4 ms·
That's the point: the sympatheticness of the victim is completely irrelevant to the dynamic, yet seems to be enough to treat the cases as different.
by SilasX 7y ago
That's the point: the sympatheticness of the victim is completely irrelevant to the dynamic, yet seems to be enough to treat the cases as different.
- rocha 7y agoDo you think that the current pharmaceutical prices in the US are the result of fair market valuation?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoNot irrelevant. One is a monopolist trying to force down free market prices by fiat. The other is a free market yearning to force down prices by monopolists.
- SilasX 7y agoThe common dynamic is that all suppliers are faced with a situation, now and going forward, that they must accept an arbitrarily low profit to continue making the good. Do you think that's only happening in one of those cases? If not, you agree that the the identities of the victims don't break the similarity.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoYes. But in one case its anti-competitive and trying to stifle a free market. In the other its trying to foster a freer market. Thus the different views on each on HN, every day and for good reason.
- SilasX 7y agoThat's not a difference, that's a reframing. In both cases, in practice, the sellers cannot expect to get more than some really low profit rate, and therefore don't invest in supplying any high-demand good, because the risk is higher and the profits are the same. That's bad.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoHey, it wasn't me trying to frame this as some unreasonable bias by HN. And its laughable, reframing big pharma as some poor unprofitable wretches.
- SilasX 7y ago>Hey, it wasn't me trying to frame this as some unreasonable bias by HN. I wasn't saying HNers are biased, I'm saying they're inconsistent in reasoning about these cases. (They're biased too, but that wasn't the criticism I was making here.) >And its laughable, reframing big pharma as some poor unprofitable wretches. It's even more laughable thinking that "whether pharmas are unprofitable wretches" is relevant to the economic effects of pseudo-price controls after the fallacy and inconsistency are explained.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoCome on, pharmaceutical prices are controlled already, by the tiny number of companies in that market. Which is the opposite of a 'free market'. Its obvious to me we're not discussing this in good faith any more. Pendantry will get us nowhere.
- SilasX 7y agoI’m arguing in good faith.