#but I'm just really here for the stories of ordinary people scraping their way through the galazy

[sindri42]

What is capitalism if private ownership and monopolization are out

This is about the insulin thing, right? Let me walk you through the steps.

The current situation is, there are three big corporations making insulin. They make it for super cheap, like $2 a dose or something including packaging and distribution and all that jazz, but they know that people need this stuff in order to not die, so there's no reason to restrain themselves as far as pricing goes. So they sell the stuff for like $500 a vial, earning a tidy 25,000% profit, because what are customers gonna do, not buy it?

In a capitalist system, this is a huge opportunity for anybody with a few thousand in seed money and a smidge of ambition. The process of making insulin is hardly a secret. I might not have the economy of scale going and I need a big up-front investment for equipment, but even if it costs me five times as much per dose to produce the stuff, that's still less than 2% of the current market price. So I start making and distributing the stuff for $10 a vial, and selling it for $400, and all the customers see that they can get the same product for $100 less so they stop buying from those three big companies and start buying from my startup. Then a month later, somebody else comes along with the same idea but undercuts me, and I lose all my customers to sombody willing to sell the stuff for $350, but that's fine I just change all my labels to sell for $300 and they come rushing back, and I'm still making $290 pure profit on every vial. Fast forward a couple years, and the market price of insulin is like, $12 a vial tops, because if you try to get profit margins any bigger than that you're the most expensive option and nobody buys from you. There was never any altruism involved in that process, no magic, no glorious savior who figured out a way to impose their will upon the world in order to save lives, just ordinary greedy humans fighting each other to make more money for themselves, but the end result is that the people who need this stuff to survive get it for a tiny fraction of what they used to be paying.

In the system that we're actually using, the three big corporations go to the government with three big suitcases full of cash, and the government passes a law that says anybody who tries to make insulin who isn't one of the three big corporations goes directly to prison forever. All the competition vanishes, and without the risk of somebody selling the same product for less they're able to keep raising the price as much as they want. I mean, if you get up to the point where the majority of your customers literally can't buy it anymore and they die then you have fewer customers, so going up into the millions per vial would be counterproductive, but as long as the majority of people who need insulin can just barely scrape together enough, you maximize your profits. And all it costs is widespread human suffering and a few surprisingly affordable bribes.

And then here's the really funny part: the corporations that benefit most from government interference in the market? They're the ones that fund all the media that convinces kids that the solution to all their problems is to give the government even more control over every aspect of life. They're the ones who pushed the narrative that 'libertarian' is synonymous with 'pedophile'. They're the ones who bury stories about corrupt politicians so you never question how a congressman can have a salary under $200,000 a year, go into the position with a net worth of a million dollars, and come out eight years later as a billionaire. Almost every "anti-capitalist" movement out there, if you follow the chain of evidence back, is funded directly by the corporations it claims to oppose, because shifting the balance of power further away from the individual and more toward the State means more profit for the people who are in a position to manipulate the state.

Now, this isn't to say that a free market is without problems. If there was zero regulation of the production of insulin, then a particularly unethical person could undercut the legitimate sources by making a loose approximation of the product people need for much cheaper by using dangerous or ineffective methods, and then sell it at prices that legitimate manufacturers can't compete with because the purchase price is lower than the manufacturing price. Which means that when you buy insulin, you would need to do your own research into who's got a reputation for quality, and there would be people who straight up die because they decided to go for the $4-6 "insulin" instead of the $12-15 insulin. But I'm pretty sure that would still be better than the only option being $500.

[rotzaprachim]

Solo: Thoughts

I have emotions and there will be spoilers. 

- This film reminded me why I love the warring stars in the first place!

- I really liked it! It’s not a perfect film, by any means, and there’s plenty of places I wanted to burn down Lucasfilm, but it is an emotional one about ordinary people scraping their way through a hellhole of a galaxy, and that’s what I’m here for. 

- The visuals??? GREAT! FANTASTIC! Soooo much better than TLJ, in between the industrial hellhole of Corellia, the mountainous snow planet, or the sweeping sand and sea of the Canaries (I think?) at the end! The CGI’d parts were intricate and epic, the parts aboard Dryden Vos’s ship and in Lando’s casino actually felt atmospheric and club-isa. (Unlike Canto Bight *cough cough*) The very Scylla-and-Carybdys scene with the black hole and the massive Eldritch abomination (that apparently eats vacuum????) was fantastic.

- I actually really like Alden as Han. I really, really liked that they didn’t make him a misogynist, a womaniser, or someone who just can’t listen to women. He was charming and cocky without being smarmy or condescending, which can be a difficult line to walk. His Han is very different to Harrison Ford’s, certainly a less jaded and more pure soul with his own, if slightly warped, moral compass. He certainly doesn’t think twice about giving the mineral stuff to Enfys.

If anything, one of my main issues with the film was the need to tie things up neatly and have Han go to Tatooine. The direct connection worked for Rogue One, with the big dramatic finale, but it doesn’t really work here. Alden’s Han just feels a lot younger and less jaded than Harrison’s did, and it feels like there should be a few more years and botched jobs and scars before he’s hanging around a cantina in Mos Eisley.

- Holy shit Han studied at Carrida? And then go demoted from pilot to foot soldier for. . ..  some reason that probably has something to do with mouthing off too much for the Empire’s liking. I’m hesitant to compare him with Finn because Finn left for extremely heroic reasons (not wanting to kill anymore) and Han just kind of left because he didn’t want to die and the opportunity presented itself, but it certainly DOES add another level to Finn and Han’s relationship in TFA, particularly when Han encourages Finn the truth, and when Finn and Han break back into Starkiller base. (Underrated adopted father-son duo right there!)

- This movie established a TON of parallels between Rey and Han. A TON! Han was essentially in the urban version of the shitty situation Rey was in at the beginning of TFA, they both repeatedly pull the trick of having to fly through a narrow slot, there’s even some verbal cues with how they both have to go back to Corellia/Jakku to wait for loved ones, and they both love someone who isn’t telling them the full truth about their pasts.

(Excuse me while I cry about all of this. “You think of him as the father you never had.” Yes, but in some ways Rey and Finn are the heroes that this version of Han wasn’t. There’s a lot of talk about Kyl0 carrying on the Skywalker legacy, but this film really establishes that it’s an ex-stormtrooper and a desert junker who carry on the Solo legacy.)

- I’m VERY much on board with the idea that Qi’ra should have been Han’s sister, or his best mate who’s become his only adopted family by the laws Corellia’s streets. If there was anything that felt slightly off here, it was their romantic relationship, which felt shoehorned and expected rather than natural. Star Wars has always been about family, yet there hasn’t yet been a movie that really explored a sibling relationship, and I think it would have fit better with the plot and tone of Solo anyway.

- Other things I loved: LANDO. Donal Glover is goddamn PERFECT. He’s charming and lively and adds a jolt of . . . something like sunshine which this movie badly needs! HIS WARDROBE IS ON POINT! The movie still leaves me feeling like we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of Nando’s backstory, though. He’s already a successful entrepreneur with a droid fight club, a very (*ahem*) successful hand at sabacc, and a closetful of expensive tailored capes. And he loves his mother! AND HE’S WRITING HIS BIOGRAPHY, and is already somehow on chapter 5.

-HANLANDO. Damn. Both of the scenes with Han and Land playing sabacc had a wonderfully flirtatious energy, and the beach scene and shootout at the mines were just painfully good. This was defiantly where the romantic tension of the film lay, with the smirks and the “buckle up, baby” and that final scene in the tropical casino place? If Lucasfilm isn’t going to make another film with Han and Lando I will gladly take, like, a fluffy workplace romcom with Donald and Alden. Please.

- L3-37! Another absolute favourite, though I am deeply sad that she died before getting a chance to meet Enfys. They would have hit it off. L3 followed in K2′s steps of being snarky, and terrifyingly human, but she’s definetely her own bizarre, wonderful . . . droid. I loved her and Nando’s camaraderie, and that final reveal that she’s in the Falcon .. . . I did cry a little.

- This movie’s greatest sin is probably it’s tragic wasting of Thandie Newton. I’m still angry.

- The final showdown between Beckett and Han? AMAZING. It felt so full circle- Han shooting Beckett right were the holes in the amor he stole off the dead man at the beginning of the film were, and in a similar place to where Kyl0 will eventually kill him. (The scene certainly DOES establish exactly how Han and Kyl0 are different, though, considering the way that Han sits with Beckett as he dies, and that Han shot Beckett so that the mineral stuff could go to Enfys rather than Crimson Dawn.)

- ENFYS! She’s in 3 scenes, but I smiled non-stop for 2 of them. No joking, those two scenes made the entire cost of the ticket worth it. The reveal was freaking amazing, as well as the fact that no one made a dumb comment about the fact that she’s a girl. Erin Kellyman absolutely killed her limited screen time, and I loved the fact that she talked about inheriting the mask from her mother. “The war is just beginning.” Shivers. Brilliant, fantastic, show stopping, incredible. Her costume and weapons were fantastic as well, with a slight Boudicca vibe to her hair/spear/that yellow tartan cape-y thing at the end?

I really hope she’s in more stuff.

HMU to chat about all of this, I am more full of emotions than I ever thought I’d be over Han Solo.