowl of jello after having an appendix removed? Yeah, just like the cost of educating one student is $25,000 a semester (so we have to charge $30K to make that profit).
Bullshit. Plain and simple.
Show me the ledger and where the numbers go and how all the costs average out to those levels every year, and I’ll believe you. Until then, no, I don’t want to buy that bridge. You greedy, lying bastards.
