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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: 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