People struggle to cook food for themselves. Just saying.
An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
161–170 of 286 posts
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
the US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. Argubly regulation is the problem we're in this mess. Do you think an epipen would cost $600 if there weren't a Government granted monopoly? We have two parties who love the current amount of regulations on competition - you need to go to an AMA approved medical school to become a doctor, there aren't H1Bs fo…
Regulations can put pressure on prices (and if you look at epipens in particular, part of the regulations allowing the increase of their price have nothing to do with monopoly and a lot to do with getting policy placed into areas where organizations are required to keep an epipen on hand by regulation...). But in terms of overall effect, one can't ignore other nations which pay much lower prices for healthcare with b…
So I don't think one can generically fault "regulation" for a poorly performing health market in the US.
You're absolutely right, however, I do think the worst parts of our medical system exist as consequences of regulation.
The mandate that emergency rooms treat anyone who enters is onerous and there's no free lunch, paying customers are stuck with the bill.
The licencing system isn't optimal for cost effective care.
There's a lot to be desired for people who favor supply side solutions to expensive problems.
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#163WHAT a fucking badass
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#164Interesting assertion from the FAQ on Michael Laufer's website[1]: > Q: What about quality control? A: It’s important to know that making small quantities of a chemical is vastly different than making it on an industrial scale. The chemistry isn’t even the same. This is a big reason why chemical engineering is an entire field of study. With smaller reactions, while you do have to be more precise in your measurements…
Large scale production has very different requirements than small scale synthesis in the lab. Getting rid of heat is much easier on a small scale, and not all methods that work on a small scale can be scaled up.
It's a ridiculous answer to the question of quality control, though. It doesn't really have anything to do with that.
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
the US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. Argubly regulation is the problem we're in this mess. Do you think an epipen would cost $600 if there weren't a Government granted monopoly? We have two parties who love the current amount of regulations on competition - you need to go to an AMA approved medical school to become a doctor, there aren't H1Bs fo…
>Argubly regulation is the problem we're in this mess. Do you think an epipen would cost $600 if there weren't a Government granted monopoly? All property is government intervention. And property is good. Because property is capitalism, and capitalism is God's will. /s
I sometimes feel like "free-market" types are actually incapable of understanding this point. The idea that markets and property exist as some sort of independent, empirical objects is baked so deeply into their ideology that it's almost as if they lack the symbolic vocabulary to even conceptualize the idea that property itself is created by regulations.
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#166DIY pharmaceuticals will never be safe, unless the recipes are regulated, at which point there's no point to them anyway.
Imagine this situation: you Google for a recipe for a drug, and find two different recipes. Recipe A is the real one, while Recipe B will kill you instantly. The troll who posted Recipe B went around the internet claiming that Recipe B is real and Recipe A will kill you. There's no authoritative source to consult, because the actual recipe is patented. How do you know which is real?
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because I'm going to trust the kid's medicine down the street with no oversight? Isn't this kind of like the day 3D printers become affordable, mass manufacturing is done?
If 3D printers were not just affordable but infallible, yes. It would be easier to have a bioreactor bubbling away to synthesize your pharmaceuticals than to try and make a lab-in-a-box kit that was equally robust (more like brewing kombucha in your kitchen than Breaking Bad for Dummies), but either way you still need to assay the results...
> If 3D printers were not just affordable but infallible, yes.
Infallible and easy to use. But you still need to buy the raw materials, unless we're talking Star Trek energy-matter conversion, which isn't on the horizon.
Otherwise, why would an average consumer think that buying the raw material and feeding it to their 3D printer is that much more convenient than just stopping by Walmart or ordering off Amazon? And would it even be cheaper, since the consumer loses the economy of scale in their individualized production?
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#168Sci-fi is increasingly struggling to keep up with reality.
Here's a novel with a similar premise (but more SF setting) that isn't even out yet: https://www.tor.com/2017/09/18/excerpts-annalee-newitz-auton...
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#169Honest question: What does it even mean to be an anarchist these days? What is the default "anarchist"? Because Wikipedia isn't really helping.
The definition I use is 'a system lacking a state or ruling elite.' If you want to include anarcho capitalism you probably want a more general definition though. I think I derived this definition from David Graeber's work. Also some people choose a definition that emphasizes the process rather than the features. Those kinds of definitions are like 'removing unjust hierarchy or domination' or something to that nature.
I would argue that definition is far too broad. I would define anarchism as a society in which the amount of power that any person can have over another person is severely limited. Not only would government have to be greatly weakened, but property rights would have to be greatly weakened, corporations, churches, political parties and all kinds of other organizations would have to be broken up and democratized.
Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds
#170> “To deny someone access to a lifesaving medication is murder,” he said. And “an act of theft [of intellectual property] to prevent an act of murder is morally acceptable.” I agree with the conclusion, but for a different reason. "Theft" is the wrong way to think about IP. The economic function of IP is not to protect producers from consumers, but to protect producers from free-riding by other producers.[1] Thus, fo…
> The economic function of IP is not to protect producers from consumers, but to protect producers from free-riding by other producers. The function of IP, from a government point of view, is to promote the useful arts and science and to ultimately make them available to the public after a limited amount of protection to the creator. Otherwise, there's no purpose in the government being involved in enforcing monopoli…
Promotion of the useful arts and sciences is the language the framers used, but the framers didn't know much about economics. The economic function of IP is to address the market distortion that could result if people were permitted to free-ride on the capital-intensive R&D or other people.
The economic definition is also far more useful. Who knows what specific policies will result in "promoting the useful arts and sciences." Preventing free-riding is a more concrete issue that can be addressed with specific policies.