Why shouldn't a pharmaceutical company with the expertise to identify and acquire an undervalued drug be rewarded? Aren't these precisely the people who deserve to be granted the privilege to allocate further capital? That's the whole point of capitalism, right? That's what HackerNews is all about? If there's some exceptional nuance here, we should explore this rigorously.
Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
why shouldn't a life saving treatment be exploited for personal financial gain? hmm let me think about it for a minute. Meanwhile, when the future "allocation of capital" is to spend $2m on a rap album, I think your argument falls apart.
Sociopaths often do small goods to whitewash their ills. Saying that any action Shrkeli might take is ok because some other purported endeavor is designed to help people is a perfect example. To say that the only way to get money for medical research is to exploit society and its regulatory environment, sounds to me like a bad faith argument, since it's so easy to come up with counter examples (VC, public grants, prior profits from normal development/sales cycles).
Besides, Shrkeli is in prison for securities fraud unrelated to his pharma shenanigans, so how does that work when he's actually a terrific person?
> Meanwhile, when the future "allocation of capital" is to spend $2m on a rap album, I think your argument falls apart.
He spent a tiny portion of his earned wealth to honor and support the Arts--in particular he supported struggling African American rap artists with a long history of strong performance and depth. Shkreli is a bona fide Rennaissance man, and I certainly do not hold this gesture against him. I am tempted even to call it charity.
> Besides, Shrkeli is in prison for securities fraud unrelated to his pharma shenanigans, so how does that work when he's actually a terrific person?
His "financial crimes" are nearly universally acknowledged even in this thread to have been contrived by his political enemies in retaliation for his more famous antics which were unambiguously legal. The case they brought against him was an absolute joke, and he would have been acquitted of all eight charges (instead of just five!) if he had been given a fair trial. Then, to further make the crooked lawfare obvious, they absolutely slammed him at sentencing with an outrageous ruling that departed dramatically from federal guidelines and rulings in similar cases, including those involving his "co-conspirators"! It was an unambiguous "f_ck you" to an American hero who deserves nothing but respect and admiration. He rose into wealth and prominence in a highly technical field despite coming from virtually nothing by the force of sheer talent and motivation, and the established powers that be were really rubbed the wrong way. This is all yet another sad case of feelings of inferiority by bug-souled racists clashing with pvre Albanian Excellence.
Shkreli's company didn't "design" squat, it bought existing drugs where the patent period had already expired and the R&D costs were paid off.
Also, funnily enough, in an actual capitalist environment you couldn't do this, because a competitor would immediately undercut you. However, the drugs market is heavily regulated, and Skhreli exploited the fact that it would take years and cost a lot of money for any putative competitor to get a generic version through FDA approvals.
> it would take years and cost a lot of money for any putative competitor to get a generic version through FDA approvals
It's more than that, the FDA grants advertising exclusivity, which is de jure weaker than patents (the patent office and the law regulates patent criteria, the FDA cannot) but is de facto just as effective, and is an IP lock on the product. (I would also call this "not really free market capitalism")
You're talking about this one drug in question, Daraprim. He actively funded the development of several new drugs you've never heard of, and sending Shkreli to prison was literally a crime against humanity. I don't think you know anything about Shkreli you haven't read in neatly packaged hit pieces.
He pulled the same trick with Thiona, Chenodal, Vecamyl and probably more -- it was on the record as his own company Turing's strategy after all.
As noted, this was all legal and I agree that he was railroaded to jail for essentially completely unrelated wrongdoings, but there's no universe where he's not a scumbag.
Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?