231–240 of 446 posts
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Nowhere in that article does it describe an actual crime that went unprosecuted. Shkreli broke the law. The financiers causing the financial collapse did not. Perhaps the laws should be changed.
"The financiers causing the financial collapse did not." They weren't prosecuted. That doesn't mean they didn't break the law.
He was so obnoxious that I guess it is easy to be happy about that, but he was so small time in the grand scheme of things. But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal...
Like it or hate it, this is what the SEC does. You think Martha Stewart deserved jail time for making 50k in an insider trading scheme she didn't really care about? The SEC finds very public cases and then brings the hammer down in order to act a deterrent. Martin Shkreli broke the law, something he didn't have to do. It isn't like it was mob justice and some hugely biased jury convicted him of all the crimes he was…
That's basically what this comes down to.
Imagine if jay walking was punishable by death but it was only ever enforced against people who mocked Trump.
Inconsistent enforcement just allows the people in power to go after their political oponents for the "real" crime of hurting their feelings.
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So, you would argue that directly profiting from raising the price of a necessary life-saving medication is equivalent to making charitable donations to foreign countries? That seems to be a stretch to me...
What makes it a stretch? In both scenarios there is a tradeoff between personal gain and someone else's wellbeing.
If I never existed to give charitable donations, those people in Africa are not in a worse situation because I am not here. My existence, and my possible charity can only improve this situation.
If Martin never existed, those poor people would possibly be much better off, getting a more fair price for their medication instead of paying the theoretical maximum.
The difference is One Thing is pushing a ball up a hill, and the Second Thing is pushing a ball down a hill. You can say, they are the same... both have balls and hills... but you have simplified out the most important distinction.
You are not obligated to make someone else's life better. But you ARE obligated not to make it worse.
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For as much of a smug bastard he was, I did have a hearty laugh at his congressional questioning. He treated it with all the dignity and respect it deserved; exactly none. It was political theater performed so the political class could act like they were doing something while the company Shkreli worked for and the rest of their compatriots were, whilist he was humiliating Congress, making record profits doing exactly…
It's a brilliant charade. Politicians were in trouble. They of course are paid to keep things nice for Pharma (including monopolistic practices on drugs) but people were angry and they after all have to get reelected every 2,4,6 years, so they had to make it look like they were doing something without actually doing something. The brought Shkrelli in so they could perform as politicians concerned about their constitu…
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You're discussing the latest chapter, I'm discussing the whole book. I'm including all the "Pharmabro" chapters over the last couple of years. Google his name. He isn't famous for fraud.
We understand, you're trying to draw attention to drug price hiking still occurring, and you think that this conviction will blow the whole thing under the rug. I agree with you on the first statement, but I think we disagree that the second was intentional . The original replier (9889095r3jh) had an issue with (3), which is not really an accurate summarization (I don't think the prosecutors acted because he was hate…
...the fund was managing $35 million in assets and had an independent auditor.
He said he later learned both of those claims were false
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-shkreli/investo...
That is a lie and therefore fraud, but the 7 year sentence seems out of line with the actual fraud committed (there are degrees).
Shkreli lied to him repeatedly, although he eventually made millions of dollars from the investment.
He made the defrauded investors money. In this crazy country, I'm not sure that giving someone shares in another company to cover other losses is illegal (Retrophin Inc). It seems like a Ponzi, but who knows. Fund managers are given a hell of a lot of leeway.
So to summarize, 7 years seem harsh for lying about the size of the assets and an independent auditor, given the fact that the investors made money. To me this seems more in line that he was punished for the press he got, and embarrassing Congress when they called him in for his perfectly legal monopolistic practices. I would much rather him be convicted for that.
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What makes it a stretch? In both scenarios there is a tradeoff between personal gain and someone else's wellbeing.
I think philosophically it has to do with being the agent that causes harm. If I never existed to give charitable donations, those people in Africa are not in a worse situation because I am not here. My existence, and my possible charity can only improve this situation. If Martin never existed, those poor people would possibly be much better off, getting a more fair price for their medication instead of paying the th…
Well maybe. One of the reasons that drugs get invented is because people are willing to buy the rights to manufacture and distribute them. If Shkreli, and other people like him, didn't exist the drug might not be there in the first place.
But you ARE obligated not to make it worse.
I can think of lots of places that people make my life worse[1] and that's fine. People raise prices on things I want to buy. I've been fired before. I've been dumped by romantic partners. I've been spurned in various personal or business dealings.
I honestly think that people have a very unusual set of rules that they think should apply to medicine and health care services. They don't see these goods as typical products but as moral totems worthy of special rules.
1. This is not to say that my life is unusually bad. I think these things are pretty typical for most people.
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He didn’t “extort sick poor people”, he extorted insurance companies. If you couldn’t afford his drugs, he was offering them for free.
You do realize that insurance companies have to charge people more money than they spend in order to be profitable, right? Exorbitant drug costs is just another one of the factors that price poor people out of insurance, which is actually a much worse outcome than simply denying access to that specific drug.
Also, the drug he raised the price on was a horrible 50-year-old drug. Shkreli raised the price with the explicit aim of getting funds to research a new drug, with less terrible side-effects.
Cruel and unusual given the crime. Half the sentence of Jeffrey Skilling who destroyed thousands of families. No question in my mind that the judge had it out for him from the get-go.
He really screwed himself over while he was on bail. He probably could have gotten off with what his attorneys wanted (around a year) if he just shut up until after the sentencing was over. But he kept trolling on livestream and twitter and acting like it was a given that he would get off easy. Obviously he was joking around with the Clinton "threat" but he should not have given prosecutors anything to use against hi…
It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than the thing where he extorted sick poor people...which is still fully legal even if the majority of society thinks it shouldn't.
If you make it not a crime to deceive investors and misuse their money, then rich people won't invest their money, they will keep it in vaults.
I consider "a world in which people who don't want to risk prison are still able to make drugs" and "a world in which capital is invested instead of hoarded" to be noble goals.