Earlier quoted context omitted.
R&D and quality control provides benefits to patients, and it is critically important to figure out how to reduce the cost of R&D and quality control so we can do a lot more of them. That's what Four Thieves Vinegar and other biohackers are doing. Regulatory compliance doesn't provide benefits to patients; it's a deadweight loss. As you are presumably aware, to a significant extent, the reason that regulatory complia…
Nothing I said above disagrees with the fact that many pharma are indeed doing what you call "monopoly rent extraction". I think all of those drugs are overpriced for non-economic reasons. Regulatory compliance, for example, with the FDA approval process, isn't a deadweight loss; it's a process that reduces the risk a dangerous drug will be given to the public. It's mostly costly due to incompetence and bureaucracy,…
People don't have to be evilly plotting when their incentives are set up to empower only people who do evil things. Don't forget that, in the US, we're talking about the same regulatory regime that rejected magainin, hasn't brought a new class of antibiotics to market in half a century, has outlawed the flavored vape liquids that help people quit smoking, won't allow you to buy a blood sugar meter until after you have diabetes, prohibited covid testing at the beginning of the pandemic, delayed covid vaccination until five or six months after China was doing mass vaccination, and routinely cuts off opiate addicts cold turkey. It's a Kafkaesque farce, as you know very well, and quite possibly the primary cause of death in the US today.