Moral thought experiment: who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at?
This isn't hypothetical, GP is talking about a treatment that went from ~$200/mo to ~$43k/mo simply because a bunch of heartless assholes figured that was the point of max profit even if it ruins the lives of a bunch of people and kills a bunch more.
Is my viewpoint hypocrisy? I don't think so. Your comment seems to be centred around the alleged part, and I also strongly oppose the death penalty because of the false-positive rate of convictions. But take an hour out of your life to study Valeant and its leadership, and come back and tell me that you believe that there is room for error in their motive or the outcome of their actions. These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. The only contentious part of my viewpoint is that I believe ethics supersedes law, and the heads of Valeant have technically complied with the law despite falling to the lowest low of ethics. These people are gaming the system at a level that most hard convicts wouldn't consider.
I upvoted your comment, it is a good avenue of discussion.
>who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at?
First, you can look at intent. If a person stabs someone, then it usually means that they intended to directly hurt someone. If a CEO raises the prices of a drug, then it usually means that they intended to make more money. The harm it causes is collateral damage rather than the main intent.
Second, a CEO controls/owns the production of the drug. They are not responsible before the public for the public having access to the drug. Private property means that they don't have to share if they don't want to. If this wasn't the case then where would you draw the line? We can all agree that asking for $43k for the treatment is outrageous and scummy, but where do you draw the line? $10k? $5k? $1k? $500?
Another question: if they had stopped producing the drug altogether then would that have been morally better in your opinion?
Obviously these price increases are ridiculous and unacceptable, but I don't see how you fix this without the government requiring that a drug company must supply a certain drug that they started making for X amount of time and in Y amount.
>These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries.
I think in my country there are laws against (translation: "racketeering"). It is selling goods/services to people in distress/danger for an unreasonable high price. There is no death sentence here, but also no loophole.
This isn't hypothetical, GP is talking about a treatment that went from ~$200/mo to ~$43k/mo simply because a bunch of heartless assholes figured that was the point of max profit even if it ruins the lives of a bunch of people and kills a bunch more.
Is my viewpoint hypocrisy? I don't think so. Your comment seems to be centred around the alleged part, and I also strongly oppose the death penalty because of the false-positive rate of convictions. But take an hour out of your life to study Valeant and its leadership, and come back and tell me that you believe that there is room for error in their motive or the outcome of their actions. These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. The only contentious part of my viewpoint is that I believe ethics supersedes law, and the heads of Valeant have technically complied with the law despite falling to the lowest low of ethics. These people are gaming the system at a level that most hard convicts wouldn't consider.
I upvoted your comment, it is a good avenue of discussion.