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I'm not a libertarian and agree with you on all points except... > * EpiPen pricing My understanding was that part of the problem with the EpiPen was a monopo

I'm not a libertarian and agree with you on all points except... > * EpiPen pricing My understanding was that part of the problem with the EpiPen was a monopoly due to patent issues. Patents are monopolies created by the government, so the market failures they cause are in fact government failures.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
I agree. But the flipside is that without patents, no-one would be spending money on drug development, since there would be 100% probability that someone straight-up copies your drug that you spent 5 years and $50 million to develop, and can then sell profitably at a lower price and capture the market. I think we can all agree that drug patents in particular are a necessary evil. On other patents (in particular software) I'm a lot more skeptical. And that's not to say "Big Pharma" isn't trying to abuse the system to maximise their profits.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  Necessary evil: yes, to some extent. I didn't say "get rid of all patents", just that they can cause market failures. I could imagine some models to make them less evil, for example by having a scheme that forces companies to grant fairly priced licenses to their competitors. Or, for drugs whose availability is in society's general interest, a government reimbursing the development costs. For both of these one would need a fair way of determining development costs, but as far as I understand pharma research already has a detailed paper trail to make sure their patent applications are bullet-proof.
dredmorbius 9y ago
There's a bit of a drugs problem anyhow: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/03/08/erooms_law http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/03/08/ero... And, well, medicine ain't all it's cracked up to be: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/msqfdpan_0xudzuorebfbg https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/msqfdpan_0xudzuorebfbg Which is to say, you're vastly better off investing in public health measures than in intensive medical interventions. (See Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, for more on that theme.)

semi-extrinsic 9y ago

I agree. But the flipside is that without patents, no-one would be spending money on drug development, since there would be 100% probability that someone straight-up copies your drug that you spent 5 years and $50 million to develop, and can then sell profitably at a lower price and capture the market. I think we can all agree that drug patents in particular are a necessary evil. On other patents (in particular software) I'm a lot more skeptical. And that's not to say "Big Pharma" isn't trying to abuse the system to maximise their profits.

tom_mellior 9y ago
Necessary evil: yes, to some extent. I didn't say "get rid of all patents", just that they can cause market failures. I could imagine some models to make them less evil, for example by having a scheme that forces companies to grant fairly priced licenses to their competitors. Or, for drugs whose availability is in society's general interest, a government reimbursing the development costs. For both of these one would need a fair way of determining development costs, but as far as I understand pharma research already has a detailed paper trail to make sure their patent applications are bullet-proof.

dredmorbius 9y ago

There's a bit of a drugs problem anyhow: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/03/08/erooms_law http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/03/08/ero... And, well, medicine ain't all it's cracked up to be: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/msqfdpan_0xudzuorebfbg https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/msqfdpan_0xudzuorebfbg Which is to say, you're vastly better off investing in public health measures than in intensive medical interventions. (See Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, for more on that theme.)