Justice has served. My fate on America as modern democracy increased +10 exp.
Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
321–330 of 446 posts
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Malaria person: please wpietri, help me. wpietri: No Sick person: please shkreli, help me. shkreli: Sure, for $500 At least in the second scenario the person is being offered an option under which they get help. It sounds a lot better than the first scenario for the afflicted.
2012 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2017 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2012 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. Daraprim: Sure, for US$13.5 2017 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. shkreli: Sure, for US$750 You see the difference? With me, they stayed at the same level of help, none. In the second, he purposefully profited from the help they were getting from Darapri…
How is dwild still not strictly worse from a utilitarian point of view?
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#323To give some background on how his sentencing increased so dramatically, initially he was convicted but since no one lost any money his sentencing guidelines were 0-12 months(most likely no jail time since it was his first offence). As a general rule of thumb in federal fraud cases sentencing is primarily determined by the what's called the "loss amount" of the crime in question. But a couple weeks ago the judge deci…
> initially he was convicted but since no one lost any money his sentencing guidelines were (...)
So.. If I try to rob a bank and fail and no money is stolen, then the sentence should be reduced?
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Same thing. Both voluntary business transactions subject to the same rules as any other voluntarily exchange. No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. I know a lot of people see this differently but I don't think they have an ethical leg to stand on. When it gets down to it they have no particular rule for fair pricing other than "that feels too high to me."
There are multiple cases where someone can be obligated to sell for a particular price. Eminent domain is the most obvious example but Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Licensing [1] is more applicable. Patent laws creates a temporary monopoly. This monopoly needs to be regulated to prevent abuse. Avoiding extortionist pricing of patented medications seems like a reasonable area for regulation. 1. https://en.wikipedi…
But the patent on daraprim expired decades ago. It was a single source drug because there wasn’t enough money in the market for another manufacturer to make a competing alternative. There are something like 8,000 prescriptions a year.
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#325He 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...
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.
Madoff went to prison, but then he foolishly made rich people the victims of his ponzi not the economy at large.
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because someone, business or person doesn't want to continue a relationship with you, doesn't mean they are doing you harm. Harm is not doing something you don't like. Harm is purposely spilling nails and glass on the public road so that you can sell people more tires. If you are trying to take the pure libertarian stance, that whatever the free market dictates is ok, I am actually fine with that. But you can't…
There were no patents in play for any of the medications Shkreli's companies were selling.
You are right about that. He is really only protected by the high cost of F.D.A. approval for generic drugs.
In many ways Shkreli showed us the flaws and hypocrisy in our system, and helped show us what we need to do to create a better one. But I don't think that was his intended purpose.
And it doesn't change my original argument.... Not giving to charity, is not the same thing as profiting from the exploration of vulnerable people, even if both things are technically legal.
Edit: Rayiner, I can't reply to your comment but your analogy is completely wrong.
It's like a Fire Department used to put out house fires for $50. And Martin identified one street on the outskirts of town that vulnerable, and he purchased the contract to protect that street from the Fire Department... and now charges them $10,000 for putting out fires.
It's not 'the same' as the guy who does nothing. He didn't INVENT helping them, like every one of these crazy analogies suggest. They were being helped much better before he got there and he made the situation a lot worse for them. You can't ignore that context and set it up as a choice between "Not being helped" or "Being helped for an exorbitant price".
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In other words, getting rich from increasing the amount of misery in this world. This is the fallacy. He didn't get rich from increasing the amount of misery in the world . He didn't give people toxoplasmosis. He got rich from not doing something he could do ( i.e. sell drugs more cheaply) to decrease the amount of misery. Which is the exact same thing you do when you buy a Macbook Pro instead of donating the money…
Making it harder for patients to get treatment definitely increases the amount of misery in the world. You don't have to be the toxoplasma gondii parasite to make life miserable for a lot of people. It's enough if you're the other kind of parasite who makes the treatment orders of magnitude more expensive, just for personal gain. > fallacy ROTFL - this is like talking about cherries with someone who can's see the col…
It's amazing to watch the amount of mental contortions you're going through. I guess it's very important for you to maintain the consistency of your current worldview, and seeing the likes of Shkreli in a negative light is an integral part of that. Ayn Rand would be proud.
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Martin never existed, those poor people would possibly be much better off 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 wors…
> If Shkreli, and other people like him, didn't exist the drug might not be there in the first place. Right, and the law grants a limited term monopoly for novel pharmaceutical compounds to encourage innovation. In this case, the patent for Daraprim had long since expired. What Martin Shkreli did was acquire the marketing and distribution rights for Daraprim, raise the price to $75,000/month, and then withdraw all ph…
The part you’re missing is that nobody else bothered to release a competing generic for all these years because there was no money in the market.
And, exactly as you’d expect the market to work, after the price hikes a company did release a generic alternative.
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#329Cruel 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.
As a quick first pass at this, it looks like Shkreli was convicted of 2 counts of securities fraud (15 USC § 78j) and 1 count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud (18 USC § 1343) [0][1]. According to the US Sentencing Guidelines[2] §2B1.1, each offense of securities fraud carries, conservatively, 6 points, plus let's say 4 additional points under §2B1.1(19) for being an officer or broker, which it's my understanding he…
Excuse me, the first statue should be 18 USC § 1348, not 15 USC.
Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were no patents in play for any of the medications Shkreli's companies were selling.
You are right about that. He is really only protected by the high cost of F.D.A. approval for generic drugs. In many ways Shkreli showed us the flaws and hypocrisy in our system, and helped show us what we need to do to create a better one. But I don't think that was his intended purpose. And it doesn't change my original argument.... Not giving to charity, is not the same thing as profiting from the exploration of v…
He’s not protected by that either—Imprimis released a competing generic shortly after the price hikes. All Shkreli did was identify a mispriced drug, and profit during the short duration it took for the market to correct itself.
You’re begging the question: what is “exploitation?” Is it “exploitation” to make money from helping someone? If so, why is that worse than not helping someone at all?
It’s like saying the guy who charges $10,000 to put the fire out on your house is worse than the guy who doesn’t do anything.