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> The price hikes would immediately attract lower-cost competitors if this were truly a free market. Any participants in a free market for a product with inela

> The price hikes would immediately attract lower-cost competitors if this were truly a free market. Any participants in a free market for a product with inelastic demand (e.g. something you need to stay alive) and non-trivial entry costs immediately implements price fixing in the absence of regulation. When life-saving devices that require a significant supply chain to manufacture capture the bulk of consumer surplus from the majority of potential customers (and the poorest are left to die), the free market is working as intended, efficiently allocating resources to maximize profits.

gwright 10y ago
The non-trivial entry costs are there because of regulations and the legal environment regarding liability. You can view the high price as the free-market finding the intersection of supply and demand given the regulatory and legal constraints but that seems like a less than useful way of understanding 'free-market'.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > The non-trivial entry costs are there because of regulations and the legal environment regarding liability I think that misplaces the cause. The requirement for safety and the high cost of failure is what creates those regulations and liabilities. Theoretically, we could eliminate the regulations and liabilities and just let people die, but 1) that's a really bad idea, and 2) it would be excluding from the market mechanism (i.e., externalizing) the most important aspect of the product, its safety.
- Ironchefpython 10y ago
  > You can view the high price as the free-market finding the intersection of supply and demand given the regulatory and legal constraints but that seems like a less than useful way of understanding 'free-market'. Stop using regulation as a stalking horse for your argument. Everything you need to know about the price of epi pens you can derive from inelastic demand (people don't want to die), and barriers to entry (copyrighted brand, network of doctors writing prescriptions, and yes, FDA approval so these things don't kill people). The price is high because people will pay almost anything to not die. This drives the price point up to capture consumer surplus. It's easy to understand. The Free Market isn't a magic bullet that will drive down these prices. For one simple reason. Rational actors don't compete on price. I'm going to repeat this, because so many people don't get it. Rational actors don't compete on price. Rational actors will spend up to their expected monopoly profits to create a Nash Equilibrium where new entrants into a market will be unprofitable. The simplest way to do this is through dumping. (see "competition" in the generic drug market for example) Why doesn't this happen in every market? Regulation. Maybe you don't like that in unregulated markets, people starve, are poisoned, are denied treatment, and worked like slaves. Because that's how you maximize profit, by minimizing your own costs by maximizing externalized costs. So you'll think anything to avoid that realization. Like blame 'regulation' for what's obviously rationally maximizing profits. And if you want to know how exactly the 'free-market' for medical supplies would work without regulation, just look at the 1800s. Demand was still inelastic, so prices were high, quality was low (for obvious reasons), and competition was still stupid, because price fixing and dumping were still more profitable than competing on price.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    > how exactly the 'free-market' for medical supplies would work without regulation, just look at the 1800s. Do you have a source for this? Medical costs started angling up steeply in the 1960s with the advent of heavy regulation. > dumping were still more profitable than competing on price. Isn't dumping competing on price?
    - Ironchefpython 10y ago
      > Medical costs started angling up steeply in the 1960s with the advent of heavy regulation Broadly, to a first approximation: Medical costs, real-estate, and education have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus created by the decline in food. clothing, and fuel costs. > Isn't dumping competing on price? Nope, dumping is used to drive new entrants out of a market. It also acts as a signal to prevent new market entrants. If I sell 2 million widgets per year at a price of $10 over a cost of $1, after $4 million in capital costs, I can maintain a monopoly if I'm willing to drop my sale price to 50 cents every time someone enters my market, and I raise the price when they exit it. This creates a Nash Equilibrium were no rational actor will spend $4 million to build a factory to compete with me.
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        > have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus It is quite a remarkable coincidence that medical costs angled steeply upward immediately after heavy regulation and government involvement in it began. > I can maintain a monopoly It'll be pretty hard to swallow $1 million/year in losses to do so. You'd have to maintain those losses to beat back even a small competitor, who would have proportionally smaller losses. A small competitor would have the capability to ruin your business with a small investment on their part. I bet they could finance it by shorting your stock.
        Ironchefpython 10y ago
        > It is quite a remarkable coincidence that medical costs angled steeply upward immediately after heavy regulation and government involvement in it began. Regulation didn't give people more money to spend on medicine. Offshoring jobs to China drive down prices of consumer goods to make more money available as a consumer surplus that could be captured by healthcare. If the price of food increased, the price of housing, education, and medical care would decrease. Because the demand curve would change. > A small competitor would have the capability to ruin your business with a small investment on their part. I bet they could finance it by shorting your stock. That's a nice hypothetical that completely ignores all of financial theory AND history. If you ever start a company, let me know so I can short YOUR stock.
- makomk 10y ago
  Suppose there were no regulations and no liability for manufacturers. Would you really trust your life or your kid's life to some unregulated clone of the EpiPen that may or may not actually work properly when needed, knowing that if it went wrong the manufacturer wouldn't even have to pay one cent of your medical bills and didn't have to worry about liability for screwing up? I suspect not.
  - aianus 10y ago
    You would if you literally didn't have $600 for the brand name version. Maybe $600 is an amount that everyone can get with some sacrifice but there are other drugs/devices/procedures that cost $10,000s or more where people just have to go without because they're not allowed to take a chance on an unregulated alternative.
ancap 10y ago
I can think of many products which are life-saving which are readily available from countless producers for relatively cheap. The difference here is just as gwright has pointed out and you have a corpus of regulation which makes this particular product more expensive and/or chokes out competition. The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated That's not what economic theory (and practice) say, I'm pretty sure. For example, unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas. Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people. Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons'. Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products. The free market is very good for some purposes, but it's not a benevolent God that finds solutions to all our problems. It's just a very useful tool in the toolkit.
  - ancap 10y ago
    I would first like to point out that in the context of this conversation the definition for shortage I am using is that there is a shortage of a good or service where it once was readily available. Sure I could, say, take a rocket ship, to mars and denounce the absence of internet connectivity, but that's not what I'm referring to here. >unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas Again, according to my above definition this is a slightly different topic, but it seems highly dubious that a lack of regulation is what has resulted in shortages of internet service is some podunk town. >Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people The most significant factor limiting the availability of low cost housing is municipal regulation, not the absence of it. I'm not aware of any place in a developed nation which has a shortage of food. It seems what you are getting at is the options may not be affordable for some, but that is a different concept from a shortage. Furthermore, it is a bit of a stretch to refer to the food and housing markets as "unregulated". If there are any shortages in these markets it's certainly not due to a lack of regulation. >Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons' I have commented on the idea of "tragedy of the commons" many times. It generally leads to quite a tangent in the conversation, but if you're truly interested I'd be happy to discuss why the problem does not lie with a lack of regulation. >Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products. A true, lasting monopoly is only possible through market regulation which strangles out competition. All the textbook examples of "monopolies" (Standard Oil) were not monopolies at all. In fact in the early days of electricity there was so much competition in the big cities that the big guys lobbied hard to get their monopoly privilege.
WalterBright 10y ago
Food is necessary for life, but food (in the US) is cheap, and food prices are not regulated.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  There is also no government protected monopoly on food (although not for lack of trying).

gwright 10y ago

The non-trivial entry costs are there because of regulations and the legal environment regarding liability. You can view the high price as the free-market finding the intersection of supply and demand given the regulatory and legal constraints but that seems like a less than useful way of understanding 'free-market'.

hackuser 10y ago
> The non-trivial entry costs are there because of regulations and the legal environment regarding liability I think that misplaces the cause. The requirement for safety and the high cost of failure is what creates those regulations and liabilities. Theoretically, we could eliminate the regulations and liabilities and just let people die, but 1) that's a really bad idea, and 2) it would be excluding from the market mechanism (i.e., externalizing) the most important aspect of the product, its safety.
Ironchefpython 10y ago
> You can view the high price as the free-market finding the intersection of supply and demand given the regulatory and legal constraints but that seems like a less than useful way of understanding 'free-market'. Stop using regulation as a stalking horse for your argument. Everything you need to know about the price of epi pens you can derive from inelastic demand (people don't want to die), and barriers to entry (copyrighted brand, network of doctors writing prescriptions, and yes, FDA approval so these things don't kill people). The price is high because people will pay almost anything to not die. This drives the price point up to capture consumer surplus. It's easy to understand. The Free Market isn't a magic bullet that will drive down these prices. For one simple reason. Rational actors don't compete on price. I'm going to repeat this, because so many people don't get it. Rational actors don't compete on price. Rational actors will spend up to their expected monopoly profits to create a Nash Equilibrium where new entrants into a market will be unprofitable. The simplest way to do this is through dumping. (see "competition" in the generic drug market for example) Why doesn't this happen in every market? Regulation. Maybe you don't like that in unregulated markets, people starve, are poisoned, are denied treatment, and worked like slaves. Because that's how you maximize profit, by minimizing your own costs by maximizing externalized costs. So you'll think anything to avoid that realization. Like blame 'regulation' for what's obviously rationally maximizing profits. And if you want to know how exactly the 'free-market' for medical supplies would work without regulation, just look at the 1800s. Demand was still inelastic, so prices were high, quality was low (for obvious reasons), and competition was still stupid, because price fixing and dumping were still more profitable than competing on price.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > how exactly the 'free-market' for medical supplies would work without regulation, just look at the 1800s. Do you have a source for this? Medical costs started angling up steeply in the 1960s with the advent of heavy regulation. > dumping were still more profitable than competing on price. Isn't dumping competing on price?
  - Ironchefpython 10y ago
    > Medical costs started angling up steeply in the 1960s with the advent of heavy regulation Broadly, to a first approximation: Medical costs, real-estate, and education have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus created by the decline in food. clothing, and fuel costs. > Isn't dumping competing on price? Nope, dumping is used to drive new entrants out of a market. It also acts as a signal to prevent new market entrants. If I sell 2 million widgets per year at a price of $10 over a cost of $1, after $4 million in capital costs, I can maintain a monopoly if I'm willing to drop my sale price to 50 cents every time someone enters my market, and I raise the price when they exit it. This creates a Nash Equilibrium were no rational actor will spend $4 million to build a factory to compete with me.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      > have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus It is quite a remarkable coincidence that medical costs angled steeply upward immediately after heavy regulation and government involvement in it began. > I can maintain a monopoly It'll be pretty hard to swallow $1 million/year in losses to do so. You'd have to maintain those losses to beat back even a small competitor, who would have proportionally smaller losses. A small competitor would have the capability to ruin your business with a small investment on their part. I bet they could finance it by shorting your stock.
      - Ironchefpython 10y ago
        > It is quite a remarkable coincidence that medical costs angled steeply upward immediately after heavy regulation and government involvement in it began. Regulation didn't give people more money to spend on medicine. Offshoring jobs to China drive down prices of consumer goods to make more money available as a consumer surplus that could be captured by healthcare. If the price of food increased, the price of housing, education, and medical care would decrease. Because the demand curve would change. > A small competitor would have the capability to ruin your business with a small investment on their part. I bet they could finance it by shorting your stock. That's a nice hypothetical that completely ignores all of financial theory AND history. If you ever start a company, let me know so I can short YOUR stock.
makomk 10y ago
Suppose there were no regulations and no liability for manufacturers. Would you really trust your life or your kid's life to some unregulated clone of the EpiPen that may or may not actually work properly when needed, knowing that if it went wrong the manufacturer wouldn't even have to pay one cent of your medical bills and didn't have to worry about liability for screwing up? I suspect not.
- aianus 10y ago
  You would if you literally didn't have $600 for the brand name version. Maybe $600 is an amount that everyone can get with some sacrifice but there are other drugs/devices/procedures that cost $10,000s or more where people just have to go without because they're not allowed to take a chance on an unregulated alternative.

ancap 10y ago

I can think of many products which are life-saving which are readily available from countless producers for relatively cheap. The difference here is just as gwright has pointed out and you have a corpus of regulation which makes this particular product more expensive and/or chokes out competition. The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated.

hackuser 10y ago
> The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated That's not what economic theory (and practice) say, I'm pretty sure. For example, unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas. Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people. Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons'. Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products. The free market is very good for some purposes, but it's not a benevolent God that finds solutions to all our problems. It's just a very useful tool in the toolkit.
- ancap 10y ago
  I would first like to point out that in the context of this conversation the definition for shortage I am using is that there is a shortage of a good or service where it once was readily available. Sure I could, say, take a rocket ship, to mars and denounce the absence of internet connectivity, but that's not what I'm referring to here. >unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas Again, according to my above definition this is a slightly different topic, but it seems highly dubious that a lack of regulation is what has resulted in shortages of internet service is some podunk town. >Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people The most significant factor limiting the availability of low cost housing is municipal regulation, not the absence of it. I'm not aware of any place in a developed nation which has a shortage of food. It seems what you are getting at is the options may not be affordable for some, but that is a different concept from a shortage. Furthermore, it is a bit of a stretch to refer to the food and housing markets as "unregulated". If there are any shortages in these markets it's certainly not due to a lack of regulation. >Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons' I have commented on the idea of "tragedy of the commons" many times. It generally leads to quite a tangent in the conversation, but if you're truly interested I'd be happy to discuss why the problem does not lie with a lack of regulation. >Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products. A true, lasting monopoly is only possible through market regulation which strangles out competition. All the textbook examples of "monopolies" (Standard Oil) were not monopolies at all. In fact in the early days of electricity there was so much competition in the big cities that the big guys lobbied hard to get their monopoly privilege.

WalterBright 10y ago

Food is necessary for life, but food (in the US) is cheap, and food prices are not regulated.

gpderetta 10y ago
There is also no government protected monopoly on food (although not for lack of trying).