#whiners
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Capitalists hate capitalism
As the Marxist agitator Adam Smith once said, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Smith understood that capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to compete with one another, because that would interfere with their ability to raise the prices their customers pay and reduce the wages they pay their workers. Thus Peter Thiel’s anticapitalist rallying cry, “competition is for losers,” or Warren Buffett’s extreme horniness for businesses with “wide, sustainable moats.”
These anti-capitalist capitalists love big government. They love no-bid military contracts, they love ACA subsidies for health insurance companies, they love Farm Bill cash for Cargill and Monsanto. What they don’t love is markets.
Case in point: pharma giant Merck. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a provision that allows Medicare to (finally) start (weakly) negotiating the prices it pays for (a tiny handful of) drugs. If you’re scratching your head and wondering if you understood that correctly, let me assure you, you did: the US government is currently prohibited from negotiating drug prices when it bargains with pharma companies.
In other words: Medicare simply pays a pharma companies — whose products build on billions in publicly funded basic research, whose taxes are reduced by billions in research credits, whose patents are backstopped by billions in enforcement — whatever it demands.
To do otherwise, you see, would be socialism. Markets are “efficient” because they “discover prices” through bidding and selling. In the case of publicly purchased drugs, the price that Uncle Sucker “discovers” is inevitably “a titanic sum” or possibly “add a couple more zeroes, wouldya?”
Enter the IRA. Starting in 2026, Medicare will be permitted to negotiate the price of ten (10) drugs. The negotiations will use the prices of other drugs from the dysfunctional, monopolized market as a starting point and go up from there. The negotiations go on for three years, and there are multiple stages where pharma companies can hit pause with court challenges:
https://prospect.org/health/2023-05-11-regulators-bungling-drug-price-reform/
The system will not consider the prices that Medicaid or the VA (which are allowed to bargain on prices) pay. Nor will it consider the prices that other governments pay — the US is alone in the wealthy world in offering the anticapitalist price-taking posture when dickering with the pharma companies.
But this isn’t enough for Merck. They are suing the Biden administration over the IRA’s drug pricing plan, arguing that it is an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/06/merck-sues-biden-administration-over-medicare-drug-price-negotiations.html
Merck is represented by Big Law firm Jones Day, who made their bones by representing the RJ Reynolds from smokers with lung-cancer, arguing that the smoking/cancer link wasn’t scientifically sound. That’s not the only fanciful argument they put before a judge: Jones Day also represented Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election (they also hired Trump’s counsel Don McGahn as he exited the White House’s revolving door).
As Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect, Merck’s argument is that the “fair market” value of its drugs can only be discovered if its single largest customer — Medicare — simply pays whatever Merck demands of it:
https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-08-merck-negotiating-drug-prices-unconstitutional/
They explicitly denounce the idea that a powerful buyer should use its market power to extract price concessions from sellers like Merck: “leveraging all federal insurance benefits (amounting to over half of the prescription drug market) to coerce companies to abandon their First and Fifth Amendment rights is a quintessential unconstitutional condition.”
Rebutting this argument, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “negotiating for the best price is as American as apple pie. Since when is competition in this American system a bad thing? Why should we be the patsies around the world and pay the highest prices for medicines?”
The irony here is that Merck itself is a very powerful buyer. Whether negotiating commercial leases, raw materials or wages, Merck is ruthless in extracting the lowest prices it can from its suppliers. The company attained its massive scale the old fashioned way: buying it. By drawing on its nearly limitless access to the capital markets, Merck bought out dozens of its competitors:
https://mergr.com/merck-acquisitions
Anticapitalist investors funded these acquisitions in the expectation that Merck would be able to use its market dominance to pay suppliers less, charge customers more, and use some of the resulting windfall to corrupt and bully its regulators so that it could buy still more companies, charge still higher prices, and impose crushingly low prices on still more suppliers.
The IRA’s drug-bargaining provisions are extraordinarily weak. When they were first mooted in 2021, I talked about how Democrats were caving on muscular drug price controls that would benefit every American (except a handful of pharma shareholders):
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption
They did so despite wild, bipartisan support for imposing price discipline on Big Pharma, and ending the 300% premium Americans pay for their drugs relative to their cousins abroad. 95% of Democrats support strong price controls; so do 82% of independents — and 71% of Republicans:
https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2021/11/healthcare-affordability--majority-of-adults-support-significant-changes-to-the-health-system.html
No one believes Big Pharma’s scare stories about how this would kill R&D: 93% of Americans reject this idea, including 90% of Republicans. They’re right — nearly all US basic pharma R&D is directly funded by the federal government, with pharma companies privatizing the gains:
https://khn.org/news/article/public-opinion-prescription-drug-prices-democratic-plan/
Despite the fact that really whipping the shit out of Big Pharma would be both popular and good for America, the Dems’ final version of pharma bargaining is a barely-there nothingburger where ten drugs will become slightly cheaper, after the next federal election. This is called “political realism” and it’s a fantasy.
The idea that limiting drug controls to the faintest, most modest measures would make them easier to attain was obvious nonsense from the start, and Merck’s anticapitalist lawsuit proves it. Merck will settle for nothing less than total central planning — by Merck. For Merck, the role of the federal government is to wave through a stream of mergers culminating in Merck’s ownership of every major drug; patent extensions for these drugs to carry them into the 25th century and beyond, and unlimited sums paid for these drugs on Medicare.
Given all that, there would have been no downside to the Dems passing an IRA that subjected the drug companies the same modest, commensense, market-based discipline we see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Switzerland.
But that’s not the IRA we got. Instead of defending a big, visionary program in court, the Biden admin is facing down Jones Day and Merck to defend the most yawn-inducing, incrementalist half-measure. What a wasted opportunity.
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/09/commissar-merck#price-giver
[Image ID: A caricature of a businessman with a money-bag for a head and a stickpin bearing the Merck logo, standing atop a pile of bundled $100 bills. At the bottom of the pile, a frowning, disheveled Uncle Sam offers up a $100 bill.]
Image:
Flying Logos (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png
CC BY-SA 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#merck#guillotine watch#big pharma#markets#anticapitalism#capitalism#pharma#whiners#bargaining power#price makers#price takers#uncle sucker#inflation reduction act#ira
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🇺🇸🇺🇸 ahh America
#camaro#chevy#chevycars#musclecars#americanmuscle#supercharged#whiners#murica#detroitmuscle#horsepower#street rod#hotrods#fastcar#TeamCanon#automotivephotography#carphotography
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The joyless are always looking for more people to recruit. Don't sign up.
Africa Brooke
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*rolls eyes*
And yet another person whining about my font choice at AO3.
“Fuck you,” is an appropriate response from me.
Don’t like my style, turn it off (and suffer from all my CSS disappearing). Not everyone loves Verdana and its garbage “smart quotes” — and not every OS can handle certain applicable fonts. You know, not web safe.
Hell, I use Cambria in Scrivener and it has them, they just aren’t as pretty.
Whatever this font is in the Tumblr editor? This at least has decent ones.
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due of this will you still continue the askblog and rp?
//yes yes! still continue idc what other people say about tumblr bugs, but still, I really annoyed of hate and whining posts about this website bugs, well for me, in my opinion tumblr is hated due bullies and snowflakes inside not because bad moderation, I researched that on google, and that true, I say this because I think no one or no group of peoples should have to be harassed because of it, so.... I hope with some of filtering that I do those annoying posts should go away, and I'll make sure nobody will object this, that's my opinion so hehehehe yeah, haters gonna hate, can't deny
~mod shoko
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Again i am sorry i acknowledge this is petty and i don't actually support but lol i love when heller proshippers get harrassed, i hope they get hate, i hope they get into a blocklist and i hope someone makes a anonhateblog for them again shsnsbbsbsvzgzdbb
#Sorry#I don't do but i find it entertaining and funny#Also be real anytime they start whining and get any resistence they go for what? Winc*st shipper or accusations#Sorry i just love when idiotic d*an crit blogs annoy them by being like wah you want jack with him wahh you want a problematic bi#Wah you want cas to be his simp wah#Cuz they are whiners#You don't get to be the arbitrer of whining which is basically how characters can't die cuz u r traumatised#And dynamics should be grown out of bcz its bad or whatever#And the dad shoukd not be jn heaven but jack should be hus baby#Fuck off#Whiners#Then they whine about whining that is not supportive of their PoSiTiVe good moral whining#I hope you get cannabalised by your faction lol#Fandom wank
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Happy National Whiners Day!
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The Lights on Dewar
Look, don't knock those trying to do something good, k?
#poem #poetry
The lights go up every year
along the main street roadside.
Decorated for some town pride
(more…)
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A lack of confidence hits everyone a bit differently.
Episode 45 Part 11
First < Previous > Next
Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5
Ep 41, Ep 42, Ep 43, Ep 44, Ep 46, Ep 47
Ko-fi | Patreon
#she's always been a whiner after all#scarlet lady#scarlet lady au#scarlet lady comic#reverser#marc#marc anciel#episode 45 part 11
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Awww, these poor snowflake fascists don’t like jail, huh? Poor babies. I’d bet my entire bank account that most of these fucks have sat around smirking and gloating and making jokes about POC being raped in prison, or about “criminals deserving punishment” when the idea of treating incarcerated people like human beings with rights comes up.
Whatever happened to “it’s not supposed to be a vacation” eh? All the pathetic whining about “criminals” getting “free food and education”, which mostly doesn’t even happen anyway.
Things look different when you’re the one being abused, I suppose.
#fascism#jan 6th#snowflakes#whiners#hypocrites get fucking served#incarceration#jailed people have rights
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poem- entitlement
Listen to the shouting,
as if increased volume
was proof of rightness.
Oh, the indignation!
when thinking’s challenged!
Everyone and everything
set to deliberately hold
them back! Poor things.
Their whole lives they
have had it all for the asking.
Expectation is dangerous.
What a shock to face
the reality that the words
they write and the stories
they tell aren’t as brilliant
or…
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This was such a little brother moment
#i can just imagine them as kids—raph is such a whiner and leo and splinter have to deal with it all the time💀#tmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles#tmnt 2012#tmnt 2k12#tmnt raphael#tmnt michelangelo#tmnt leonardo#tmnt raph#tmnt mikey#tmnt leo#tmnt fugitoid#2012 raph#2012 mikey#2012 leo#2012 fugitoid
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something abt a sub who doesn't fully moan. he lets out half moans before it turns into little whines. overstimulate him enough, and he can't make a single noise. he lets his mouth hang open as little choked gasps barely escape his throat. he's trembling, grabbing at what he can because he feels too good.
#— castiel thirsts#sub jjk#sub mha#sub bsd#sub choso#sub shigaraki#sub juno#dom reader#gn reader#sub character#mostly thinkin' abt choso and tomura for this#they are whiners#even when they're 'dominant'
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//sorry but huge notice tumblr is buggy again, and people do hate post to tumblr staff!!? dude! that's stupid if you feel tumblr very buggy and you have thought to blame tumblr staff, you'll regret it later, then nothing you can do, you must wait till it's normal my recomendation of tumblr alternative is blogspot or wordpress, it's blog maker that has similar feature of tumblr, and there's no limit of posts, don't be whiners, I'm sick of it!
~mod shoko
//people do childish things again.... that's why I hate whiners too same thing, if tumblr much limitations try other blog making website services and make comments sections as askbox that's it, and don't do hate post, those are sooo old days!
~mod shuichisaihara mlp
//yare yare...peoples do this every single tumblr bug problem, maybe soon they'll end up banned so.... really stupid to doing hate posts to tumblr staff workers and tag them what the? most of humans stupid I can't deny it.
~mod Lucipride
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