Live data from Hacker News

An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

statnews.com

281–286 of 286 posts

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#281
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition can enter but the barriers are too high - even without any government protection remaining on the generics in question. But that's the whole point -- what is causing the barriers to be so high? Regulatory capture isn't just patents. Drug companies like the fact that a would-be competitor has to pay millions of dollars in regulatory compliance costs to enter the market. Because it should cost them $1 to…

Those costs don't go to zero without compliance - there would either be costs to manufacture with sufficient medical quality or people would be getting shoddy drugs (which is a human cost). Blackmarket drugs get cut or replaced or just have random terrible things mixed into it all the time so I am skeptical of zero-compliance cost drugs.

Compliance costs can be low without being ineffective. You can buy a bag of spinach for $2 and yet so few of them are infected with salmonella that when it does happen it's a huge scandal.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem very strongly invested in this point, which is strange considering how easily refuted it is: Property existed long before third-party regulation. Rather than ownership being enforced by a third party with monopoly on violence, it was enforced by the threat of escalating violence from the property owners themselves. Eg. You take one goat from my herd and refuse to give it back, and we are now at war. Result:…

It's interesting that you start off attempting to refute me but end up demonstrating my point. The cultural conditions in early agricultural societies, before the development of the city-state, were insufficient to support a strong rule of law, and hence, property as we now know it. Property and personal possession are not the same thing. Certainly, individuals claimed ownership of goods, and barter occurred, but these were far from the only or even the dominant modes of economic activity in early agricultural societies, which also incorporated gift economies and cooperative sharing of labor and goods. By interpreting past economic systems through the lens of capitalism, you are proving my point: that the defenders of the free market commit the fallacy of reifying markets and property, as we now define them, as some sort of inevitable emergent attribute of human society, when there have been many different economic systems throughout the history of human civilization, none of which fully correspond to the abstract conception of the free market as discussed by economists.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#283
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know "where the fuck this gang banger garbage" is coming from but there'd be a lot less of it if we stopped giving them get out of jail free cards in the form of emergency healthcare. You know what's offensive? I pay more than my fair share healthcare expenses and I don't get better access to care than lazy people. You know what's stupid? Health insurers can't adjust my policy based on my gender, but auto ins…

Again, you assume these gunshot victims were gang members. You don't know shit about these gunshot victims but in your mind "gunshot victim = gang member". Do you honestly really think that everyone who has been shot and taken to a hospital ER is a gang member? Honestly, really? No one who's been shot isn't in a gang? If your answer is "yes, every gunshot victim is a gang member" then you're a real prize moron, no tw…

No, I think people who look like gang members who have gun shot wounds are probably gang members.

Neck tattoos, chains, bad attitude, won't tell the police who shot them = probable gang member

Wearing a suit, eager to talk to the police = probably not a gang member.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#284
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you assume these gunshot victims were gang members. You don't know shit about these gunshot victims but in your mind "gunshot victim = gang member". Do you honestly really think that everyone who has been shot and taken to a hospital ER is a gang member? Honestly, really? No one who's been shot isn't in a gang? If your answer is "yes, every gunshot victim is a gang member" then you're a real prize moron, no tw…

No, I think people who look like gang members who have gun shot wounds are probably gang members. Neck tattoos, chains, bad attitude, won't tell the police who shot them = probable gang member Wearing a suit, eager to talk to the police = probably not a gang member.

YOU. DO. NOT. KNOW. WHAT. THESE. GUNSHOT. VICTIMS. LOOKED. LIKE.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND???????

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#285
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think people who look like gang members who have gun shot wounds are probably gang members. Neck tattoos, chains, bad attitude, won't tell the police who shot them = probable gang member Wearing a suit, eager to talk to the police = probably not a gang member.

YOU. DO. NOT. KNOW. WHAT. THESE. GUNSHOT. VICTIMS. LOOKED. LIKE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND???????

We're talking about two separate things -

I'm talking about gun shot victims who look like gang members.

You're talking about people you've seen. If those people don't look like gang bangers, that's fine, then they can get help.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#286
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you assume these gunshot victims were gang members. You don't know shit about these gunshot victims but in your mind "gunshot victim = gang member". Do you honestly really think that everyone who has been shot and taken to a hospital ER is a gang member? Honestly, really? No one who's been shot isn't in a gang? If your answer is "yes, every gunshot victim is a gang member" then you're a real prize moron, no tw…

No, I think people who look like gang members who have gun shot wounds are probably gang members. Neck tattoos, chains, bad attitude, won't tell the police who shot them = probable gang member Wearing a suit, eager to talk to the police = probably not a gang member.

So what if they're gang members? Does that mean it's OK to sentence them to death? Take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.
Post reply on HN