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Pfizer says it will price Covid treatment Paxlovid at nearly $1,400 for a five-day course, which researchers estimate only costs Pfizer $13 to produce.
That's a 10,000%+ markup. Shameful.
Because they think government is inefficient by default, and a commercial business is motivated towards max efficiency to cut costs. Maybe all of this is true, but in capitalism companies also sell for the optimal price based on price elasticity. No competitors + essential live saving product = high prices.
Actually in human societies, not just in capitalism.
People talk about capitalism being bad as if only there people try to eat each other to become richer.
If you read something about reasons the USSR wouldn’t have more efficient centralized planning, while having necessary machinery and resources, or why it wouldn’t have standardized something, while having the standardization apparatus and planned economy, or why all the Internet-like projects went nowhere in USSR while being much more ambitious due to, again, planned economy, or why despite less fragmentation scale wouldn’t make things cheaper to produce in USSR, but the opposite, and so on - that’s because every reform would mean someone losing influence, and that someone would naturally use that influence to resist reform.
It’s actually fascinating to read how some of those people really believed in Marxism and Communism, and were even very competent sometimes, but the general architecture made the whole thing less than just a sum of its parts. Really sad, though.
I agree that the problems aren’t just in Capitalism. However, the country with the unofficial historical tagline, “and then it got worse”, may not be the best example. I think China is a really good example of influence peddling outside a free market.
Well, China, when its ruling organization still had some consistent ideology, was a copy of Stalin’s USSR, bigger and weaker, give or take. Only it started later.
Its way off that track started with reforms like Kosygin’s reforms, would those not be neutered.
I’d say the reason in China this happened was exactly that it was bigger and weaker. It didn’t quite have anything like Soviet industrial establishment, and it had the issues of poverty, hunger etc.
Because “government research” doesn’t cover mass production and all of the supply chain management. Which is where anything bureaucratic really sucks.
(Unless you need to build things badly, but fast and on large scale, mobilization-style - see Khruschev-era mass construction in ex-USSR, or, for exotic stuff, older state-built housing in Israel which isn’t that much better).
Actual production rots very quickly, if centralized and bureaucratic.
I agree that research requires long-term investment and is in general a completely different thing.
There’s just so much wrong in your comment I can’t address it all…
If you can’t then you’d better say nothing.
But where has anyone said the government had to manufacture it too?
You said when talking about pharma companies as middlemen. You remove those middlemen - you have to do tasks they perform.
We’re talking about patents right now.
Yes, patent law should be abolished. That’s what I’m talking about while commenting in most threads blaming “capitalism”, because in like 2/3 cases patent law is to blame and not that.
The rest of what you said is still wrong, can’t stress that enough, it just also has absolutely nothing to do with what people were talking about…
Thank you for your unsubstantiated opinion which I can beat with that of my own every time, so not sure why you’d even express it without details.
Ah, trademark laws and patents are obviously governmental stuff. So - not present in some imagined absolute capitalism. And with those abolished (except for stealing authorship still being illegal), I suppose market mechanisms would do their job sufficiently well for this particular case.
Believing in capitalism is believing in humans making rational and moral choices, anyone to do that would be nuts. That’s a proactive answer to politically active people getting triggered by my comment and labeling me as a member of the other crowd.
Thanks capitalism!!
/sarcasm.
I’ll never understand why so many people think middlemen somehow makes shit cheaper…
Taxes > government research > cheap meds
With the bonus point of no more pharmaceutical companies selling shit like oxy for profit
Because they think government is inefficient by default, and a commercial business is motivated towards max efficiency to cut costs. Maybe all of this is true, but in capitalism companies also sell for the optimal price based on price elasticity. No competitors + essential live saving product = high prices.
Actually in human societies, not just in capitalism.
People talk about capitalism being bad as if only there people try to eat each other to become richer.
If you read something about reasons the USSR wouldn’t have more efficient centralized planning, while having necessary machinery and resources, or why it wouldn’t have standardized something, while having the standardization apparatus and planned economy, or why all the Internet-like projects went nowhere in USSR while being much more ambitious due to, again, planned economy, or why despite less fragmentation scale wouldn’t make things cheaper to produce in USSR, but the opposite, and so on - that’s because every reform would mean someone losing influence, and that someone would naturally use that influence to resist reform.
It’s actually fascinating to read how some of those people really believed in Marxism and Communism, and were even very competent sometimes, but the general architecture made the whole thing less than just a sum of its parts. Really sad, though.
I agree that the problems aren’t just in Capitalism. However, the country with the unofficial historical tagline, “and then it got worse”, may not be the best example. I think China is a really good example of influence peddling outside a free market.
Well, China, when its ruling organization still had some consistent ideology, was a copy of Stalin’s USSR, bigger and weaker, give or take. Only it started later.
Its way off that track started with reforms like Kosygin’s reforms, would those not be neutered.
I’d say the reason in China this happened was exactly that it was bigger and weaker. It didn’t quite have anything like Soviet industrial establishment, and it had the issues of poverty, hunger etc.
Because “government research” doesn’t cover mass production and all of the supply chain management. Which is where anything bureaucratic really sucks.
(Unless you need to build things badly, but fast and on large scale, mobilization-style - see Khruschev-era mass construction in ex-USSR, or, for exotic stuff, older state-built housing in Israel which isn’t that much better).
Actual production rots very quickly, if centralized and bureaucratic.
I agree that research requires long-term investment and is in general a completely different thing.
There’s just so much wrong in your comment I can’t address it all…
But where has anyone said the government had to manufacture it too?
We’re talking about patents right now.
The rest of what you said is still wrong, can’t stress that enough, it just also has absolutely nothing to do with what people were talking about…
If you can’t then you’d better say nothing.
You said when talking about pharma companies as middlemen. You remove those middlemen - you have to do tasks they perform.
Yes, patent law should be abolished. That’s what I’m talking about while commenting in most threads blaming “capitalism”, because in like 2/3 cases patent law is to blame and not that.
Thank you for your unsubstantiated opinion which I can beat with that of my own every time, so not sure why you’d even express it without details.
You’ve got a point, I should have said “won’t put the effort in”.
I looked at your profile, you wait till posts are really old, then spam a bunch of nonsensical replies in it.
I’m just gonna block you. Everyone wins.
Not the worst way to look at this, if you want my opinion.
Ah, trademark laws and patents are obviously governmental stuff. So - not present in some imagined absolute capitalism. And with those abolished (except for stealing authorship still being illegal), I suppose market mechanisms would do their job sufficiently well for this particular case.
Believing in capitalism is believing in humans making rational and moral choices, anyone to do that would be nuts. That’s a proactive answer to politically active people getting triggered by my comment and labeling me as a member of the other crowd.