6 ms·

As far as I am concerned, the people engaged in price gouging for insulin are essentially committing mass murder for profit. It is so far outside of any kind of

As far as I am concerned, the people engaged in price gouging for insulin are essentially committing mass murder for profit. It is so far outside of any kind of moral standard, that I have no problem in categorising it as just straight up evil.

MrTonyD 7y ago
I'd prefer that our society classifies it as illegal rather than evil or immoral. We need to have laws which also take away the acquired wealth from those who benefit from such practices.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Illegal is a classification a state makes about things considered immoral or evil. Or sometimes neither and someone is out to make a quick buck by corrupting the law. I cannot classify something as illegal, but I can point out that it is downright evil. If enough people do this then eventually the law might catch up, that is if the law hasn't been bought out already by the evil bastards out to make a buck. Which it has, unfortunately.
maxxxxx 7y ago
Mass murder for profit is normal operating procedure. Otherwise we wouldn’t have cigarette companies, mining companies fighting safety regulations or companies fighting tooth and nail to keep leaded gas.
- marnett 7y ago
  Also weapons technology!
  - supergauntlet 7y ago
    The entire military industrial complex is predicated on murder for profit. Remember this every time someone tries to sell you the lie that we need to airstrike Iran because they shot down a drone. Guess who's really winning there? Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and their shareholders. Certainly not the Iranian or American people at large.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      War is a Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
      - marnett 7y ago
        Thanks for sharing this by the way. I actually checked out a published book of his (and associated) essay from my local library and read it just yesterday. His perspective against for-profit wars, yet lean towards defensive military spending (not to be conflated with modern offensive military spending) was nuanced and very insightful.
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      There certainly is a legitimate self defense need for weapons technology. Realistically you cant do without. But things get murky when we start selling weapons to questionable allies.
      - supergauntlet 7y ago
        Defense need, sure. But remember that warmongering and imperialism are fed by the war machine.
      - inflatableDodo 7y ago
        Is a rare event for the UK to be fighting anyone who isn't using the guns we had sold them first.
- aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  > Mass murder for profit is normal operating procedure. That's just not true. Of course a profit-maximizing entity (which is an idealized abstraction that doesn't perfectly match anything in the real world) would 'love' an addictive product, or to minimize their costs, including an externalities for which they're liable, but, again, ideally, those same entities would absolutely prefer that their product does NOT in fact kill their customers or potential customers as that would just reduce their maximum potential profit. Per your hyperbole, mass media is also engaging in 'mass murder for profit' as they cause people stress and stress likely shortens their lives. A tradeoff involving the potential loss of life or some period of life is not literally murder. If you sold all of your possessions and lived a life of poverty you could donate the proceeds, and any income you earn that you don't strictly use to prolong your own life, to a charity that could save lives or lengthen others. That you do not, nor almost anyone else, is NOT literally the same as murder.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Bulls run, pigs get slaughtered. There’s a difference between making money and short term exploitation. If I own woodland, I can earn a living harvesting trees for decades, or cut the whole thing down. Clear cutting gets you a big check now, but less over time. Responsible harvest gets you more money in the long run, but spread over time. None of this is sustainable, and many of these companies even outsource their manufacturing. By maximizing short term results above all else, they will kill the golden goose, and ultimately will either be nationalized, or replaced by foreign competitors.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    " those same entities would absolutely prefer that their product does NOT in fact kill their customers or potential customers as that would just reduce their maximum potential profit." But since their products or their production methods kill people they prefer more profits over less profits. I can't find any possible excuse for lobbying against safety regulations in coal mines other than them being greedy bastards.
felipeko 7y ago
As far as I am concerned, the problem is not with people who make drugs and want to profit from it, but with people who regulate competition away. If people weren't prohibited from buying whatever the drug they want at their own risk, they wouldn't be forced to monopoly prices.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Utter nonsense. That kind of deregulation fixes everything always assumes a perfect market with perfect information, ie consumers who can actually judge the quality of the product their receiving. Drugs most definitely do not fit into this category, how do I tell if the drug I'm taking is actually working? Would I feel worse or be getting sicker faster if I weren't taking Pepsi Insulin (tm) or is it just a placebo and I'm just going through the disease normally (or tricking my self into feeling better because I'm taking something). Ok, this drug does make me feel better but it turns out it makes mutant babies if I happen to get pregnant while taking it (see Thalidomide or the warnings on basically any acne medication).
  - felipeko 7y ago
    I make "no perfect market" or "perfect information" assumption. I am pretty confident that people will take stupid risks, as I am confident that people who want to be safe - buying from reputable sources - will be able to.
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      How do people without a scientific background and without the access to clinical testing data (since we're deregulating here companies won't even have to do them before going to market legally) have a hope of evaluating what new drugs are safe and which companies are reliable?
      - mrguyorama 7y ago
        If you want an example of how an unregulated medicine market works, check out the American medical "supplement" market. Plenty of producers, dubious and often purposely wrong claims, often don't even contain the compound as advertised, and still hilariously expensive. If unregulation begets competition and that begets lower prices, why do these turmeric supplements cost $30[0] while you can go to the spice aisle and get 10x as much for $5? [0]:https://www.amazon.com/Turmeric-Curcumin-Capsules-MONEY-GUARANTEE/dp/B00HRXMQ50 https://www.amazon.com/Turmeric-Curcumin-Capsules-MONEY-GUAR...
aeorgnoieang 7y ago
> mass murder for profit This doesn't make sense. Only an entity out to make a quick one-time score would literally kill their customers or potential customers. If anything, you'd want to bleed your customer for as much as you can, which is closer to what they actually do, e.g. provide 'discount programs' for people with less wealth or income to obtain drugs with high 'sticker prices' for much less. Remember that, generally, if anyone is paying these high prices, it's insurance companies, not private individuals.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Think of it as the 'Apple' strategy. The most money for the least effort is to have a high markup for the middle class and up while ignoring the bottom of the market entirely. If you release cheaper things for the bottom of the market this gets you much less profit for your spend and also many of your existing customers will opt for the cheaper versions. In medicine this is exacerbated by the fact that you do not have a nice range and market segmentation, you are selling the same product to everyone.
- Steuard 7y ago
  Killing all your customers is clearly a bad market strategy. But I expect that to truly maximize profits, you'd aim to price the drug a little higher than what some patients can possibly pay. Sure, a few people will die as a result, but your higher profit on the others will more than compensate for that lost income. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a nice little model to compute exactly what percentage of patients left to die will pay off most. Obviously this is awful, gross reasoning. But I think it's pretty solidly what pure economics would lead you to, and I expect that's what the term "mass murder for profit" is referring to.
Spooky23 7y ago
Some of the big states should just use preferred sourcing laws to bootstrap manufacturers or contracts to just make things like insulin and shut these companies out of Medicaid. The casual disregard for humanity and their largest customers should result in severe consequences for the companies and the investors in them. In short, they should be ground down and driven out of business.
andrewla 7y ago
This is not a coherent position. By this logic, every single person who is _not_ making insulin (people like you and me) are also guilty of committing mass murder. There's clearly something very, very, very broken here, but unwinding the tremendous weight of bureaucracy and regulations that prevent an interested investor in setting up shop making insulin on the cheap is the root of the issue. The regulations need not even be a negative; I don't have a reason to believe that recombinant engineered bacteria produced insulin is really that easy, and the regulations may be all that's keeping a tide of ineffective or harmful varieties of insulin from flooding the market.
- objectivetruth 7y ago
  I disagree, you're trying to use "freshman Philosophy 101" logic but most real-world ethical frameworks absolutely distinguish between actors and others, particularly when it comes to morality, i.e., avoiding suffering. The "tremendous weight of bureaucracy and regulations" is a Gordian knot that every other developed country managed to cut by simply regulating the insulin market.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >This is not a coherent position. By this logic, every single person who is _not_ making insulin (people like you and me) are also guilty of committing mass murder. I don't think that is a particularly coherent position on my position.
  - andrewla 7y ago
    The way that I read what you wrote was that "charging too much for insulin is morally equivalent to murder". How much do you charge for insulin? Would they be less culpable if they stopped producing insulin completely? If another company (say GSK or TEVA) has the technical ability to produce insulin, but doesn't, are they murderers?
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      For many diabetics, insulin is about as vital as water. If I have somehow ended up with an effective monopoly on water, would it be murder to price out all the poor? Would it be murder to stop all access to water? Am I allowed to point to other people and say, well they are not producing water? Or am I morally culpable for my own actions, regardless of the actions of others?

MrTonyD 7y ago

I'd prefer that our society classifies it as illegal rather than evil or immoral. We need to have laws which also take away the acquired wealth from those who benefit from such practices.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
Illegal is a classification a state makes about things considered immoral or evil. Or sometimes neither and someone is out to make a quick buck by corrupting the law. I cannot classify something as illegal, but I can point out that it is downright evil. If enough people do this then eventually the law might catch up, that is if the law hasn't been bought out already by the evil bastards out to make a buck. Which it has, unfortunately.

maxxxxx 7y ago

Mass murder for profit is normal operating procedure. Otherwise we wouldn’t have cigarette companies, mining companies fighting safety regulations or companies fighting tooth and nail to keep leaded gas.

marnett 7y ago
Also weapons technology!
- supergauntlet 7y ago
  The entire military industrial complex is predicated on murder for profit. Remember this every time someone tries to sell you the lie that we need to airstrike Iran because they shot down a drone. Guess who's really winning there? Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and their shareholders. Certainly not the Iranian or American people at large.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    War is a Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
    - marnett 7y ago
      Thanks for sharing this by the way. I actually checked out a published book of his (and associated) essay from my local library and read it just yesterday. His perspective against for-profit wars, yet lean towards defensive military spending (not to be conflated with modern offensive military spending) was nuanced and very insightful.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    There certainly is a legitimate self defense need for weapons technology. Realistically you cant do without. But things get murky when we start selling weapons to questionable allies.
    - supergauntlet 7y ago
      Defense need, sure. But remember that warmongering and imperialism are fed by the war machine.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      Is a rare event for the UK to be fighting anyone who isn't using the guns we had sold them first.
aeorgnoieang 7y ago
> Mass murder for profit is normal operating procedure. That's just not true. Of course a profit-maximizing entity (which is an idealized abstraction that doesn't perfectly match anything in the real world) would 'love' an addictive product, or to minimize their costs, including an externalities for which they're liable, but, again, ideally, those same entities would absolutely prefer that their product does NOT in fact kill their customers or potential customers as that would just reduce their maximum potential profit. Per your hyperbole, mass media is also engaging in 'mass murder for profit' as they cause people stress and stress likely shortens their lives. A tradeoff involving the potential loss of life or some period of life is not literally murder. If you sold all of your possessions and lived a life of poverty you could donate the proceeds, and any income you earn that you don't strictly use to prolong your own life, to a charity that could save lives or lengthen others. That you do not, nor almost anyone else, is NOT literally the same as murder.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Bulls run, pigs get slaughtered. There’s a difference between making money and short term exploitation. If I own woodland, I can earn a living harvesting trees for decades, or cut the whole thing down. Clear cutting gets you a big check now, but less over time. Responsible harvest gets you more money in the long run, but spread over time. None of this is sustainable, and many of these companies even outsource their manufacturing. By maximizing short term results above all else, they will kill the golden goose, and ultimately will either be nationalized, or replaced by foreign competitors.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  " those same entities would absolutely prefer that their product does NOT in fact kill their customers or potential customers as that would just reduce their maximum potential profit." But since their products or their production methods kill people they prefer more profits over less profits. I can't find any possible excuse for lobbying against safety regulations in coal mines other than them being greedy bastards.

felipeko 7y ago

As far as I am concerned, the problem is not with people who make drugs and want to profit from it, but with people who regulate competition away. If people weren't prohibited from buying whatever the drug they want at their own risk, they wouldn't be forced to monopoly prices.

rtkwe 7y ago
Utter nonsense. That kind of deregulation fixes everything always assumes a perfect market with perfect information, ie consumers who can actually judge the quality of the product their receiving. Drugs most definitely do not fit into this category, how do I tell if the drug I'm taking is actually working? Would I feel worse or be getting sicker faster if I weren't taking Pepsi Insulin (tm) or is it just a placebo and I'm just going through the disease normally (or tricking my self into feeling better because I'm taking something). Ok, this drug does make me feel better but it turns out it makes mutant babies if I happen to get pregnant while taking it (see Thalidomide or the warnings on basically any acne medication).
- felipeko 7y ago
  I make "no perfect market" or "perfect information" assumption. I am pretty confident that people will take stupid risks, as I am confident that people who want to be safe - buying from reputable sources - will be able to.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    How do people without a scientific background and without the access to clinical testing data (since we're deregulating here companies won't even have to do them before going to market legally) have a hope of evaluating what new drugs are safe and which companies are reliable?
    - mrguyorama 7y ago
      If you want an example of how an unregulated medicine market works, check out the American medical "supplement" market. Plenty of producers, dubious and often purposely wrong claims, often don't even contain the compound as advertised, and still hilariously expensive. If unregulation begets competition and that begets lower prices, why do these turmeric supplements cost $30[0] while you can go to the spice aisle and get 10x as much for $5? [0]:https://www.amazon.com/Turmeric-Curcumin-Capsules-MONEY-GUARANTEE/dp/B00HRXMQ50 https://www.amazon.com/Turmeric-Curcumin-Capsules-MONEY-GUAR...

aeorgnoieang 7y ago

> mass murder for profit This doesn't make sense. Only an entity out to make a quick one-time score would literally kill their customers or potential customers. If anything, you'd want to bleed your customer for as much as you can, which is closer to what they actually do, e.g. provide 'discount programs' for people with less wealth or income to obtain drugs with high 'sticker prices' for much less. Remember that, generally, if anyone is paying these high prices, it's insurance companies, not private individuals.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
Think of it as the 'Apple' strategy. The most money for the least effort is to have a high markup for the middle class and up while ignoring the bottom of the market entirely. If you release cheaper things for the bottom of the market this gets you much less profit for your spend and also many of your existing customers will opt for the cheaper versions. In medicine this is exacerbated by the fact that you do not have a nice range and market segmentation, you are selling the same product to everyone.
Steuard 7y ago
Killing all your customers is clearly a bad market strategy. But I expect that to truly maximize profits, you'd aim to price the drug a little higher than what some patients can possibly pay. Sure, a few people will die as a result, but your higher profit on the others will more than compensate for that lost income. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a nice little model to compute exactly what percentage of patients left to die will pay off most. Obviously this is awful, gross reasoning. But I think it's pretty solidly what pure economics would lead you to, and I expect that's what the term "mass murder for profit" is referring to.

Spooky23 7y ago

Some of the big states should just use preferred sourcing laws to bootstrap manufacturers or contracts to just make things like insulin and shut these companies out of Medicaid. The casual disregard for humanity and their largest customers should result in severe consequences for the companies and the investors in them. In short, they should be ground down and driven out of business.

andrewla 7y ago

This is not a coherent position. By this logic, every single person who is _not_ making insulin (people like you and me) are also guilty of committing mass murder. There's clearly something very, very, very broken here, but unwinding the tremendous weight of bureaucracy and regulations that prevent an interested investor in setting up shop making insulin on the cheap is the root of the issue. The regulations need not even be a negative; I don't have a reason to believe that recombinant engineered bacteria produced insulin is really that easy, and the regulations may be all that's keeping a tide of ineffective or harmful varieties of insulin from flooding the market.

objectivetruth 7y ago
I disagree, you're trying to use "freshman Philosophy 101" logic but most real-world ethical frameworks absolutely distinguish between actors and others, particularly when it comes to morality, i.e., avoiding suffering. The "tremendous weight of bureaucracy and regulations" is a Gordian knot that every other developed country managed to cut by simply regulating the insulin market.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>This is not a coherent position. By this logic, every single person who is _not_ making insulin (people like you and me) are also guilty of committing mass murder. I don't think that is a particularly coherent position on my position.
- andrewla 7y ago
  The way that I read what you wrote was that "charging too much for insulin is morally equivalent to murder". How much do you charge for insulin? Would they be less culpable if they stopped producing insulin completely? If another company (say GSK or TEVA) has the technical ability to produce insulin, but doesn't, are they murderers?
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    For many diabetics, insulin is about as vital as water. If I have somehow ended up with an effective monopoly on water, would it be murder to price out all the poor? Would it be murder to stop all access to water? Am I allowed to point to other people and say, well they are not producing water? Or am I morally culpable for my own actions, regardless of the actions of others?