cwicseolfor:assassinationtipsforladies:blackqueerblog: I don’t think this is how efficient
cwicseolfor: assassinationtipsforladies: blackqueerblog: I don’t think this is how efficient markets are supposed to work. Insulin is literally a textbook example of a product whose price can not be controlled by operations of the free market as demand is purely inelastic, so the price can go up indefinitely. People need it to live and will pay whatever for it. I mean, it’s literally the example used by econ 101 textbooks to explain the concept. Like anyone who knows literally anything about economics could explain that the free market alone won’t work here. For a long time basic human decency and the fact that it’s pretty cheap to produce kept drug companies from going hog wild, but now it’s clear regulation is needed. It’s funny… how everything below the level of inflation, which is to say becoming cheaper over time… is optional… that which meets the level of inflation is the absolute minimum to keep a population (though not all its individuals) breathing… that which exceeds the level of inflation is everything which demarcates the rich from the poor… almost perfectly in line with what would produce a deeply and self-exacerbatingly unequal society of consumers of cheap goods… Must be a coincidence. -- source link