[LiquidSky]

>What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines

Because, as a post below notes, this is a pure fantasy. At this point you're proposing actual magic.

>Linux versus, say, Solaris and Microsoft Windows

Your choice of operating system isn't going to severely harm or kill you. "Move fast and break things" is a problem when the "things" are people.

>medical consequences have to get pretty costly before they're more costly than selling your home and emptying your retirement account and your kids' college funds.

Welcome to the reality of healthcare in the US for the uninsured (and often times for the poorly-insured).

[notch656a]

Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate, where here the white market is a huge oligopoly with insane markups to pay off lobbyists / regulator / advertisers / the rich people who own the pharma companies. Sometimes the black market is even more expensive but in DIY it often isn't.

If it were me I'd just make it all in one go, hopefully enough to be set for life, huge pile of it whatever drug I need to stay alive. Create a homogeneous mixture, GC/MS the mixture for purity and then package it for long term storage.

[LiquidSky]

>Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate,

No, it's classic libertarian fantasy bullshit. Medicines aren't toys, and we know exactly what happens when they're unregulated.

[notch656a]

I wasn't aware that analytical instruments could measure your economic or political ideology.