#I might have an unjustifiably low view of third parties

[bulletsandbracelets]

I’m sorry to say that this isn’t true. Voting smaller parties works outside of the US because those governments are not the US government. They have proportional representation, something that we desperately need but do not have implemented yet.

No third party president will ever win in the US without making their party into one of the major two parties. It is impossible. A contingent election means that if no candidate gets more than half of the electoral votes, the House of Representative chooses the president and our votes no longer matter at all. Each state gets one vote in this system. Guess which party has more states?

If a third party gets 40% and both other parties get 30%, the third party still loses. Because no House members are going to choose a third party over their own candidate.

So then we get into congressional votes. How do we get more third party candidates into congress? They have to run. And right now, no third parties even attempt to get into Congressional races because they are money sinks instead of fundraising opportunities. And they rely on a candidate who is familiar with the state and who has the time, and energy, to get on the ballot. Before we see third parties we need to see a form of proportional districts. Because in order to be elected, a third party would need to have a majority of the votes in a given area instead of just a proportion of them.

The reason voting third party is useless and is a waste of your vote is because unless you are sure, in the near future, your party can overtake one of the main two, you have no chance of winning in the future. If you want to see more third party representation, then we need to be working on lobbying for changes that actually will allow that. And that work needs to be done between elections.

The frustrating part to me is that third parties, who would benefit from so much of this work, refuse to really talk about or fight for it themselves. I don’t think being unaware is an excuse. I think many of the leaders of these parties know exactly how ineffective their methods are. I just don’t think they care so long as they get their fundraising and publicity in every four years.

Again, speaking as someone with scrupulosity OCD and anxiety, this whole entire mentality of "if I vote for a presidential candidate, then I, personally am responsible for each and every bad thing they do" is essentially a form of catastrophic, polarized thinking. It's a super unhealthy way of thinking that leaves you unable to meaningfully navigate through life a lot of the time. And while you might feel morally clean, it's actually an incredibly dysfunctional way to live because you just won't take action when it could really matter, or the actions you do take don't actually have a substantial chance of changing things.

Like refusing to vote, or voting third-party even though you know the odds of a third party candidate making it are pretty much nil (or because you've convinced yourself it could totally work if Everyone Just - even though we all know there is no point in history when Everyone Just), that's dysfunctional behavior. There's no getting around it. It's dysfunctional behavior.

[alexsmitposts]

Hillary “Queen of the Warmongers” as Trump’s Greatest Asset The US presidential race hits a “new low” with Cold War slurs. As Ilia Chavchavadze, a famous Georgian writer, poet, and journalist once wrote, “Judge not a man by his friends but look at his enemies, and then I can tell you who this man is!” However, in this case, that man is a woman, and one that is collecting high profile enemies. Speaking truth to power has such a nice ring. That is because it is so seldom applied these days, as you are soon marginalised and labelled a loose cannon, or even worse—a Russian asset, Manchurian Candidate, or an Assad apologist! Tulsi Gabbard once went so far as to sponsor a bill known as the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” through Congress, which would have meant cutting off aid to the rebels/terrorists fighting Assad. Tulsi Gabbard The NYT and other MSM were quick to attack Tulsi Gabbard. They did not try to discredit her for anything that is out of the ordinary, but because she told too many inconvenient truths. This was especially the case in a response to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for having had taking on the one democratic candidate that has views that are being expressed by more and more Americans, especially former military and rank and file Americans. Thus, it is understandable why Gabbard is NOT the candidate of choice for the DNC. She speaks her mind about the DNC and Hillary Clinton. The result for her is being branded with a Scarlet Letter. She also turned her back on the DNC back in 2016, walking away, when she realized how Hillary was rigging the election, stealing the Democratic nomination, and even the Whitehouse was stolen from Bernie Sanders. Being true to herself—and the core values of the Democratic Party, Tulsi Gabbard spared no words in describing Hillary Clinton for what she was and continues to be. You, Hillary Clinton, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. Ever since I announced my candidacy there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why… it was always you.” She further added a challenge: It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me, don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies, Join the race directly. Besides having the ability to think for herself; Gabbard has the military experience and education to do that, especially in terms of national security issues. That means by conventional wisdom she doesn’t belong in the Democrat Party and that in itself is a REAL threat to the Republican Party and Trump’s reelection bid. To have the audacity to talk opening about the consequences of 4-profit US “regime change wars” comes at a high political cost, at least at the first impression. For this reason, Gabbard is being smeared as a “foreign agent”—a Manchurian Candidate. This is old term that is commonly used to indicate disloyalty or corruption, whether intentional or unintentional—and comes from a Cold War era movie about capture POWs who had been brainwashed and trained to be part of sleeper cells that would eventually carryout missions upon return to the United States. But this mudslinging is flying back in Hillary’s face. Within 48 hours not one but two CNN correspondents have not only backed Tulsi, but called out Clinton. Is the sky falling, or is it because Tulsi brings a power to the game that we haven’t seen in politics…. I guess there is no level beneath which Hillary cannot sink. Game-Changer As one CNN pundit describes her: Clinton Is Acting Just Like Trump. Tulsi Gabbard is now calling The New York Times and CNN —”completely despicable” for alleging she is a Russian asset and Assad apologist. Finian Cunningham writes: “On the other hand, Gabbard stands alone in telling the American people the plain and awful truth. US policy is the fundamental problem. Ending its regime-change war in Syria and elsewhere and ending its diabolical collusion with terror groups is the way to bring peace to the Middle East and to spare ordinary Americans from the economic disaster of spiraling war debts.” It is very sad indeed that there is a lack of accountability for war crimes (so far) and the unjustified killing of millions of women, children and other civilians (as well as the sad deaths, suicides and wounding of soldiers duped into fighting these illegal wars) War criminals are being celebrated as national heroes: ones to be emulated. And there is an attempt to silence the voices of those who know the true horror and costs of America’s perpetual wars. And you don’t even have to read Orwell to understand what is going on with never-ending wars. Obama continued with enthusiasm the wars he inherited from the times of the Bush administration. People should not forget that it was Trump who promised to bring an end to such wars and bring American soldiers home during his campaign. And the shared hope of Americans to see the end of needless wars is what got Trump elected in the first place. Hillary as Trump Asset It is almost as if Hillary Clinton is working hard to get Trump reelected by further dividing an already divided Democratic Party. If anyone could be called a Russian asset, one only needs to look at her own sordid history: the uranium deals, 20 percent of American stocks sold off to the Russians, the dealings of the Clinton Foundation, its list of donors and how some biting sanctions were lifted on Russian on Bill’s watch, allegedly with a cash payment in return. It was Hillary and the DNC who stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. She prevented the only candidate who had a standing chance against a Trump Whitehouse from being nominated. However, all that is moot now. It would be interesting to watch how her recent actions and allegations, will open up the race for the Democrats and put new life into a party that has been on death throes. Democrats went from a dominant majority to a marginalized party that represents coastal cities. The party seems to have abandoned enormous areas of the country—the heartland. Democrats lost 10 percent of their Senate seats, 19 percent of their House seats, and 20 percent of the seats in state legislatures. One only has to look at the map of the Electoral College and where Trump won the election to understand there has been a change in voter expectations. Hillary and the Democrats, especially the power elite in the DNC should take a refresher introductory college course in American government. They would then understand that the popular vote does not always matter – as the system is based on allocating representation between all states – and the Electoral College decides who will the president and the race is not by direct vote. That explains much of what is going on: the efforts to impeach Trump from behind closed doors, and all the rhetoric over the need to reform or eliminate the Electoral College system. Not going to happen, at least anytime soon! This explains the concerted effort by Hillary to smear one of the few candidates, who if nominated and with the support of the DNC and the rank and file of Democrats could actually beat Trump in the National Election. Hillary’s words on October 17th are well-chosen for the “unwashed masses” of American voters who still think that anyone painted with her wide red brush will be the kiss-of-death, a proverbial Scarlet Letter. As Hillary so sarcastically said: “I’m not making any prediction, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. …They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And, that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset.” Such statements are from another era, like that of Joseph McCarthy—and from the time of the Red Scare. But there is method in madness. And it is clear that the comments “appear” to be directed at Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. This was later confirmed after Hillary Clinton’s comments drew considerable criticism from both political parties. As a result Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill backed away from the former Secretary of State’s allegation. Merrill tweeted, “She doesn’t say the Russians are grooming anyone. It was a question about Republicans.” Whatever that means is open to debate. One thing is certain, the Democratic Party has been injured the most as a result of Hillary’s obvious cheap shots and she should control her diarrhea of the mouth, at least restrain from making public statements. However, the damage has already been done, and not only to Gabbard but to the Democratic Party as a whole, showing that there is no such thing as party solidarity. To attack a war veteran and respected member of Congress is a new low, even for Hillary. It is too early to predict if this incident may have political ramifications, as to who gets the nomination. However, it does give good press to Gabbard and a boost to her fledgling campaign. Much to the dismay of many voters, this infighting in the party is a windfall to Trump’s campaign and it may be the incumbent may be reelected. Hillary is actually doing something constructive for the first time in her sordid career – by giving an unexpected and much-needed boost to Tulsi Gabbard who is the only candidate who challenges the military-industrial complex and never-ending war agenda. At least Americans have another choice to consider. There are also health and political issues to consider, Bernie Sanders and his heart, and Joe Biden and his son. It is good to know that there are a few candidates who are in the prime of their life, their political careers, and who are not carrying of the millstones of political corruption around-their-necks. My prediction: Bernie + Tulsi as VP Gabbard’s time may not be now but her name will be recognized in the next presidential election, as Trump is only allowed to serve two terms. Perhaps Hillary would take the challenge – to run openly against Gabbard, and then we can be certain of another four years of Donald Trump. Or that is perhaps the real plan, “Hillary as Trump’s GREATEST Asset!

[pinelife3]

Ask about me. I wish you would.

Disclaimer: I don’t know shit about shit - but I’m trying.

Feel like my blogging this year (I know we’re not very far in) has been really sub-optimal. Typically I feel like my blogs are best when I get fired up about/really interested in something - they come easier and (hopefully) are funnier and more interesting. I have been interested in lots of stuff, but I feel a lot of what I’ve read has already been well positioned and there hasn’t really been much room for me to butt my nose in and comment. Anyway, I wanna try to steel man Martin Shkreli. Feeling pretty amped about this actually.

I remember late 2015 sitting in a fish and chip shop (Colin’s Catch <3 - I never got fish and chips there, always burgers) reading some shitty article on Jezebel about Shkreli and even though it was probably not a good example of reporting I found it convincing. In 2015 he (or actually, his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals) increased the price of Daraprim 5500% from $13.50 (US, I presume because they only own the US version of the drug) to $750 per pill. Once upon a time it retailed for just $1 a pill. The way people talk about him he might as well be the devil.

From The Daily Beast:

From Consequence of Sound:

From Dazed:

Hahah - from Wonkette (whatever that is):

The New Yorker:

The New Yorker article opens like this:

On Thursday morning, the most reviled person in America arrived on Capitol Hill for a short but memorable engagement with the most reviled institution in America. The institution was the U.S. Congress, which Americans say they hate—though not quite enough, apparently, to stop reëlecting its members. And the person was Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical executive who loves to play the villain, and who can’t decide whether to be amused or outraged when he is treated accordingly. Donald Trump can rightly be called polarizing, but Shkreli cannot: he seems to have precious few fans to balance out his innumerable detractors.

Okay, so I have cherry picked some of the more venomous headlines but I think it’s fair to say he’s unpopular. The mainstream media actively root against him. In December last year everyone was smugly pleased when some high school students made the active ingredient in Daraprim: like because some teenagers can bootleg one component of the drug in a high school chem lab that’s somehow valuable? They didn’t recreate the whole drug, just a key component. And in any case - the whole basis of the outrage was that this was a cheap drug that underwent an unjustified price hike. Has Shkreli ever tried to pretend there was some change of circumstances where they key component of the drug suddenly became expensive to produce? Their position has always been: we jacked up the price because we could. 

Quoth Shkreli:

To me the drug was woefully underpriced. It is not a question of ‘Is this fair?’ or ‘What did you pay for it?’ or ‘When was it invented?’ It should be more expensive in many ways.

And again:

If there was a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle, and we buy that company and ask to charge Toyota prices, I don’t think that should be a crime.

It cost those high school goons $20 (assuming this is just in ingredients - not equipment, facilities, time, fancy lab coats, etc.) to create 3.7 grams of the active ingredient in Daraprim (which apparently works out to about $2 per pill… again, based purely on their ingredients). 

^^ Cute

Shkreli has always said that profits made from the price jacking allow/ed his then-company Turing Pharmaceuticals (he resigned as CEO in 2015 after being arrested for securities fraud - is there anything this guy can’t do?) to work on research and development for cool new drugs to save lives (or make more money depending on your outlook).

Shkreli has consistently defended the move to raise the price of the drug - in late 2015 there were some vague intimations that he would lower the price, but they later backtracked on this and it was later reported that Turing would instead follow some standard procedures to make it easier for patients to access the drug. According to the NY Times:

Daraprim, which has been on the market since 1953, is the preferred treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can cause severe brain damage in babies, people with AIDS and others with compromised immune systems.

According to PolitiFact:

There are only about 2,000 U.S. patients who use the drug every year. 

And if you don’t have insurance you can get it for free here. 

Turing have held this position from way back in 2015: 

“A drug’s list price is not the primary factor in determining patient affordability and access,” Nancy Retzlaff, Turing’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement. “A reduction in Daraprim’s list price would not translate into a benefit to patients.”

The company pledged that no patient needing Daraprim would ever be denied access.

How is this dude still so hated? According to the NYT, the programs Turing is undertaking are standard for high priced drugs (because it’s not like Daraprim is unique in being expensive - 12 months’ worth of cancer treatments can cost upwards of $100,000 - Daraprim is a bargain at the low, low price of just $75,000 for 100 doses):

Such patient assistance programs are standard for companies selling extremely high-priced drugs. They enable the patients to get the drug while pushing most of the costs onto insurance companies and taxpayers. 

I feel like only villains say stuff like “it’s just business” - but, I mean, it really is? If you can make money, why shouldn’t you? One of the all time top posts on /r/depthhub is about how Bill Gates is a bad dude because he’s a ruthless businessman who tried hard to beat his competitors. That’s business, man. Why would you work with or help you competitors? All that’s gonna do is take money out of your pocket:

He viewed any successful non-Microsoft software as a threat, even if that software was for Windows. And if that software was cross-platform he viewed it as an existential threat, since it lessened people’s dependence on Microsoft.

They literally are threats? They’re competing products… how thick do you need to be not to see that? Even if something is made for Windows, if it wasn’t made by Microsoft then Microsoft sees none of the profits. Why would they be interested in that arrangement? And some of the complaints against Microsoft are violently stupid:

Apple had contracted out to a 3rd party company to do the Windows port of QuickTime, so what did MS do? They went to the same company and gave them a ton of money to develop Video For Windows, but an insanely short schedule, knowing full well that the company would essentially have to re-use a lot of the QuickTime For Windows source code to get the project done on time.

When Apple found out (their contract with the other company stated that Apple owned all the QuickTime For Windows source code), they went ballistic and sued Microsoft. Microsoft had been caught red-handed and knew that Apple had them by the balls. So MS settled. Remember when Microsoft “bailed out” Apple in the 90s by buying $150 million in Apple stock? Despite what the tech press reported, that’s not what actually happened. The $150 million in non-voting Apple stock that Microsoft bought was part of their settlement (Apple was no longer on the verge of bankruptcy by that point, and didn’t need to be bailed out). The settlement also had Microsoft agreeing to port MS Office and Internet Explorer to Macintosh.

Really sounds like the third party’s fault to me? The third party company shouldn’t have agreed to an unrealistic timeline and they certainly shouldn’t have resold Apple’s IP. It sounds like all Microsoft did was go to a third party company who had proven success in developing a video player for PC (which is sensible) and asked them to make something for them as well. Anyway: so Bill Gates is cutthroat? So Bill Gates wins? So his throne is built on the bone dust of his foes? It’s just business - why should you make concessions for businesses which can’t cut it or are trying to cut into your share? It’s not charity. And Gates knows charity - he’s donated over $28 billion dollars to improve healthcare and fight poverty, he aims to wipe out Malaria in the next generation.

It’s not even a case of ends justifying the means (like, a mafia boss who funnels the spoils of his crimes into an orphanage or something) - Gates behaved in a way which was industry standard for any big corporation and does so much good - if he let other companies survive and make money (essentially taking away from his own bottom line) is there any guarantee that those $28 billion would have made their way into charity?

Tangentally related to this - Shkreli’s capitalist declaration:

Yeah, I’m a capitalist, I’d love to make an even bigger fortune than I’ve got now. But I’m not gonna do it at the expense of a human life. We sell our drugs for a dollar to the government, but we sell our drugs for $750 a pill to Walmart, to Exxon Mobil, to all these big companies, they pay full price because fuck them, why shouldn’t they? If I take their money to do research for dying kids, I think I’m a hero, let alone evil.

Anyway (I got distracted). In an AMA Shkreli did in late 2015, the top comment is:

Hey! Doctor here and I work in India.

Now medically speaking I haven’t yet heard of why your drug’s worth $749 more than my pyrimethamine. Does it improve on the nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea? Does it have a folate sparing effect? Can it be used in pregnant women and in epileptics?

No one’s been able to tell me what your upgrade is or how it works or even if it is a cost saving upgrade.

Now here is my second problem. If your upgrade reduces the side effects of the drug, why is it much more expensive than prescribing say…. Ondansetron and a Folate infusion to counteract the more common effects. I mean even if I used multiple drugs to achieve this and say bundled pyrimethamine with ondansetron and loperamide and an antacid say pantoprazole and suggested folate level monitoring it would be cheaper.

So what makes Daraprim better than pyrimethamine and what changes and upgrades have you made to the drug to warrant the increase in price?

I find this really frustrating because at no point has Shkreli ever said that he introduced a cool new feature to justify the price increase - this dude (the Indian doctor) is just being smug and facetious but you can’t out-smug Shkreli so what’s even the point? He’s just pandering to a bunch of outraged idiots on Reddit. This dude (the Indian doctor) knows the answer to the question (Q: why? A: because he could) and is just being deliberately obtuse so he can pretend to be some kind of altruistic hero: “Oh you mean you increased the price of the drug just to make money? Unfathomable.” 

Even before Shkreli jacked the prices up, it was still much more expensive than similar products elsewhere. Before he increased the price to $750 a pill, it was sold for $13.50 a pill - in India they sell a generic version for $0.05 a pill (and I guess the Indian doctor above uses a $1 pill). So it was already (I am bad at maths but I think) 27000% more expensive than similar products available in India (does that sound right?).

When similar shit goes down the headline is “A drug company hiked the price of a lifesaving opioid overdose antidote by 500 percent” - when Martin Shkreli does anything they invoke his name in the headline (as though he as an individual were carrying out these actions from his home office) and leave Turing (or whichever other company he’s working with/for) buried in the main body somewhere. In the article linked above, the writer doesn’t actually mention the company’s name (Hospira) until the third paragraph and she doesn’t make any calls to lynch the CEO. She opens with this:

At a time when America needs these drugs most, drug companies are hiking the prices.

It’s called supply and demand, bitch. Jesus. (This person is actually seeking drama and pointless backlash, the sub-heading is: “Where’s the outrage?”) She’s an idiot:

Drug overdoses kill more people than car crashes and gun violence in America, and these overdose antidotes have never been more important. But they’re also quickly becoming more unreachable for the people whose deaths they could avert.

Yeah because junkies would totally be carrying around anti-overdose medicine in their purses were it not for the $142.49 price tag. Fuck I’m also angry because no one writing about this stuff seems to understand what a free market is. She says:

America has long taken a free market approach to pharmaceuticals. Drug companies haggle separately over drug prices with a variety of private insurers across the country. Meanwhile, Medicare, the government health program for those over 65, which is also the nation’s largest buyer of drugs, is actually barred from negotiating drug prices.

In no way does this describe a free market. Sure, it’s more lax than England’s system but it’s still heavily regulated and therefore != free market. This is from a post about Shkreli but still applies:

They’re saying that the price hike is such a good example of how the “free market” is pure evil and “just doesn’t work”… well as per usual, those people just don’t see the big picture and have deeply misunderstood the parts they do see.

First of all, the pharmaceutical industry is not a free market by any stretch of the imagination. A free market would be almost a perfectly contestable market. A perfectly contestable market (aka a “free market”) has three main traits… no barriers to entry, no sunk costs, and universal access to the same technology for new firms as well as existing firms. The pharmaceutical industry is actually a perfect example of the EXACT OPPOSITE of a contestable market.

And all of those barriers to entry, sunk costs, and disparities in the level of technology among firms exist because of the actions of government regulators.

The idiot writer of the Vox article on opiate overdose antidotes concludes:

Unlike EpiPen, though, the naloxone price increases haven’t garnered much attention or outrage, maybe because of the stigma that comes with opioid addiction.

In the face of an out-of-control opioid epidemic, the outrage better come soon.

I am so not buying her point about this not being a scandal because no one cares about opioid addiction. People care. Throughout most of the press on Daraprim/Shkreli people have highlighted the fact that it is used by AIDS sufferers to try to signpost how much of a dick Shkreli is. Is AIDS not at all stigmatised? It was until recently. A couple of decades ago it was headline news when Princess Diana shook the hand of an AIDS patient without gloves.

Really, the hysterical, shitty and reactive reporting on this has probably caused much more drama and stress for patients taking Daraprim than the price hike itself. 

Every other pharma boss in the world has made themselves inaccessible and opaque to the public - Shkreli is surely kind of unique in participating in unfiltered interactions with the public. People are more likely to recognise his name than name of his company/ies or the drug itself. That’s kind of an achievement, right? His email (which he shares openly) is martin@thotpatrol.com. He live streams all the time:

In the video above he’s talking about a website he made called Pharma Skeletons dot com (which is what got me interested in him in the first place) where he basically tears apart the lobbying group PhRMA after they tried to scapegoat Shkreli/distance themselves from him as though he were an aberration in the pharma industry. According to Business Insider:

On Monday, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, (PhRMA) kicked off a multi-year ad campaign to try and shift the criticism the industry’s been getting on drug pricing onto a more positive topic. In a press briefing, PhRMA president Steve Ubl described the campaign as “Less hoodie, more lab coats,” an apparent jab at Martin Shkreli, who wore a hoodie while he was arrested for securities fraud in December 2015 and on stage at a conference earlier that same month. 

Shkreli was obviously savvy to PhRMA’s dig and didn’t care for it so he put together Pharma Skeletons to outline how member companies of PhRMA have acted similarly to Turing/Shkreli:

Don’t you dare point your finger at me for the pharmaceutical industry’s troubles. It turns out we’ve all made some unpopular moves.  

I’m so into it. This website is really simple - hardly any CSS, no images or videos. Just a list detailing these pharma companies’ indiscretions with links to sources. The tone is really fun as well:

Mallinckrodt / Questcor

Really? Acthar’s 65,000% price increase represents your values but Turing doesn’t?

Gosh, I’m so upset my portfolio companies aren’t a part of your trade group.

I sued & whistleblew this company after they bought the only competitor to their only drug in order to stop my competition from their high price.

Tax avoider? Check. Ireland.

Marathon

Bro. These guys invented price increases. I literally learned it from them.

Ovation. I can sell & start a new company, too.

I feel pretty convinced that what he did was industry standard. But I really don’t want my argument to just be ‘Shkreli’s no worse than the other guys in big pharma so it’s not fair to criticise him’ because I want to believe that he’s better/special/different somehow. He seems weird and funny and interesting. Everyone wants to hit him in the face. He’s the smartest guy in most rooms he’s in. 

Dumb justifications I’m thinking of:

Maybe he’s a bad dude, but at least you’ve heard of him. For a layperson (hi) he must be the most famous person in pharmaceuticals. Not saying notoriety is cool or in any way mitigates shitty behaviour, but I feel like he’s at least copping to it and is cognizant of what he’s doing and how he’s perceived - probably the CEO of every pharma company is as villainous as Shkreli, but they act like they’re not which gives Shkreli some kind of high ground

He doesn’t seem interested in or at all concerned with PR/PC bullshit

Did Shkreli perhaps inadvertently draw mainstream attention to serious issues within the US pharmaceutical/FDA/insurance/whatever else system? Everyone knows about these problems now. I certainly wouldn’t have cared were the articles not accompanied by pictures of a dude with such a punchable face. Possible downside: Shkreli as an individual is reviled, companies still seem to get away with it

All the pharmaceutical big dogs hate him - not because he jacked up the price of an old, cheap drug (they all do that) but because he drew attention to them and made their shitty behaviour more visible

(Do you think Shkreli gets laid more or less since all this went down?)

The faux hysteria over his ‘harassment’ of a Teen Vogue writer (who wrote this anti-Trump article in December which became really popular because who doesn’t go to Teen Vogue for quality journalism?) really pissed me off. He was mocking her by pretending to be obsessed with her because hot girls are lame and assume everyone is in love with them when really everyone hates them. I thought it was pretty funny

^^ Shkreli decorated his Twitter with pics of the journalist and Photoshopped himself into a picture of her and her husband 

Sidebar about that Teen Vogue Trump article (”Trump is Gaslighting America”) in which she argues that umm Trump is gaslighting Americans… which I find annoying because she’s basically taking away half the country’s agency - like, they know not what they do:

Trump took advantage of the things that divide this country, pitting us against one another, while lying his way to the Oval Office. Yes, everything is painfully clear in hindsight, but let’s make sure Trump’s win was the Lasik eye surgery we all so desperately needed.

The article is basically a plea for the truth. She suggests:

Inform yourself what outlets are trustworthy and which aren’t.

Hmmm. Teen Vogue. I want to cyber bully her too. I mean. Hmmm. 

I feel like in my eagerness to be contrary I get myself into these positions where I’m trying to defend the indefensible. I think Shkreli’s more nuanced, interesting and well meaning than the press give him credit for. Professionally, he’s obviously made some reckless choices and remains self-righteous and smug (hard to tell if he’s always smirking or if that’s just his face). The things he’s done which seem greedy and unreasonable are normal in his industry so if he’s no worse than his peers he’s just a normal dude (I don’t really feel convinced by that). Still, I think he seems cool. He’s entertaining anyway.

[nicholemhearn]

The Theory of the (Tech) Firm

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the American Enterprise Institute, which asked the question, “Should Washington break up Big Tech?” Antitrust, unsurprisingly, was at the fore of everyone’s mind. But the title of the panel suggests that there’s a fundamental problem associated with “Big Tech”—a problem that antitrust may (or may not) be able to solve. So what is the problem?

In general, the current critiques du jour of American tech firms seem to boil down into one of these categories:

Tech firms are too big, too, powerful, and too few;

Tech firms are inhibiting competition; and

Tech firms are destroying the institutions of liberal democracy.

Unfortunately, none of these criticisms holds up to scrutiny.

To start, concerns over the size of tech firms are entirely overblown. It’s true that the level of industry concentration (the presence of fewer, more dominant firms) across many sectors of the American economy has increased in recent decades, but whether this is problematic and why it is happening remain unclear.

One theory, proposed by James Bessen in a recent paper, suggests that much of the increase in firm size can be attributed to greater effectiveness at implementing proprietary IT systems. Unlike generic computing, such systems are far slower to diffuse to rival firms. As a result, these disparities in effective implementation give rise to heterogeneous firm productivity and access to skilled labor (especially if many of those skills are learned on the job with firm-specific proprietary technology). This, he argues, widens the productivity gap, leading to more efficient and consumer welfare-enhancing outcomes emanating from larger, more concentrated industries.

Part of the concern over firm size also goes to the problem of rent-seeking and the concentration of political power. Large corporations can have an outsized influence on high-level political actors and use that power to maintain their dominance in an industry, often by lobbying for the erection of regulatory entry barriers. However, there is no indication that the dominant tech firms have done anything to diminish the competitiveness of the Internet landscape through such means. In fact, quite to the contrary, many of these same companies regularly lobby against legislation that would undermine the openness and contestability of the market in which they operate (the concerted effort to oppose sweeping changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is just the most recent example of such efforts). Of course, it is certainly true that such opposition invariably benefits the large dominant firms; but it also works against attempts to close-off the Internet to new entrants.

Ultimately, we should be far more concerned about the behavior of firms, not their size or structure. To that end, so long as a market remains contestable, entry barriers are minimal, and the firms enhance consumer welfare, the size and quantity of companies in a given industry don’t matter much.

This leads to my second point: the idea that competition in the technology sector—and the online service provider segment of that market—is stifled by the presence of dominant firms is entirely unfounded. Determining the level of competition in the tech sector can be difficult, in part because services are generally provided at a price of zero in exchange for consumer’s data. So what’s a good means of assessing competitiveness in the absence of clear prices that might allude to symptoms of excessive market power?

I’d argue a good starting point would be examining expenditures on R&D. Investment in R&D is essentially a firm placing a big bet today in the hopes of very uncertain future returns—the type of bet a firm is unlikely to make unless it is concerned about retaining, or expanding, its market position. In its 2017 Global Innovation 1000 study, PricewaterhouseCoopers makes it pretty clear which industry dominates R&D spending: the American technology sector.

The R&D spending of the five biggest tech firms (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook) ranges from $1.6 billion to $16 billion, with R&D intensity (the ratio of R&D expenditure to total revenue) ranging from 2.16 percent to 27.5 percent (Amazon is the pack leader in absolute spending, while Facebook leads in R&D intensity). In both absolute spending and intensity, American tech firms spend far more on R&D than any other industry. By contrast, the top R&D spending by utilities, which are commonly cited as the quintessential examples of non-competitive monopolies, capped out at $650 million, with an associated R&D intensity of 0.75 percent. It’s also worth pointing out, that of the utility firms that managed to eek their way into the PwC Global Innovation 1000, not a single American utility firm made the cut (the $650 million number was for Électricité de France S.A.).

Another good metric would be looking at barriers to entry relative to other industries. While entry costs to effectively competing with Google or Facebook may include things like access to advanced data analytics and AI, large quantities of consumption pattern data, and scalable network effects, none of those are barriers are any more anti-competitive than the initial capital requirements for building a new factory or investing in inventory stock for a new bodega. What the Internet offers, which other industries simply cannot match, is non-capital intensive access to the market, with bare minimum requirements amounting to little more than a computer and Internet access. In that sense, the Internet, as a broad market, is not marred by the types of stifling barriers to entry that characterize other economic sectors.

If R&D spending is high, and barriers to entry are (and remain) low, it’s fair to conclude that the market is competitive, and doesn’t unnecessarily burden new entrants. The key here is that the contestability of the online service market remains high. So long as the market constantly threatens to unseat incumbent firms, concerns of durable and everlasting monopolies in the tech sector are unjustified.

Third, criticisms over the role that social media played in undermining American democracy in the 2016 election are wildly overstated, and completely ignore more fundamental socio-cultural (and political) problems. Here it’s worth reiterating something that people seem to forget, or miss entirely. The Internet is not divorced from culture and society; it is a reflection of all those things we commonly associate with the “real world.” As I discussed in an old blog post:

The Internet … mirrors society and, by extension, each of us: our preferences, associations, and world views. In a sense, our online tools are just means by which we transpose our lives into the digital realm, and those tools, wonderful though they may be, are just that: tools that we can use to shape our online bubble. Google may be great at allowing us to access information we previously did not know, or refutes our long-held beliefs. But there’s a chasm of a difference between being confronted with evidence suggesting our perspectives are ill-informed, and internalizing that information and readjusting our beliefs accordingly. Simply having access to more information doesn’t necessarily make us better informed.

Criticisms of Facebook in the wake of the Russian election interference are pretty easy to come by. But charging the company with contributing to the degradation of American political institutions by providing a platform from which people can express themselves is a wildly incongruent perspective. It’s odd to make the claim that our democracy is undermined by a service that is premised on vibrant and robust expression and interconnectivity, when those are the very values that characterize the open and inclusive society America has always billed itself as. The tech sector may make for a tempting target of scorn in the current political climate, but leaving the blame for dwindling institutional trust at “Big Tech’s” doorstep is a woefully unsatisfying answer to the question of, “how did America get to now?”

Last summer, Jonathan Rauch’s appropriately-titled Atlantic article, How American Politics Went Insane, argued that part of the reason for declining trust is in part a symptom of the breakdown in party machines and political networks—the American people abandoned the establishment, not the other way around. “The biggest obstacle,” he argues, “is the general public’s reflexive, unreasoning hostility to politicians and the process of politics. Neurotic hatred of the political class is the country’s last universally acceptable form of bigotry. Because that problem is mental, not mechanical, it really is hard to remedy.” I think this is broadly correct. The point, however, is that claims of “Big Tech” undermining American democracy are overly-simplistic and incomplete answers to larger and far more complex issues.

I discussed these and a lot of other issues with my fellow panelists at AEI. If you’re interested, feel free to check out the entire event below.

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