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The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

esquire.com

181–190 of 259 posts

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#181
post #157

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." —Balzac (apocryphal)

Is Warren Buffett's fortune a crime as well?

Warren Buffett has made his money through a few businesses that aren't quite in line with his folksy image.

For example, his Mobile Home Empire: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/min... empire-clayton-homes/

Berkshire Hathaway have the largest single stake in Wells Fargo: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-10-03/wells-f...

And here's a charming bit about one of his Kidney related investments and some of their practices: http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/15/investing/davita-dialysis-jo...

Finally, an interesting column in the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/fd27245a-9790-11e7-a652-cde3f882d...

One question stands - can you ethically deploy the amount of capital Buffett & Berkshire Hathaway have? I'm not sure.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#182
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Warren Buffett's fortune a crime as well?

There is definitely some tax evasion in there somewhere, plus insurance practices and all the free money seems pretty messed up but maybe not a crime. Also lots of lobbying state governments for favorable regulations. The quote is sort of non falsifiable... It's a hidden crime we're talking about after all.

LOL. There isn't a sniff of any tax evasion or crime to Buffett's wealth. I'm also pretty doubtful he's ever lobbied anyone for any personal advantage, remember this is a guy who has publicly lobbied for higher taxes on the wealthy, including himself.

"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it." - Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is just a guy who believed in the power of compounding from an early age, lived below his means so he could invest every dime possible, and became the world's best at investing in businesses.

The amazing thing about Warren is that if he had wanted to be worth far more than he is, he easily could have been. He ran an investment partnership for 13 years where he earned 25% of the profits, and averaged 40% per year just investing in the stock market. Then he switched to running Berkshire Hathaway, where anyone can call up their broker and buy shares in to have Warren manage your money nearly for free (his salary is $100,000 per year. No. Really). If he had kept his profit share arrangement (and easily could have) he'd easily be worth over $200B today.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#183
post #63

... Medical Advertising Hall of Fame... This is a real thing.[1] They really give out awards for medical advertising. Typical writeup: "Ambien dominated the insomnia market like few products ever have. Our goal was to introduce a new way of thinking about sleep, and to introduce Rozerem as a new option for the treatment of insomnia. In order to take down Goliath, Rozerem needed to spend BIG. $200 million in broadcast…

Ick! This reinforces my belief that direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs should be illegal.

It is illegal in India. As a result, in all my life here I cannot recall seeing ads for any medicine stronger than aspirin.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#184
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…

They achieved what Escobar couldn't: respectability on a mountain of skulls.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#185

It should simply be illegal to advertise prescription medications. "Ask your doctor about Klonopin today" "Ask your doctor about coronary artery bypass grafting today" One of these sounds completely ridiculous, and the other sounds commonplace. They should both sound ridiculous, because they're both equally completely ridiculous. The idea that the patient should be influencing the treatment decisions of medical profe…

The idea that the patient should be influencing their own treatment decisions is absurd?

The idea that the patient should be influencing treatment BASED ON WHAT THEY SAW ON TV is absurd.

It's like you didn't even read what you responded to. What is this, reddit?

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ick! This reinforces my belief that direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs should be illegal.

As disgusting as this story is, freedom of speech isn't a freedom if it magically disappears because a collection of people say it instead of a single person. I'd much rather have a raucous marketplace of ideas and opinions that let people choose for themselves, over having the government make their medical decisions. For example, thousands of deaths have been attributed to the tough drug approval requirements in the…

Deliberate deception is not protected speech. These people deliberately lied and created the most lethal epidemic of drug abuse in our country’s history. Don’t defend their right to do it. You cheapen the notion of free speech when you do.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#187
post #74

I was on Oxy for about a month after smashing one of my vertibraes into pieces in a climbing accident, I was prescribed more than three times as much. I walked through hell to get out of that crap; nothing else I've encountered even comes close, including heroine and cocaine. There are several natural, less addictive and less harmful methods for treating chronic pain; cannabis, mushrooms and meditation among others.…

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…

Relevant excerpts from the linked article:

> when it doesn’t last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.

> Even before OxyContin went on the market, clinical trials showed many patients weren’t getting 12 hours of relief.

> OxyContin’s market dominance and its high price — up to hundreds of dollars per bottle — hinge on its 12-hour duration. Without that, it offers little advantage over less expensive painkillers.

> Purdue tells doctors to prescribe stronger doses, not more frequent ones, when patients complain that OxyContin doesn’t last 12 hours.

> Research shows that the more potent the dose of an opioid such as OxyContin, the greater the possibility of overdose and death.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#188
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Warren Buffett's fortune a crime as well?

Warren Buffett has made his money through a few businesses that aren't quite in line with his folksy image. For example, his Mobile Home Empire: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/min... empire-clayton-homes/ Berkshire Hathaway have the largest single stake in Wells Fargo: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-10-03/wells-f... And here's a charming bit about one of his Kidney related in…

A follow up question would be, is he personally running the companies which you have mentioned and doing those "crimes" or covering up for them or is it the people who are actually running those companies doing it?

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#189
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…

In the context of Hegel's dialectic, my understanding is that "undesirable" would be the synthesis of "bad" and "something that tempers the badness," which could simply be "low intensity." Said another way, I don't think your question is all that valid, it's like asking "Why is something pink, if it is not red?" Which if you ask me sounds like a pondering from a pre-Socratic also-ran, and at any rate the question can be dispensed by saying that pink is a less intense red. All in all, they're all value judgments, so the good-faith answer is: like all value-judgements, it's because the perceiver says so.

I’m interested in digging at the normatives.

Assuming this isn't to indicate a search for consensus where there isn't any, the "normative" is that someone donating $1 can't make these demands, so maybe a better question would be why do rich people demand namings, and could it be merely a personality flaw to force people to use their name to refer to something oriented around their donation (building, fund, etc.)? That is, rather than right or wrong, can we ask whether it's selfish? Immature? Something else? Fire up your dialectic if you like.

How ridiculous would it be to create "The Barney Google Fund for Helping People Reach a State of Getting Things Named After Themselves?" I'd say if you think, "say, that's not a bad idea!" then you probably don't see a problem with donations purchasing naming rights. Plain and simple, no dialectic necessary.

But we can come up with reasons not to do something all day. So, assuming for simplicity that naming is optional and the money would be given regardless, in what ways are named donations a good thing? I find this approach more readily exposes the details.

Re: The Family Making Billions from the Opioid Crisis

#190
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Warren Buffett's fortune a crime as well?

Warren Buffett has made his money through a few businesses that aren't quite in line with his folksy image. For example, his Mobile Home Empire: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/min... empire-clayton-homes/ Berkshire Hathaway have the largest single stake in Wells Fargo: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-10-03/wells-f... And here's a charming bit about one of his Kidney related in…

LOL. Those are all clearly legal businesses. Warren's job is to find the highest return investments for his investors, not make fine ethical distinctions. And still, he refused to buy tobacco companies 40-50 years ago even though they perfectly fit his criteria for great investments.

In the case of Wells Fargo, Warren invested nearly 30 years ago, because it was a great business. 10% shareholders don't get to hire and fire management, or even pick board members. He's been very critical publicly of management and the board, going so far as to suggesting directors return 5 years of pay as recompense for their failures. He's also sold shares, which he almost never does in existing investments.

Maybe Davita is a loser, if so it won't be his first. He's been great at detecting management bullshit during his career, but he's not perfect, he has no supernatural lie detector. Guaranteed he didn't pick Davita because he thought they were misleading patients. Aside from the ethics, that's a horrible investment, you can't build a lasting business on fraud.

As far whether Buffett can ethically deploy the amount of capital Berkshire Hathaway has, it's a hugely silly question. BRK has $250 Billion in net capital. The S&P 500 comprises the largest 500 companies on the NYSE & NASDAQ exchanges, which have a total market value of over $20 Trillion. There are nearly 6,000 more public companies on those two exchanges alone, and that doesn't count thousands of companies on foreign exchanges, and tens of thousands of private companies Berkshire could purchase. Or the thousands of bonds and other fixed income investments that have billion dollar capacities.

In total his universe of possible investments is likely close to $100 Trillion, having capital comprising 1/4000th of that universe doesn't require making any ethical shortcuts. Buffet's large capital base is a hindrance to his returns but he doesn't care and never has. He no longer can achieve the 40% annualized returns of the Buffett Partnerships, or the 25% annualized returns of Berkshire when it was far smaller. But he's still beating the market by a substantial amount, and that's all he cares about.

Go read Barbarians at the Gate. Buffett was quoted about what a great business tobacco companies were. "It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty." But he passed on an opportunity to make a bunch of money off the RJR Nabisco takeover. "I'm wealthy enough where I don't need to own a tobacco company and deal with the consequences of public ownership".

And that was the 80s. He's far wealthier now. Some Buffett quotes.

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

"It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction."

"The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body"

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