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tneva82 wrote:
Yeah so it's not free but monopolized. Monopoly everywhere is always bad and will result in customer getting worse deal. If you switch monopoly to other party you just switch the one screwing customers.

What? If monopoly is always bad exactly how do you propose ensuring a company gets a reward for developing a new medication or delivery device?

 BigWaaagh wrote:

The Free Market I speak of is one with a level playing field. No bias, no cronyism, no favoritism, no protectionism, etc., etc.

A market without bias is not free.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

True economic Darwinism. Capitalism as it should be. The fact that it's not perfect...nothing is and that is also something I didn't come even close to stating...is a function of reality meeting theory and the introduction of manipulation and abuse to that playing field. Even so, it's head and shoulders the best system I've seen in my half century of existence. There's not even a close second.

When did you observe that? Because I can't think of a country like the one you're describing.

 Ouze wrote:
Definitely the latter. I want single payer, or at least something close to it - epipens are $100 in Canada and the price hasn't budged in years.

I'd also like to see, much like Canada, stricter controls - nearly a ban, really - on drug advertisements. It's out of control.

https://www.treated.com/allergies/epipen

https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen


about £50 -- $66 odd --- over here.

 kronk wrote:
They do it because they can.

She, and the other two companies' CEOs that make the EpiPen and similar products, should share a cell with Shkreli for price gouging.



I have looked at the face of evil, and it wears shiny, Butterscotch chapstick.

Her father is Senator Joe Manchin, and her company donated somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation

Shkreli or the company he worked for didn't even develop the drug he pressed up in price, they just bought the rights to it.

This isn't only a medical industry problem though, it's a problem with investment corporations out to make a quick buck. Anything short of the very largest companies can be bought out when bankers juggle fantasy money around. Take a loan of a few hundred million (the bank has nothing to lose anyway as governments will have us tax payers bail them out if it fails), buy something and hike prices so you can pay back and rake in fat bonuses. If you can make sure to put the money somewhere the tax service can't get at it. No reason you should be part of bailing out the banks if your next big deal fails, right?

I'm sure many will disagree, but I find people like this to be as close to evil as you can get within the law.

 dogma wrote:

 kronk wrote:

I have looked at the face of evil, and it wears shiny, Butterscotch chapstick.

That is an impressive amount of transparent spin.

Wow.

"No one's more frustrated than me," Bresch told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday when she was pressed on the question of why Mylan needed to have such a high price for EpiPens, and why she just didn't cut their price.

"Everybody should be frustrated," said Bresch, who in recent days has come under fire from U.S. Senators, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and patients who are outraged by EpiPen's 400 percent price increases in recent years.

Uh, you're the mother fething CEO. The Head Person in Charge.

My dog after peeing on the rug "No one is more disappointed that the rug was peed on than I am. Also, can I have a 650% increase in cookies?"


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Spetulhu wrote:
Shkreli or the company he worked for didn't even develop the drug he pressed up in price, they just bought the rights to it.

Milan didn't invent the EpiPen, either. Just like Shkreli, they purchased the company that did.

 BigWaaagh wrote:


You're actually trying to defend the "quality" of Soviet Russia's industry? Just please.

Free Market is the most efficient when operating unencumbered in a true environment of open competition. Competition drives improvement, innovation and efficiency, period.

The United States powered through WW2 on the back of a command economy.


Competition is inherently inefficient because you'll end up with losers having wasted resources and will have spent a lot of time to get to this point. It's needless effort.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Her father is Senator Joe Manchin, and her company donated somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation

Joe Manchin is a noted Blue Dog who got sued by his brother for not repaying a loan, and his daughter got her MBA under circumstances which were extremely dubious; leading to it being rescinded.

Is your point something like "Her dad is a Democrat, and her company gave a trivial amount to the Clinton Foundation, ergo Democrats can't complain."? Because as arguments go that's pretty weak.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Competition is inherently inefficient because you'll end up with losers having wasted resources and will have spent a lot of time to get to this point. It's needless effort.

Sure, the government should just order industry to get it right the first time, huh?

 Manchu wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Competition is inherently inefficient because you'll end up with losers having wasted resources and will have spent a lot of time to get to this point. It's needless effort.

Sure, the government should just order industry to get it right the first time, huh?

I think it's more of a duplication of effort than not getting it right that causes the inefficiency.

 dogma wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

The Free Market I speak of is one with a level playing field. No bias, no cronyism, no favoritism, no protectionism, etc., etc.

A market without bias is not free. .......HUH?

 BigWaaagh wrote:

True economic Darwinism. Capitalism as it should be. The fact that it's not perfect...nothing is and that is also something I didn't come even close to stating...is a function of reality meeting theory and the introduction of manipulation and abuse to that playing field. Even so, it's head and shoulders the best system I've seen in my half century of existence. There's not even a close second.

When did you observe that? Because I can't think of a country like the one you're describing.

That's because you're applying an absolute concept to reality. If that's your yardstick, you'll always be disappointed and missing the point. If you want to see a very real application of what I'm talking about, try Silicon Valley. Free flow of private capital pursuing and promoting innovation.


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Rosebuddy wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:


You're actually trying to defend the "quality" of Soviet Russia's industry? Just please.

Free Market is the most efficient when operating unencumbered in a true environment of open competition. Competition drives improvement, innovation and efficiency, period.

The United States powered through WW2 on the back of a command economy.


Competition is inherently inefficient because you'll end up with losers having wasted resources and will have spent a lot of time to get to this point. It's needless effort.

That's an absurd statement. Competition weeds out the weak and eliminates the wasting of resources on inferior, obsolete and/or antiquated products, technologies, services, etc. Following your logic, how about the Olympics just have one athlete per event that way nobody wastes their energy on needless effort? Yeah, that makes sense. C'mon!

 skyth wrote:
I think it's more of a duplication of effort than not getting it right that causes the inefficiency.

No need for duplicate effort if industry loyally obeys the vanguard of the people and provides what is best on command, right?

Command Economy is ideal in war between equally opposed powers.

We are not in a war with an equally opposed power. Command Economy is not ideal at this time.

 BigWaaagh wrote:
.......HUH?

Even a level playing field requires bias towards policies which enable that. And then there's consumer choice, employer choice, and all the other forms of choice which involve bias.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

That's because you're naively applying an absolute concept to reality. If that's your yardstick, you'll always be disappointed and missing the point. If you want to see a very real application of what I'm talking about, try Silicon Valley. Free flow of private capital pursuing and promoting innovation.

So a relatively small part of a State in a much larger country that is supported by both? And one where production workers can't actually live?

If the free flow of capital leads to a median home price of 1 million USD, and a ~1,900 USD median monthly rent, then there is something wrong.

The Olympic Games are a poor metaphor for economic needs, systems and activities. It's just sports.

 Manchu wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Competition is inherently inefficient because you'll end up with losers having wasted resources and will have spent a lot of time to get to this point. It's needless effort.

Sure, the government should just order industry to get it right the first time, huh?

Trial-and-error and competition aren't the same thing, though. You don't need multiple companies working to outlast eachother in order to know what product or service is necessary to fill a need. New products are developed in order to create new markets, not to better fill needs. We get new models of smartphones and cars every year to push their predecessors onto the trash heap despite both of them being of limited necessity, while millions live with food insecurity despite the enormous amounts of food being produced. How's that for innovation? Hah!

The real question is, How many times must tens of millions die of starvation before Western teenagers realize that command economies don't actually feed the masses?

 Manchu wrote:
The real question is, How many times must tens of millions die of starvation before Western teenagers realize that command economies don't actually feed the masses?

The other real question is, How many times must tens of millions die of starvation before Western grognards realize that free market economies don't actually feed the masses?

The answer, as is with almost everything in life, lies not at either end but somewhere in the middle.

I don't think you'll be able to put forth a compelling argument that a Command Economy is incapable of feeding the masses. All you have to do is organize the economy to do so. The mass starvation in countries historically with such economy set ups wasn't because a Command Economy innately can't do it, but rather because extant examples purposefully chose to not care (or even set out to cause starvation as a way of reducing the population).

The general reason a Command Economy is bad is because there's enough corruption between business and government when they're distinct entities (money, money, MONEY!), and it just goes up to 1,000,000 when they're the same thing. It's one thing to have a state regulate businesses, and another to have the state own them. It is yet another thing to have the State basically own shares in everything to the point it owns the economy.

 feeder wrote:
The other real question is, How many times must tens of millions die of starvation before Western grognards realize that free market economies don't actually feed the masses?

I don't recall making the claim that capitalism feeds the masses. I expressed skepticism about Rosebuddy's criticism of competition as inherently inefficient, inasmuch as the alternative is a fairy tale.

 LordofHats wrote:
All you have to do is organize the economy to do so.

Oh well why didn't I think of that???

"Just make everything perfect!"

 Manchu wrote:

 feeder wrote:
The other real question is, How many times must tens of millions die of starvation before Western grognards realize that free market economies don't actually feed the masses?

I don't recall making the claim that capitalism feeds the masses. I expressed skepticism about Rosebuddy's criticism of competition as inherently inefficient, inasmuch as the alternative is a fairy tale.

Ah, I fell into the classic "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists!" trap. My apologies.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't recall making the claim that capitalism feeds the masses. I expressed skepticism about Rosebuddy's criticism of competition as inherently inefficient, inasmuch as the alternative is a fairy tale.

Oh. Right.

There are some economy models though where I'd argue competition is destructive, and healthcare is one of them (other examples are the very back end of the tech industry, and operating systems). Competition doesn't necessarily produce the best market environment. I wouldn't argue that competition is a complete crock though.

 feeder wrote:
Ah, I fell into the classic "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists!" trap. My apologies.

No problemo, I am under no delusions that capitalism is an ideal way of doing things. Even if a mixed economy is the best way we have found so far, it is clearly not without its faults.

 LordofHats wrote:
There are some economy models though where I'd argue competition is destructive, and healthcare is one of them (other examples are the very back end of the tech industry, and operating systems).

Competition would likely solve the instant healthcare problem, however ...

 Manchu wrote:
Oh well why didn't I think of that???

"Just make everything perfect!"

It's not so much about making things perfect as it is that there's nothing innate to what a command economy is that prevents it from feeding the population. The failure of such an economy to do so would be political more than economic.

 LordofHats wrote:
The failure of such an economy to do so would be political more than economic.

We're talking about Marxism - this is a distinction without a difference.

 Manchu wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
The failure of such an economy to do so would be political more than economic.

We're talking about Marxism - this is a distinction without a difference.

Even in Marxism political and economic considerations are not the same thing.

And that still doesn't address the base point that nothing really prevents a command economy from feeding people. Stalin chose to not care that people were starving to death, and by extension so did the USSR. The price of modernization in his mind. The mass industrialization of agrarian Russia was more important to them than people's lives. The failure of the Soviet State to curtail such behavior has nothing to do with its economics, and everything to do with its political structure.

 dogma wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:
.......HUH?

Even a level playing field requires bias towards policies which enable that. And then there's consumer choice, employer choice, and all the other forms of choice which involve bias.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

That's because you're naively applying an absolute concept to reality. If that's your yardstick, you'll always be disappointed and missing the point. If you want to see a very real application of what I'm talking about, try Silicon Valley. Free flow of private capital pursuing and promoting innovation.

So a relatively small part of a State in a much larger country that is supported by both? And one where production workers can't actually live?

If the free flow of capital leads to a median home price of 1 million USD, and a ~1,900 USD median monthly rent, then there is something wrong.

If I haven't made this clear yet, the bias I speak of is that of a country/industry/etc. loading the deck via tariffs, protectionism, etc. Also, the choices you speak of are subjective bias' and are merely drivers for free market enterprise to address and have no standing with regards to the pros/cons of the argument.

You think everything should be even across the board? Is that your point? If a 2Ksf house in Peoria is only $150K and in SF it's $1m, that's wrong? Actually, no. It proves my point precisely. Supply and demand, free market at it's finest. Also, as recent history shows, free markets are ruthless in their efficiency and invariably self correct excesses, quite violently some times.

 LordofHats wrote:
Even in Marxism political and economic considerations are not the same thing.

That's false, practically speaking. Even turning to your appraisal of Stalinism - mass industrialization is a prototypical example of the high-level liquidity of economic and political considerations in Soviet thinking. The Five Year Plans were designed to confront existential threats to the state (obviously, mass starvation was not one of them). Let's not forget Marx altogether here: economics and politics take place inside of history. The, er, metaphysical potential of a command economy was of no concern to the USSR. Mao was much more into that sort of thing, but the Great Leap Forward exemplifies even better the unity of politics and economics. The truth is, feeding a huge number of people is as inextricably political as it is economic. Where the ostensible will was present, the results failed to materialize ever - and instead the worst disasters of starvation and its accompanying miseries resulted immediately. Neither Stalin nor Mao minded losing 30 million lives (or many, many more) "in the short term," of course, but it was not because they had no political/economic aspiration to, at some stage of national development, provide for everyone. A revolution is not a dinner party, after all. (Sorry - but that pun is just too delicious to pass by.)

Anyhow, a command economy is not the solution to providing affordable epipens.

 Manchu wrote:
That's false, practically speaking.

Define practically. If we're talking about the end of it all, then it is all an economic decision because the state is making all the economic decisions.

If we're talking about how those decisions are made, it's completely true. There is 0 economic reason for people to starve to death in a command economy. It happens when the people running the command economy choose not to care. Russia could easily have prioritized a 5 year plan to feed Russia. The USSR chose not to because it prioritized other considerations.

but it was not because they had no political aspiration to

Nope. That's my entire point. They could have cared. At the very least tried. Who knows how much of a difference it would have made (exception for the engineered famine of 1932). Russia especially was at the time well known for historically struggling to feed itself, and rampant famines had a huge effect on the course of the Russian Empire throughout the 19th century. They just didn't care. That resulted in economic decisions that caused people to starve to death, but those decisions were made for political reasons. There's nothing innate to the economic structures of a Command Economy that makes it impossible to feed people. No more so than any other economic apparatus.


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 Manchu wrote:


Anyhow, a command economy is not the solution to providing affordable epipens.

I didn't say it was. Even if I were to write out a long argument about why I think competition doesn't work in the Healthcare industry, I wouldn't propose a command economy as a solution. Command economies don't work off paper. They can produce short term gains, and drive seriously monumental economic change, but in the long run they fundamentally fail to produce long term progress (you know... relative to economics).

A command economy is going to have difficult feeding tens/hundreds of millions of people when you run into the problem of the state dictating to farmers/ranchers/producers what to produce, when to produce it and what it is worth.