Guys. Look. This isn't rocket science. Projects are expected to be profitable or not based on their own merits. The fact that developing a third- or fourth-generation antihistamine is expected to be profitable has no impact whatsoever on expectations regarding the profitability of an entirely novel cancer drug.
In fact, when price controls reduce the revenues that can be pulled in for patented drugs, it's the marginally profitable drugs, not the blockbusters, that will be cut. All the red herrings that you like to trot out as examples of pharmaceutical companies "wasting" money will be all that we have left.
I’ll worry about the pharmaceutical companies when they worry more and spend more about actually finding cures for diseases instead of finding a way to make Claritin XZ to replace Claritin XY because it’s patent is running out in a year.
First, companies are working on finding cures for diseases. Second, second-generation antihistamines leave much to be desired, and developing superior alternatives is a valuable project with major quality-of-life implications for allergy sufferers. Third, there were good reasons to believe that administering the active metabolite of loratadine (desloratadine) would produce superior results, as this is exactly what happened with terfenadine, another antihistamine. Fourth, the decision to develop desloratadine was entirely orthogonal to the decision to develop other drugs.
Finally, did you even think about what you're saying? Why would someone pay much more for a new patented drug if it offered no actual benefits over the generic alternative? You do get that developing a new version of a drug doesn't actually extend the old version's patent, right?
Single-payer would be disastrous. Once the US government is paying all the bills, it'll impose price controls, just like every other country with socialized health care. Price controls in the pharmaceutical industry's largest and most profitable market means a dramatic reduction in the returns to new drug development. Which means people suffering and dying diseases that would otherwise have been cured.
Of course, it'll never be possible to pin it conclusively on the socialization of medical care, because there's no control economy to serve as a basis for measuring the decline in new drug developments.
Actually, Obamacare with the mandate is preferable to Obamacare without a mandate, which would be a complete train wreck (and, not at all coincidentally, a hell of a lot more popular). I was using "mandate" as shorthand for a mandate-based scheme.
The mandate is just the handle we're using to overturn the whole thing, since it's the most blatantly unconstitutional part and the only part not allowed under Supreme Court precedent (not to be confused with what's allowed under the actual Constitution).
That's hardly a fair comparison. He responded to your intelligent, civil comment with the respect that you deserved, and he responded to M.A.'s rubbish with...well...personally I thought Koz was unduly charitable.
How interesting that libertarians turned their back on it once a black guy was elected president.
Seriously? As of this morning, you're still bitching about the time you imagined that I accused you of antisemitism despite my repeatedly explaining that I did no such thing, yet you have no problem throwing out cavalier and baseless accusations of racism like this?
I wasn't really intending for "government program" to carry any normative connotations there. I didn't even mean to suggest that use of means-tested government programs might be negatively correlated with dignity. I just don't see that dignity, as I understand the word, has anything to do with material wealth. I'm not at all sure we have the same definition in mind.
The ability to send your kids to a good public school isn’t necessarily something you gained through choices at all.
Sure it is. You choose where to live, and the set of places you can afford to live is a function of other choices. Ideally your school wouldn't be tied to your residential address, but that's the system we have, and it is very much possible to work the system through personal choice.
Dignity, as I understand the term, refers to an intrinsic aspect of one's character or behavior, rather than something you can get from a government program. The way it's being used here suggests to me that you must have something else in mind.
I meant Internet-access-as-perquisite rather than Internet-access-as-legitimate-tool. Granted that those are difficult to separate in practice. Heavy filtering, I guess.
One of the problems I have with the fundamentalist libertarian outlook is that it assumes that people have the time, intellect, information and resources to make optimal decisions in all portions of their life.
It's a good thing you pointed that out to me, because I had no idea I was making that assumption.
It's also a good thing that we put all these decisions in the hands of capable, honest statesmen elected by people who have the time, intellect, information and resources needed to assess the claims of candidates in order to make optimal voting decisions.
I'm not a big fan of minimum labeling requirements, though obviously I do agree that any information provided should be required to be accurate.
My reasoning is that if more detailed labeling is something that consumers demand, food manufacturers will provide it. First one will do so to get a competitive edge, then another will do it to nullify that edge, and pretty soon not having nutrition information is like not having a high school diploma.
To save one of the usual subjects the embarrassment of having to walk back some snark about how libertarians love their theoretical models but don't understand how the real world works, I'll give some examples.
Milk is one good example. There's no requirement that use of rBGH or prophylactic antibiotics be disclosed, but all the brands that don't advertise it on the label, so you know that the others do. Similarly, if the cows are fed exclusively on pasture, that's on the label.
I have a canister of whey protein that gives the amino acid profile. That's not required, but enough consumers care about it, so it's there.
I believe that nutrition labeling was optional in the US prior to 1990, but most manufacturers chose to provide it. Even today, many labels contain more than the minimum required information.
Many fast food restaurants provided brochures with nutritional information upon request years before there was any talk of requiring them to post calorie counts. I'm actually not 100% sure that this wasn't required, but I don't believe it was.
All that said, I don't really see this as a battle worth fighting. There's no real harm done. But let's not trumpet this as some great victory for big government---they were just mandating something that was fairly standard practice already.
When a white person named Bob fucks up, we say Bob is a fuck up.
When a black person named Bob fucks up, we say black people are fuck ups.
Who is "we," kemosabe?
When a white person named George wins the Presidency, we view it as an affirmation of white people.
When a black person named Barack wins the Presidency, we view it as an affirmation of Barack (if even that).
IIRC, Obama's election was very much touted as a victory for black people. And this is quite possibly the first time anyone has ever suggested that George W. Bush might be perceived as a credit to his race.
This is a strawman, Snarky. There are certain baseline expectations people have about a product called hamburger. One is that it be made of ground beef. Another is that it not contain worms or dangerous levels of pathogenic bacteria. To sell something that doesn't meet those expectations and call it "hamburger" without further qualification is fraud. No serious libertarian thinker would argue otherwise.
What we part company with the left is that we don't think that products should be banned outright. Consider casu marzu, a traditional Sardinian cheese infested with maggots. This is an actual product that some people willingly and knowingly eat. It's also illegal in the US, even if you slap a big "WARNING: MAGGOTS UP IN HERE" sticker on it.
Or consider the FDA's policy on experimental drugs and medical prodecures. You can't legally obtain medication or undergo medical procedures that haven't yet completed the years-long process of demonstrating safety and effecticacy to the FDA's satisfaction. Even if you have a an end-stage terminal illness. Drug safety laws kill.
There's an easy solution to this: Relegate the FDA to an advisory role. It gives its stamp of approval to foods and drugs, and consumers may choose to heed that or disregard it at their own risk, but it won't have the power to ban products outright.
Scott, “stay in school” is an unsatisfying answer, especially when many people have access to such horrible schools.
First, let's not forget that those horrible schools are a part of the welfare state.
Second, it doesn't really matter. The value of a high school diploma is that it shows employers that you're not the kind of person who drops out of high school.
On “Cato Lives!”
Kochpuppets!
On “The Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short Libertarian Life”
Guys. Look. This isn't rocket science. Projects are expected to be profitable or not based on their own merits. The fact that developing a third- or fourth-generation antihistamine is expected to be profitable has no impact whatsoever on expectations regarding the profitability of an entirely novel cancer drug.
In fact, when price controls reduce the revenues that can be pulled in for patented drugs, it's the marginally profitable drugs, not the blockbusters, that will be cut. All the red herrings that you like to trot out as examples of pharmaceutical companies "wasting" money will be all that we have left.
"
I’ll worry about the pharmaceutical companies when they worry more and spend more about actually finding cures for diseases instead of finding a way to make Claritin XZ to replace Claritin XY because it’s patent is running out in a year.
First, companies are working on finding cures for diseases. Second, second-generation antihistamines leave much to be desired, and developing superior alternatives is a valuable project with major quality-of-life implications for allergy sufferers. Third, there were good reasons to believe that administering the active metabolite of loratadine (desloratadine) would produce superior results, as this is exactly what happened with terfenadine, another antihistamine. Fourth, the decision to develop desloratadine was entirely orthogonal to the decision to develop other drugs.
Finally, did you even think about what you're saying? Why would someone pay much more for a new patented drug if it offered no actual benefits over the generic alternative? You do get that developing a new version of a drug doesn't actually extend the old version's patent, right?
"
The mandate is the part that pays for the rest of it, and the only truly unpopular part.
Imagine that.
Yeah, that's pretty much why I'm not a democratic fundamentalist.
"
The mandate is the part that pays for the rest of it, and the only truly unpopular part.
Imagine that.
I'm not a democrat. The mandate is the part that pays for the rest of it, and the only truly unpopular part.
Yeah, that's pretty much why I'm not a democratic fundamentalist.
"
Single-payer would be disastrous. Once the US government is paying all the bills, it'll impose price controls, just like every other country with socialized health care. Price controls in the pharmaceutical industry's largest and most profitable market means a dramatic reduction in the returns to new drug development. Which means people suffering and dying diseases that would otherwise have been cured.
Of course, it'll never be possible to pin it conclusively on the socialization of medical care, because there's no control economy to serve as a basis for measuring the decline in new drug developments.
"
Actually, Obamacare with the mandate is preferable to Obamacare without a mandate, which would be a complete train wreck (and, not at all coincidentally, a hell of a lot more popular). I was using "mandate" as shorthand for a mandate-based scheme.
The mandate is just the handle we're using to overturn the whole thing, since it's the most blatantly unconstitutional part and the only part not allowed under Supreme Court precedent (not to be confused with what's allowed under the actual Constitution).
"
The mandate is the lesser of the evils, compared to outright socialization, but it's still an evil.
"
That's hardly a fair comparison. He responded to your intelligent, civil comment with the respect that you deserved, and he responded to M.A.'s rubbish with...well...personally I thought Koz was unduly charitable.
"
How interesting that libertarians turned their back on it once a black guy was elected president.
Seriously? As of this morning, you're still bitching about the time you imagined that I accused you of antisemitism despite my repeatedly explaining that I did no such thing, yet you have no problem throwing out cavalier and baseless accusations of racism like this?
On “Inequality, Freedom, and Dignity”
I wasn't really intending for "government program" to carry any normative connotations there. I didn't even mean to suggest that use of means-tested government programs might be negatively correlated with dignity. I just don't see that dignity, as I understand the word, has anything to do with material wealth. I'm not at all sure we have the same definition in mind.
The ability to send your kids to a good public school isn’t necessarily something you gained through choices at all.
Sure it is. You choose where to live, and the set of places you can afford to live is a function of other choices. Ideally your school wouldn't be tied to your residential address, but that's the system we have, and it is very much possible to work the system through personal choice.
"
I actually think he makes good points once in a while
[Citation Needed]
"
Dignity, as I understand the term, refers to an intrinsic aspect of one's character or behavior, rather than something you can get from a government program. The way it's being used here suggests to me that you must have something else in mind.
"
What exactly does "dignity" mean, in this context?
"
Rather, you misunderstand it enough to see the humor in it. Anything can be made to look ridiculous through gross misrepresentation.
"
I meant Internet-access-as-perquisite rather than Internet-access-as-legitimate-tool. Granted that those are difficult to separate in practice. Heavy filtering, I guess.
"
Too bad that got struck down in Citizens United.
Never would have gone for that whole "free speech" thing if you knew it would apply to others, eh?
"
Look, you clearly don't understand what libertarianism is, so maybe you should stop pretending that you're qualified to critique it.
"
One of the problems I have with the fundamentalist libertarian outlook is that it assumes that people have the time, intellect, information and resources to make optimal decisions in all portions of their life.
It's a good thing you pointed that out to me, because I had no idea I was making that assumption.
It's also a good thing that we put all these decisions in the hands of capable, honest statesmen elected by people who have the time, intellect, information and resources needed to assess the claims of candidates in order to make optimal voting decisions.
"
I'm not a big fan of minimum labeling requirements, though obviously I do agree that any information provided should be required to be accurate.
My reasoning is that if more detailed labeling is something that consumers demand, food manufacturers will provide it. First one will do so to get a competitive edge, then another will do it to nullify that edge, and pretty soon not having nutrition information is like not having a high school diploma.
To save one of the usual subjects the embarrassment of having to walk back some snark about how libertarians love their theoretical models but don't understand how the real world works, I'll give some examples.
Milk is one good example. There's no requirement that use of rBGH or prophylactic antibiotics be disclosed, but all the brands that don't advertise it on the label, so you know that the others do. Similarly, if the cows are fed exclusively on pasture, that's on the label.
I have a canister of whey protein that gives the amino acid profile. That's not required, but enough consumers care about it, so it's there.
I believe that nutrition labeling was optional in the US prior to 1990, but most manufacturers chose to provide it. Even today, many labels contain more than the minimum required information.
Many fast food restaurants provided brochures with nutritional information upon request years before there was any talk of requiring them to post calorie counts. I'm actually not 100% sure that this wasn't required, but I don't believe it was.
All that said, I don't really see this as a battle worth fighting. There's no real harm done. But let's not trumpet this as some great victory for big government---they were just mandating something that was fairly standard practice already.
"
When a white person named Bob fucks up, we say Bob is a fuck up.
When a black person named Bob fucks up, we say black people are fuck ups.
Who is "we," kemosabe?
When a white person named George wins the Presidency, we view it as an affirmation of white people.
When a black person named Barack wins the Presidency, we view it as an affirmation of Barack (if even that).
IIRC, Obama's election was very much touted as a victory for black people. And this is quite possibly the first time anyone has ever suggested that George W. Bush might be perceived as a credit to his race.
"
This is a strawman, Snarky. There are certain baseline expectations people have about a product called hamburger. One is that it be made of ground beef. Another is that it not contain worms or dangerous levels of pathogenic bacteria. To sell something that doesn't meet those expectations and call it "hamburger" without further qualification is fraud. No serious libertarian thinker would argue otherwise.
What we part company with the left is that we don't think that products should be banned outright. Consider casu marzu, a traditional Sardinian cheese infested with maggots. This is an actual product that some people willingly and knowingly eat. It's also illegal in the US, even if you slap a big "WARNING: MAGGOTS UP IN HERE" sticker on it.
Or consider the FDA's policy on experimental drugs and medical prodecures. You can't legally obtain medication or undergo medical procedures that haven't yet completed the years-long process of demonstrating safety and effecticacy to the FDA's satisfaction. Even if you have a an end-stage terminal illness. Drug safety laws kill.
There's an easy solution to this: Relegate the FDA to an advisory role. It gives its stamp of approval to foods and drugs, and consumers may choose to heed that or disregard it at their own risk, but it won't have the power to ban products outright.
"
These may seem like small things, but then again, how much do you value your access to the internet at work?
Negatively, actually. For me it was always more of an unwanted distraction than a valued perquisite.
"
Scott, “stay in school” is an unsatisfying answer, especially when many people have access to such horrible schools.
First, let's not forget that those horrible schools are a part of the welfare state.
Second, it doesn't really matter. The value of a high school diploma is that it shows employers that you're not the kind of person who drops out of high school.
On “How to Privatize”
Damn straight. Show me a Blu-Ray player that's kept working for 20 years.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.