Live data from Hacker News

The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

esquire.com

131–140 of 259 posts

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#131
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what country has the highest opioid use per capita? Canada! You know why? Codeine is available OTC. However I don't know many people that went from codeine to heroin.

OTC Codeine is much weaker and is sold in much smaller doses than oxy.

Yes, but when you see stats about opioid use, weak opioids are included.

I would estimate a huge percentage of US opioid utilization is codeine in the form of Tylenol #3.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#132
post #104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about doing "good," they're both doing "good." It's about milking the charity like you can't give money away without getting something in return.

My point in this line of questioning is purely dialectic; in essense, I am indirectly targeting the question, “Why is something undesirable, if it is not bad?” So we have a few possibilities: - Is demanding attribution in philanthropy bad? If it’s bad, how does it decrease the concrete “goodness” of the philanthropy? - Is it not bad? Then why is it undesirable? - Is it neither bad nor undesirable? Then why is it rele…

Charitable gift exchange is a zero-sum game between giver and recipient. On the table is the money in question, attribution, tax relief, future control of the money, and the conditions for future gifts.

Attribution is essentially a public statement on behalf of the recipient that the giver is a good person. These statements have a value. You could not pay me $10 to say that Bill Gates is a good person, but you could probably pay me $100,000. However if Bill Gates wanted to give me $100,000 without attribution, I would be spared the cost of saying I thought he was a good person in public.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#133
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTC Codeine is much weaker and is sold in much smaller doses than oxy.

Yes, but when you see stats about opioid use, weak opioids are included. I would estimate a huge percentage of US opioid utilization is codeine in the form of Tylenol #3.

You don't think that the US using 99% of the world's supply of hydrocodone is a factor?

You keep mentioning Canada, bu Canada has its own opioid crisis and public health officials are working hard to reduce canadian prescribing of opioids.

You've also said that canada has higher per capita use - do you have a cite for that? Because it doesn't match any data I've seen.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#134
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your doctor is making actual medical decisions based on a pharma. rep's sales pitch, find yourself another doctor pronto.

But how would you necessarily know? And not everyone is equipped to make such a determination. Lots of people still treat doctors as infallible demigods.

There are plenty of bad doctors out there, just like there are plenty of bad software engineers and lawyers.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#135
post #18

The Sacklers have ingratiated themselves at the highest levels of society using a fortune that's at best built on a product of dubious value, and at worst obtained at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of people. I think this piece points to a big problem: we worship money and those that accumulate it, and often ignore the question of how much societal value was created in exchange for it. The least we can co…

I definitely don't wanna play devils advocate for these scumbags, but can't you apply your logic to basically any product? I mean, Coca-Cola. Its at best product of dubious value, and at worst produced for the need for sugar by tens of thousands of people.

>>and at worst produced for the need for sugar by tens of thousands of people.

I think you mean the want for sugar. Because humans don't need sugar.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#136
post #104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about doing "good," they're both doing "good." It's about milking the charity like you can't give money away without getting something in return.

My point in this line of questioning is purely dialectic; in essense, I am indirectly targeting the question, “Why is something undesirable, if it is not bad?” So we have a few possibilities: - Is demanding attribution in philanthropy bad? If it’s bad, how does it decrease the concrete “goodness” of the philanthropy? - Is it not bad? Then why is it undesirable? - Is it neither bad nor undesirable? Then why is it rele…

I think the answer to your question relates to the ability of the billionaire to do what he wants on his terms.

You have to ask yourself what are the implicating consequences of this kind of concentrated influence?

So I think in terms of consequentialism, you need to look bigger. Should the billionaire be further rewarded for philanthropic actions? What else would he have done with the money without those rewards? How do the rewards to big donors affect the donations and volunteering of smaller participators? What was the long lasting consequence of the big donation which awarded rewards to a big donor?

The answer to that is complicated, but could change the consequence of the system, so are relevent to a consequentialist perspective.

Of most noteworthy to me, I think is the idea that a single entity can have so much concentrated wealth in the first place, where we now need to put motivations in place for them to give it away. Why award so much wealth to that entity to begin with? What consequences does this has on the moral objective you're looking to get as a consequence of our system?

And so, if you believe having billionaires generates overall bad consequences, then you'll want to demotivate people to become one, thus you might start by shaming them for their wealth, by conveying to their ego that they are not special, loved or admired for those traits, and that their big donations is frowned upon, that we'd rather they just volunteered their time, because no one cares to know how much they were able to donate.

But, if you frame the problem in the small, and don't explore alternatives, or quesrion the consequences of the given frame, ya, a billionaire which gives hundreds of million to charity in exchange for a thousand of dollar statue is an all around good deal for the charity in terms of consequentialism.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#137
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perdue Pharma, the producer of Oxy, is basically making half of its customers into drug addicts by lying about "12-hours" of "effective" pain relief. The LA Times ran an investigation into Perdue Pharma's claim[1] and the article is incredibly disturbing. This is the killer quote: > "More than half of long-term OxyContin users are on doses that public health officials consider dangerously high, according to an analys…

From my perspective, OxyContin is obviously designed to be as addictive as possible; and they have been lying all along. These people are not fully functioning humans, they will do whatever it takes to generate more profits. I promised myself to never touch their artificial crap again; if it doesn't grow on the ground, I'm not interested.

Medication is thruroughly tested and there are plenty of good painkillers that aren't as addictive. Many are synthetic of course, and still have known side effects.

The evil here isn't that the drug is addictive but that doctors and pharmaceutical companies prescribe it despite the known side effects. It's almost unheard of outside the US.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#138
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's tied up in a bunch of other bits like not eating pork and worshipping a particular deity. The secular quip raises the same questions about human motivations without the other baggage.

Because clearly George Steinbrenner is a better moral teacher than Jesus.

If GS taught the same without claiming to be the son of god, then yes.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#139
post #67

In my experience with local philanthropy, there are donors who have no interest in "naming opportunities" and those for whom it is all about the name. To me it says a lot about the character of the donor if they specifically want as little fuss as possible about the donation, and especially if they do not want something named after them. It is the cause they support, not their own egos. Personally, the more often I s…

I’m more of a consequentialist; I consider a larger philanthropist who cares about public attribution to be more admirable than someone who is a smaller philanthropist but doesn’t care about public attribution. Personally, I would absolutely like to have my name on something if I were to donate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars towards it. In my opinion the intention or ego of a philanthropist is approximately…

I agree. For example, the consequence of the Koch brother’s philathropy is the normalization of their radical (belligerently anti-democratic) political agenda.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#140

In my experience with local philanthropy, there are donors who have no interest in "naming opportunities" and those for whom it is all about the name. To me it says a lot about the character of the donor if they specifically want as little fuss as possible about the donation, and especially if they do not want something named after them. It is the cause they support, not their own egos. Personally, the more often I s…

People who donate anonymously still get a reward - they feel good about it.
Post reply on HN