2 ms·

Interesting, I had the exact opposite reaction to that line. There is no "subsidizing their own distribution" here, making the drug is dead cheap and distributi

Interesting, I had the exact opposite reaction to that line. There is no "subsidizing their own distribution" here, making the drug is dead cheap and distribution isn't even an item on their budget. No, what this means is they are setting their prices to extract the maximum possible amount of money out of each country. Obviously, the price that will yield the largest profit is not always the highest; if you can get four times as many customers at half the price, you doubled your profit while reducing your price.

Houshalter 13y ago
It pays for the cost of researching this drug (and all the other drugs which failed before making it to market) and it creates an incentive to produce more drugs like this in the future. You don't want drugs to cost so much? Encourage the government(s) to fund or subsidize research. Maybe even lower barriers to entry to getting drugs approved. But no one is forcing you to buy the drug and the patent will eventually expire.
- revelation 13y ago
  I want to end this charade of free market and capitalism. It's obviously not capitalism or a free market if a company can maximize their prices to fit each countries GDP and not be instantly killed by arbritrators. It's not a good fit, which is presumably why even the current market doesn't resemble a free market at all, but the illusion is unnecessarily costing a lot of money and wasted productivity.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    How is that not a free market, let alone capitalism? That's how club goods work. The cost per individual is low, but the total cost is high. In those cases it makes sense to have different prices for different regions, or even different individuals. A poor person in Egypt can't afford $1,000 a day. But if they charged everyone the Egypt price, they wouldn't make enough money to even cover the cost of researching it. Besides that's not an argument for why it's bad. Your just saying you don't like it because it doesn't look like what you think a free market looks like.

Houshalter 13y ago

It pays for the cost of researching this drug (and all the other drugs which failed before making it to market) and it creates an incentive to produce more drugs like this in the future. You don't want drugs to cost so much? Encourage the government(s) to fund or subsidize research. Maybe even lower barriers to entry to getting drugs approved. But no one is forcing you to buy the drug and the patent will eventually expire.

revelation 13y ago
I want to end this charade of free market and capitalism. It's obviously not capitalism or a free market if a company can maximize their prices to fit each countries GDP and not be instantly killed by arbritrators. It's not a good fit, which is presumably why even the current market doesn't resemble a free market at all, but the illusion is unnecessarily costing a lot of money and wasted productivity.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  How is that not a free market, let alone capitalism? That's how club goods work. The cost per individual is low, but the total cost is high. In those cases it makes sense to have different prices for different regions, or even different individuals. A poor person in Egypt can't afford $1,000 a day. But if they charged everyone the Egypt price, they wouldn't make enough money to even cover the cost of researching it. Besides that's not an argument for why it's bad. Your just saying you don't like it because it doesn't look like what you think a free market looks like.