In South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, offensive television characters Terrance and Phillip inspire moral indignation within a small Colorado town, sparking a movement of outraged parents who actively organize to censor the actors. Rather than focusing their energy on the individuals in question, the parents launch into an over-the-top campaign (complete with song and dance) targeting the entire country of Canada, where Terrance and Phillip live. Their crusade to “Blame Canada” drives the plotline to equally comedic and ridiculous lengths.
We have a similar short fuse in the United States. Though we don’t launch into full-scale invasions of our quiet northerly neighbors (at least, not yet), many Americans tend to miss the mark when attributing blame for our largest problems and woes. This propensity of impugning ideological strawmen usually places capitalism in the crosshairs of America’s most outraged.
On This Episode of “Blame Capitalism”: The EpiPen
One doesn’t have to look far from today’s headlines to see this pattern. The latest controversy: the price of the EpiPen – Mylan’s famous medical auto-injector that delivers an immediate and measured dose of epinephrine – recently skyrocketed 400%, causing an uproar amongst 3.6 million people who depend upon the prescribed product. For those who live in fear of anaphylactic shock, the cost of living quite literally went up.
But surely a new business will take advantage of this public relations debacle, enter the market, and offer a more affordable option, right?
From the time this bill was introduced to the date it was signed by Obama, Mylan’s stock was up nearly 20%.
Unfortunately – and as no surprise to libertarians and free market advocates – federal regulators continue to buffer the padding that surrounds Mylan’s monopoly. Shortly after the Auvi-Q recall, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries pitched a generic version of the EpiPen. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) squashed their efforts, citing “major deficiencies” in their application. Teva plans to appeal the decision, but won’t be able to effectively move forward until 2017 at the earliest.
Teva isn’t alone in this struggle. Windgap Medical, a Boston startup, and Adamis, a small biotech firm based in San Diego, have both struggled to bypass FDA’s barriers of entry in the marketplace as well.
If you need further convincing that the FDA impedes the market, consider the following:
The average time it takes for a drug to go from the lab to the medicine cabinet is 12 years
Only 1 in 5,000 new drugs will make it through the FDA approval
Based on the regulatory burden of creating new medicine, the average price tag for research and development for a new compound is $2.6 billion
So, no, Bernie – it isn’t always just a “few dollars” to produce a pharmaceutical product. The price tag of producing that “first pill” is often steep.
An Unironic “Thanks Obama”
Those companies who “paid to play” are providing a textbook example of crony capitalism, not free market capitalism.
Mylan’s monopoly was also bolstered by the White House. In 2013, President Obama signed into law the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. The program incentivizes the school system to stockpile EpiPens by dangling the carrot of federal grant monies in front of financially beleaguered school districts. From the time this bill was introduced to the date it was signed by Obama, Mylan’s stock was up nearly 20%.
But this little piece of legislation pales in comparison to the benefit doled out by the Affordable Care Act. Following Obamacare’s codification, net spending on prescription drugs increased nearly 20%. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry experienced a renaissance era of whirlwind profits: estimates of profits over the next decade range from $10 billion to $35 billion – a hefty door prize for the industry lobbyists who crafted the ACA legislation.
The EpiPen is not a microcosm; the cost of other prescription drugs are also on the rise. A House of Representatives report found that ten different drugs experienced even larger price hikes, starting as low as 420% and as high as 8,000%.
Considering the scope of government intervention in this specific marketplace, rather than blaming the free market for this controversy, a more appropriate response would be “what free market?” And now, lawmakers are ironically “demanding answers” from Mylan. If forced to speak in front of a Congressional panel and asked what inspired this price hike, Bresch and company should be encouraged to hold up a mirror to lawmakers’ faces.
re. free markets...like many other effective strategies that could alleviate our ills, we are likely beyond the point of no return...that is, unless there is new technology that can disrupt the current infrastructure.
Think of the forces at work in the larger culture that work overtime to situate us within a privatized world of fantasy, spectacle and resentment that is entirely removed from larger social problems and public concerns. For instance, corporate culture, with its unrelenting commercials, carpet-bombs our audio and visual fields with the message that the only viable way to define ourselves is to shop and consume in an orgy of private pursuits. Popular culture traps us in the privatized universe of celebrity culture, urging us to define ourselves through the often empty and trivialized and highly individualized interests of celebrities. Pharmaceutical companies urge us to deal with our problems, largely produced by economic and political forces out of our control, by taking a drug, one that will both chill us out and increase their profit margins. (This has now become an educational measure applied increasingly and indiscriminately to children in our schools.) Pop psychologists urge us to simply think positively, give each other hugs and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps while also insisting that those who confront reality and its mix of complex social issues are, as Chris Hedges points out, defeatists, a negative force that inhibits "our inner essence and power." There is also the culture of militarization, which permeates all aspects of our lives — from our classrooms and the screen culture of reality television to the barrage of violent video games and the blood letting in sports such as popular wrestling — endlessly at work in developing modes of masculinity that celebrate toughness, violence, cruelty, moral indifference and misogyny.
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
So what do we do when the private decisions you allude to end up giving us millenial capitalism, fostering our well-established trend towards economic injustice, inequality, and social insecurity? What's your method for moving us back towards the "peace, justice, mass prosperity and social security" that more and more people enjoyed for a good part of the 20th century? The Constitution doesn't urge the promotion of "the welfare of the individual", but "the general welfare". Ignoring this fundamental principle of our governing document, and focusing solely on the economic rights and privileges of individuals (or corporations), seems rather absurd. You may hope that these individuals will act in a so-called rational way that will benefit everyone, but it seems manifest that expecting this sort of rationality from individuals who control great wealth is hopelessly naive.
Maybe Ford wasn't an ideologically pure lessaiz-faire capitalist, but he seems to have been a pragmatist who accomplished something worthwhile, and helped demonstrate tangibly that economic prosperity is not a zero sum game. Where are the ideologues and pure capitalists who have real world achievements comparable to Ford?
apparently bono has had an epiphany of reason and logic (breaking through some preconceived barriers/notions on enabled poverty controlled by politicians via aid) and props to him
at first i thought it was dambisa moyo that influenced him (and i'm sure she did), but it was george ayittey's speech, book and friendship that sparked bono's realization
In Germany, still a manufacturing and export powerhouse, average hourly pay has risen five times faster since 1985 than in the United States. The secret of Germany’s success, says Klaus Kleinfeld, who ran the German electrical giant Siemens before taking over the American aluminum company Alcoa in 2008, is “the social contract: the willingness of business, labor and political leaders to put aside some of their differences and make agreements in the national interest.”
from M/W
Definition of CAPITALISM
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
imho, any other modification to the voluntary exchange of goods and services really isn't capitalism or free market capitalism
politically corrupting that system (crony capitalism and/or corporatism) and turning it 180 degrees from what it was seems to be the mainstream boogeyman that politicians and most academia love to blame
of course if people have sat through some of those academic courses (or read most mainstream text books) it's no wonder they might believe that politically sponsored/motivated info
fordism? ford or any business owner could pay employees any amount they saw fit and for whatever reason, but that still doesn't mean it was a good business decision
as brilliant as henry ford was, he was still subject to error
and in a case where a business owner based employee pay on being able to purchase the product he/they produced without regard to a healthy sustainable business plan, could be disastrous
what if the product was luxury yachts?
eventually the business owner will run out of employees to purchase his product and he will be subject to the market to decide
i haven't looked into germany's business practices in detail recently, but i imagine the big factors are product and productivity
apparently bono has had an epiphany of reason and logic (breaking through some preconceived barriers/notions on enabled poverty controlled by politicians via aid) and props to him
at first i thought it was dambisa moyo that influenced him (and i'm sure she did), but it was george ayittey's speech, book and friendship that sparked bono's realization
In Germany, still a manufacturing and export powerhouse, average hourly pay has risen five times faster since 1985 than in the United States. The secret of Germany’s success, says Klaus Kleinfeld, who ran the German electrical giant Siemens before taking over the American aluminum company Alcoa in 2008, is “the social contract: the willingness of business, labor and political leaders to put aside some of their differences and make agreements in the national interest.”
Unfortunately, as the following article points out, Fordism has basically been abandoned.
apparently bono has had an epiphany of reason and logic (breaking through some preconceived barriers/notions on enabled poverty controlled by politicians via aid) and props to him
at first i thought it was dambisa moyo that influenced him (and i'm sure she did), but it was george ayittey's speech, book and friendship that sparked bono's realization
Today the evermore wasteful nature of capitalist production, viewed from a qualitative or use-value perspective, is starkly evident. The packaging industry, much of which is devoted to marketing wares, is the third largest industry in the world after food and energy.46 It has been estimated that packaging costs an average of 10–40 percent of non-food produce items purchased. The packaging of cosmetics sometimes costs three times as much to produce as the actual contents within it.47 Around 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally each year. Only two-thirds of this is enough, according to the Guardian, “to cover the 48 contiguous states of the U.S. in plastic food wrapping.” Advertising for some products, such as soap or beer, is 10–12 percent of the retail cost per unit sold, while with some toys advertising is 15 percent of the retail cost.48 The sales promotion budgets of corporations meanwhile are often three times that of their advertising budgets.49 More than a trillion dollars was spent on marketing in the United States in 2005 alone.50
