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by SQueeeeeL 1056 days ago
I'm not really sure what "the problem" with this is? Like we all do know that the point of pharma companies is to make money, and that things like 'helping people' are just incidental byproducts of that fact.

If pharmaceutical development was government run, I'd understand the outage at lowering the quality of life of US citizens; but faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime.
3 comments
haswell 1056 days ago
> I'm not really sure what "the problem" with this is?

I think you found it:

> corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime

The “problem” is that perverse incentives lead to unethical behavior that most would find distasteful and morally reprehensible.

I don’t understand the criteria for outrage that you’re hinting at. The fact that it’s not government run doesn’t make this less disturbing. It does change where one might direct their outrage.

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jtode 1056 days ago
I detect a heavy glaze of sarcasm/satire in the comment you're responding to.

Or someone who has drunk enough kool-aid that they actually believe that.

Both are pretty common here, this one seems pretty perfectly balanced between the two.

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Georgelemental 1056 days ago
> Faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime.

The financial optimality of things depends in large part on government laws; changing the laws could re-align incentives.

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COGlory 1056 days ago
>but faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime

It's not quite that black and white.

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alasarmas 1056 days ago
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that, for a corporation to act in such a way that maximizes financial gain, it must disregard ethics. Perhaps the optimal behavior from a financial perspective is also ethical, but in many cases it will not be ethical.

As for crimes, in many cases, criminal behavior results in a fine that doesn’t make the behavior uneconomical. I’d like to say I don’t understand why this happens :-)

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