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Medicine that costs $1 to make raised in price from $13.50 to $750.00
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August.
CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments. The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems.
After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution.
Cost of Daraprim Medication Raised By Over 50 Times
BBC is reporting on a massive price hike of an essential drug used by AIDS patients:
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August. CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments.
The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems. After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution. "We needed to turn a profit on this drug," Mr Shkreli told Bloomberg TV. "The companies before us were just giving it away almost." On Twitter, Mr Shkreli mocked several users who questioned the company's decision, calling one reporter "a moron".
Why not switch to a generic pyrimethamine tablet? They don't exist right now, according to the New York Times (story includes examples of other recent price hikes):
With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim's distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.
The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.
The drug is also used to treat malaria and appears on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. Toxoplasmosis infections are a feline gift to the world.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 22 2015, @07:58PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:03PM
With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim's distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.
I don't understand this fully; maybe there is more information in the article. So it's harder to get the samples, but I am assuming that with price hikes like this it is well worth somebody's while to make the expenditures required to get ahold of this, test it, and duplicate it and get a generic drug to the market. I can't see how "harder" equals "no generics available."
Now if the government is assisting in making it harder, that needs to stop immediately. For example, if the government is overriding First Sale doctrine here so that people can't buy the pills and turn around and sell them to a generic drug company for analysis. For that matter, requiring a prescription makes it harder for drugs to get, so dropping that requirement would also help.
All in all a higher price should function as a signal for competitors to swoop in and, motivated purely by greed, increase the supply of this crucial medication ... except in the presence of artificial barriers to entry created by government force such as patents (which in my opinion should be flagrantly disregarded just as surely as "whites only" laws).
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:36PM
Not sure why you bolded this part, or even bothered typing it, other than to inform everyone of your bias, because the summary is clear that no such artificial barriers exist:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:57PM
Maybe not in this case, but there are many patents that exist and hinder competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:08AM
And those have exactly what to do with the topic at hand?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:20PM
I was also confused in writing my part of the summary. The sampling issue doesn't seem like an insurmountable barrier.
My interpretation is that when the company was selling at $13.50, there was no incentive for other manufacturers to step in and make a generic version of a niche trademarked drug. Now with the sudden 5000% price increase, generic manufacturers are unprepared to step in, and patients are screwed in the meantime. I assume that those drug manufacturers need to acquire samples of the drug to compare their versions to and ensure FDA approval. The NYT story claims that controlled distribution is a way to thwart generics.
From NYT:
It doesn't look like anyone will die because of this, because doctors can badger the company to get charity access to the drug. But some patients will be hurt.
The situation is a failure of both free market principles and government regulation. Regulations (safety standards rather than patents) make it harder but not impossible to make a generic version of the drug, but the market can't quickly adapt to a situation where the monopoly making a low-demand, low-cost drug jacks up the price from reasonable levels to over 50 times more. With future technologies like "chemical printing", maybe it would be harder to pull off the price increase for such a cheap drug, but in today's world you need to pay the initial costs of starting production and meet regulatory concerns.
I want to know what it will cost for generic competitors to set up dedicated production lines for pyrimethamine. Even if they made every batch of tablets on demand and shipped them directly to the customers, while increasing the price to cover initial costs to start making the drug, I bet the price would come far under $750 per dose.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:32PM
I assume that those drug manufacturers need to acquire samples of the drug to compare their versions to and ensure FDA approval.
And yet the FDA has already approved it. Anybody should be able to sell an identical chemical. But it sounds like the requirements are much more onorous:
I think it is slightly more convoluted than that. You could make a similar generic, but in order to sell it you must conduct a study [thefreedictionary.com] that proves your drug is equivalent to the one you wish to replace. However in order to conduct the trail I think you need a control group that would take the original medication... which is priced so ridiculous it will not be worth it to run the trail if you plan to sell the new drug cheaply yourself. Plus even if you could pay for the supply, these schmucks would probably claim they cannot provide you with sufficient doses because of "shortage."
source [soylentnews.org]
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday September 25 2015, @11:07AM
Other Pharma companies are not going to jump in and invest all the money needed to produce and test the drug, and get FDA (and worldwide) approval to release in all the various markets, when Turing can simply drop the price back down to 13.50 again where it won't be profitable for a generic to make.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:06PM
More to the point, isn't the patent supposed to be all a person of average skill in the field needs to replicate the invention?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:00PM
> More to the point, isn't the patent supposed to be all a person of average skill in the field needs to replicate the invention?
No. The specific formulation in the branded version is rarely specified in the patent. Remember, patents are written to be as broad and generic as possible in order to lockdown as much as they possibly can. If you spell out all the specifics of what you actually bring to market, then you've limited yourself to those specifics and somebody else may be able to come up with something close enough to work, but different enough to get around the patent. An overly simplified example: packaging it in doses that are half the size but the patient could just take 2 of.
Frequently those details make a big difference in efficacy, so generics try to copy the exact formulation and even packaging as the branded version in order to be truly interchangeable.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:12AM
A patent, at least under the laws of around 1955, was supposed to contain sufficient information that one "skilled in the art" could reproduce the patented invention. That was the basis for the agreement of the state granting a limited (in time, etc.) monopoly to the inventor on the practice of the invention.
Perhaps the laws have changed. But I don't think so.
OTOH, even back as far as 1940 the requirement for revealing the invention was not realistically enforced. So while it's a theoretical requirement, it's not an actual requirement. IIRC people have gotten pattents on FTL spaceship drives, and I'm rather sure that nobody has ever revealed how to make such a thing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:33AM
> A patent, at least under the laws of around 1955, was supposed to contain sufficient information that one "skilled in the art" could reproduce the patented invention.
I don't know if you are playing dumb or what. Drug patents are sufficient to reproduce the raw chemical. They just aren't sufficient to reproduce the specific product delivered to the market. Just like a theoretical patent on the wheel would not need to list the exact number of spokes, nor the the exact diameter of the wheels the WheelCo sells.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:41AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:09PM
That's a valid point, but it doesn't invalidate the point I was making. Patents often are not explicit. They are intentionally written to be a vague as can be gotten away with partially so that the claims can be as wide as possible. It's not clear that the intention is really to prevent others from being able to copy the work ... most of the time. As you point out, that is more properly addressed by a trade secret. But since they want to be as vague as possible anyway, the holders certainly don't hesitate to take the additional advantage of making replication unfeasible. This is not supposed to be allowed, but that requirement is rarely enforced, and then only in egregious cases.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:06PM
> How is distribution being controlled to prevent people from analyzing and duplicating the pill?
No free samples. Each pill has to be officially destined for a specific named patient. So you have to lie to get them which is fraud, and you need way more than just one in order to duplicate it.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:15PM
Each pill has to be officially destined for a specific named patient.
I'm curious if that is law or if that is just the policy of the company producing them.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:19AM
Its just policy, and probably not enforceable when Some big Pharmacy sends in a bulk order. You can hardly hold up shipment until you get names of every patient, because as a manufacturer you have no right to that information. I think its pretty much a bluff.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:24AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by tathra on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:00AM
just know that the possession or exchange (regardless of whether any money changed hands) of any prescription-only drug without a prescription is a crime, as is possession of any prescription drug outside of its prescription bottle. its usually only a misdemeaner instead of felony if its not a controlled substance, but its still a crime. our drug laws are fucking ridiculous.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:45PM
just know that the possession or exchange (regardless of whether any money changed hands) of any prescription-only drug without a prescription is a crime, as is possession of any prescription drug outside of its prescription bottle. its usually only a misdemeaner instead of felony if its not a controlled substance, but its still a crime. our drug laws are fucking ridiculous.
This is a law that needs to be broken for the purpose of duplicating this medicine, so therefore this is a law that needs to go by the wayside, and enforcing it is just as immoral as enforcing "whites only" laws.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by tathra on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:14PM
just this one? no, all drug prohibition laws need to be broken and ignored. any and all drug prohibitionary laws hinge upon removing self-sovereignty from citizens. so long as such laws exist at all, everyone in the countries were they exist are literal slaves.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:36PM
This is a law that needs to be broken for the purpose of duplicating this medicine
just this one?
No, I didn't say just this one. I simply highlighted this one as a great example.
no, all drug prohibition laws need to be broken and ignored. any and all drug prohibitionary laws hinge upon removing self-sovereignty from citizens. so long as such laws exist at all, everyone in the countries were they exist are literal slaves.
I agree with you completely.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:38AM
> Its just policy, and probably not enforceable when Some big Pharmacy sends in a bulk order. You can hardly hold up shipment until you get names of every patient,
You can require that when the order is placed that all the paperwork is filled out for it to be accepted. Sure the pharmacy can cheat, but you can threaten to stop selling it to them if you catch them cheating. Once a tracking system is in place for one drug, that can be used for all drugs. There is sooo much money on the table here that all the big companies in the supply chain can afford to jump through these hoops.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:38PM
I'm sure that in two years we'll see generics. Till then, everyone can just suck it right?
Price gouging like this Shkreli prick is doing should be a crime, the type where you get infected with something nasty, and denied treatment of course. What a raging asshole.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:46PM
I'm sure that in two years we'll see generics. Till then, everyone can just suck it right?
I'm sure we could see them a lot faster than that if this were a free market.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:10AM
Bait and switch.
And the generics companies know that. So the fuckers get away with it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Informative) by gman003 on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:53PM
When you launch a drug, even a generic one, you do have to go through an approval process to demonstrate medical equivalence (this isn't complete bullshit - even if your active chemical is the same, your delivery mechanism and formulation might make it more or less effective (you don't want someone selling aspirin that does technically contain aspirin but it doesn't release it until after you've shit it out)). To do this, you need to run a medical trial.
I refuse to associate these scumbags with the good Alan, so I'll call them "Turdlike Pharmaceuticals".
Turdlike is refusing to sell their drug to anyone in sufficient quantities to run a medical trial, and refusing to sell to anyone who might use it for trials. So now you can't get approval the way a normal generic can, by proving you work just as well as another formulation of the same drug. You basically have to test it like it was a brand-new drug, which is unprofitable because even if you succeed, Turdlike will just drop their prices back down to normal so you don't reap much in the way of profit, definitely not enough to recoup your losses on approval.
Despite your preferences, this problem could be solved both by more and less regulation. Getting rid of the medical-equivalence testing could do it, but it might be better to just forbid companies from restricting who and how much they sell to. The former idea has some obvious issues (see the earlier example of non-functional aspirin), while the latter doesn't restrict anything that would have happened in an ideal free market anyways (it only prevents actions that happen only because of other market distortions).
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:11AM
you don't want someone selling aspirin that does technically contain aspirin but it doesn't release it until after you've shit it out
Ah, good point!
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @11:02PM
What you are describing is A MARKET.
If all the Capitalists had died yesterday, markets would still exist.
A lot of folks needlessly conflate these paradigms.
Since there is no longer an "intellectual property" restriction on this (no artificial scarcity), a (Socialist) worker cooperative could produce this and sell it to consumer cooperatives.
Both operations could take any excess profits to their credit union (another cooperative).
In the model I have described, there are no Capitalists at all.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @11:19PM
Wrong.
Your worker's cooperative requires stores of value to be able to actually obtain the means of production, whether or not this is in the form of cash. Or, if they genuinely have nothing whatsoever, they need to accumulate capital by the process of building tools and digging up ore and smelting and all the rest of what they need to be able to function.
You can do a five finger exercise on consumer cooperatives and credit unions. It doesn't matter whether you're measuring wealth in pesos or peanuts, someone somewhere along the line is looking at what they have in hand/in the bank/in a warehouse and making a call as to how to invest/employ/barter that to best advantage. That's capitalism.
I don't know where you got the nutty idea that cooperatives are somehow anticapitalist, or uncapitalist, or otherthancapitalist, but provided you have private ownership and disposition of stores of value, and recovery of value from the use of your stored value, you have capitalism.
If on the other hand you have a central government telling the band of workers what capital to use, and how to use it, then you don't have capitalism. But that's not what you're describing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:11AM
The workers own the means of production.
That's Socialism.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:28AM
Depends on what you mean.
If each worker owns, and has (as is the common meaning of ownership) a convertible, realisable interest in some materially distinguishable aspect of the means of production, such as to be able to negotiate concerning the use thereof, then you still have capitalism.
You could even make a case that a worker's collective is a capitalistic entity insofar they collectively own the means of production, and enjoy the fruits thereof.
If on the other hand the workers do not have discretion as to the application of capital, don't have a claim to the fruits of its application, or have no means of conversion, then you don't have capitalism - but it's deeply misleading to call it ownership.
On yet another hand, if all this is code for a collective group calling the shots in the names of the workers who don't really get to decide for themselves what to do .... well, we've heard that song before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @03:25AM
You spewed a huge number of words trying to convince people that white is black.
It only took me 9 words to state the classical definition.
You lose.
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:22AM
Bad news.
Your definition of socialism is on the level of Donald Trump's definition of America. Full of tasty, heart-warming goodness, but useless for real work and deeply misleading.
Good news.
You, too, can eventually come to understand the nuances. All you need to do is work at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:38AM
It's not -my- definition.
It's the definition assigned by Karl Marx.
Y'know, the guy who invented the word.
You lose again.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:18PM
OK, so let's delve into this a little bit.
What is capitalism? Capitalism is an economic system characterised by a series of arrangements related to capital and the treatment of capital.
Capitalism is distinct from feudalism, and a wide range of systems (sometimes widely disparate) which are known as various forms of socialism, but there are also forms of feudalism and socialism which share many substantial features with capitalism.
The essential elements of capitalism centre on the idea that capital (qua store of value) is a meaningful asset in its own right, the existence and maintenance of which enjoys legal protection, such that the capitalist can retain the rewards of capital, trade for those rewards or for the capital itself. In a sense, capitalism tracks capital.
In classic, hard line feudalism, all ownership reverts to the crown (the exact limits of this definition vary - in many systems goods and chattel were privately controlled) and the last word on the disposition of capital rests with the crown. Others enjoy the benefits of the capital in question at the pleasure of the crown.
In socialism, to use the marxian definition which you put forward, there is an essential unresolved ambiguity: if the workers own the means of production, to what extent does it constitute ownership? For example, if a weaver leaves a weaving factory, does he get a shuttle? A loom? A part of the building? Or does he get to rent that back to the rest of the collective? If he does not, then the concept of his ownership of the means of production is not one which we would generally regard as very sound.
Conversely, if the weavers own the factory, equipment and stores as a collective group independent of any individual claims, what happens to people who leave? Are they simply cast out with no resources whatsoever? They can leave a situation where the collective is effectively a capitalist entity, with recognised property rights, but individual people enjoy access to property only at the pleasure of legally recognised collectives.
Alternatively, if the workers merely control the means of production, as opposed to having a proprietary claim, what scheme is used for the resolution of conflicting property claims? Does some sort of ultimate workers' council call the shots?
On some level, the first case is effectively capitalistic because individuals can establish and maintain proprietary claims, and trade and manage their store of value on a personal level regardless of the fact of having a team of workers collectively owning a factory. The last case is anti-capitalistic, because accumulation of capital is no more possible for an individual than it might be under a strict feudal system, where everything is held at the pleasure of a regal figure.
The real world is messy, and there are many shades of grey. Social democracies such as Sweden generally protect private property, but tax and redistribute quite aggressively to redress imbalances. The USA is inconsistent - it actually has quite a substantial redistributive system in place - but at least nominally has strong private property rights. In actual fact the degree of red tape around many uses of private property is so restrictive that many private actions are de facto at the pleasure of government figures, which calls into question the idea of the USA being a capitalist society.
Unfortunately, Marx's dictum is not a very useful guideline without a much more detailed examination of all the implications, some of which he left rather fuzzy. In fact, some of his claims were robustly contested at the time, and subsequently shown to be quite false as matters of empirical fact. The labour theory of value in particular stands out as one which simply cannot explain much of the modern world's economy, however simplistically attractive it may have seemed at the time.
I hope that this little whistle-stop tour of economic definitions will encourage you to study the field in greater depth. It's as full of hidden subtleties and surprising implications as any other, and has massive practical implications. Next time you might like to outline in greater detail precisely what you understood Marx to mean in the context of ownership of the means of production, and what the extent of that ownership might be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @10:36PM
The real world is messy
...especially when red herrings like yours are added.
I'll make it simple for anyone still reading this:
In Capitalism (and Feudalism and Slave-based economies) there is a separate ownership class that exploits the working class.
The Working Class might choose to get rid of the exploiters (as they started doing in France in 1789) and they are on their way to the the next and ultimate economic system: Socialism (where you do useful labor or you starve--there are no idle rich).
Marx's [...] claims were [...] quite false
What's false is your assertions.
Murderous Capitalists have repeatedly used their guns to destroy successful Socialism (Paris, 1871; Barcelona, 1937; Indonesia, 1965; etc.).
Across the north of Italy, as an example, Socialist production paradigms are very successful (without having to kill anyone--just displacing the obsolete (vulture) Capitalist model).
Those local|regional clusters need to continue to proliferate (Socialism is a bottom-up paradigm) and consolidate their political power.
The problem, as previously mentioned, is to survive to a national level without being literally murdered by Capitalists--typically a USA-funded/armed/trained/supported activity (Chile, 1973).
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @12:12AM
Alas, would that it were that simple. You're not actually giving us a very meaningful definition.
First you tell us that the workers own the means of production (a statement which needs some detail, as we've seen before) but now you tell us that there's an ownership class which exploits the working class. This raises many questions, such as the limits of ownership, and the disposition of returns. You haven't specified these at all.
Why does it matter? Here are a couple of cases:
Let's stipulate that ownership is individual, transferable, and quantifiable. Bob the Herring Cannery Worker (since you don't care for my red herrings) decides one fine day that he would do better by making delicious cider for all the thirsty herring canners, but he needs some equipment to get off the ground. He sells his interest in the herring cannery to someone else, and starts to make cider. He does very well at this (he found his native talent!) and pretty soon he's the sole owner of a wildly successful cidery. Good for Bob!
... this is a pretty capitalist-looking outcome, and completely in line with what you described as the workers owning the means of production...
In the next case, we recast the concept of ownership in terms of contingency. Bob has a nominal interest in the herring cannery, strictly as and when he works for the herring cannery. The moment he decides to do something else, he is gifted some of the nominal ownership in his new pursuit, assuming that there is anybody allowing him to join his new pursuit, but simply forfeits all interest in the herring cannery. If he left the herring cannery and nobody else has room for him, he's suddenly indigent. And, as per your statement, on the highway to starvation. What precisely is involved in the concept of ownership here? A share in the profits, if we're measuring thing in terms of profit? Does he get to take home a wheelbarrow of canned herring to peddle on the streets? Does he get a vote on the activities of the cannery? If the cannery dissolves, does he get some kind of interest in the assets? Where is the boundary?
... in this scenario, Bob is more like a serf with a collective, rather than a single master. It's not really ownership as we recognise it, but is it what you meant?
Moreover, there's an open question: a herring cannery means little without herring to can. Do herring boats automatically cede their catch to the cannery? Is there something traded? Who decides on the trades? Who is the ultimate arbiter of the ownership questions vis-a-vis stocks of herring? Or do the herring boats have some sort of proprietary interest in the herring, and the cannery merely performs the service of canning? And what about the cans themselves? What about the labels? What about the machinery? Your proposal does not detail any structure which actually answers these questions at all.
I notice that you rest your position on a hegelian understanding of history, since you refer to "the next and ultimate economic system: Socialism" but you don't offer any answer to the empirical weaknesses of that model as observed since Marx's time. I'm assuming (absent further particulars) that you're a fairly orthodox marxist but even his followers have had to interpret and adapt his works in the last century.
You don't say why Marx's views on the labour theory of value were true. You don't even address the question at all. So let's try this again: if they were true, how do you square them with things like the differential value of different workers, differential analysis of value from the perspective of different utility functions, and the contextual nature of value in different environments? These are merely a few of the major challenges brought over the years; any decent search of the history of the topic should give you half a dozen more. And yet, you dismiss them with a handwave, not specifics.
You then segue to a laundry list of various conflicts of varying degrees of cogency, as an anecdotal appeal to support a conspiracy theory that the only reason it's not working is because the USA won't let it work - but you won't tell us what this system looks like in terms of the rules by which it runs.
So, fair enough, let's hear it: what, in your view, does ownership really mean in this context? What are the implications for individual choice and initiative? What defines the minimum size of a group of workers which may be said to own something? Who certifies that? How are disputes with respect to conflicting claims of ownership resolved? How are transfers of means of production across various layers of industry effected? Are loans permissible? May they be secured? May interest be charged, or any other consideration in respect of use of accumulations of value? If not, what are the motivations behind the creation of a surplus in the interests of maintenance, technological updates and future developments? Who becomes the guardian of those interests?
Ultimately, if ownership actually can be individual, and diligence and intelligence rewarded with commensurate returns, and interest-bearing returns are possible (whether in cash or kind is largely immaterial) what is to prevent someone from becoming a capitalist in a socialist world? The moment that he stops earning from the sweat of his brow, and starts based on his intelligence and historic productivity, he gets lynched? Or stripped of all his possessions because successful trading or saving are de facto crimes?
Please let us know what the answers are, so that we can evaluate what you're really proposing, because so far you're being very nonspecific.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:12AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:18AM
Agreed. The only reason it can't be duplicated is because it JUST HAPPENED, and nobody has geared up to do it yet. The Formula and the molecular structure is NOT Secret, because its in the Patent. That's what patent's do.
Furthermore, now that everyone has vented their RAGE, NBC Is Reporting [nbcnews.com] (warning - autoplay video on the page) that the CEO has decided maybe this wasn't such a good idea, and will be rolling back the price. How far the roll-back is anyone's guess.
He told NBC News that the decision to lower the price was a reaction to outrage over the increase in the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
"Yes it is absolutely a reaction — there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action, I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people," Shkreli said.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.