SCARY: A Flaw in the Free Market?

[KevinWestern]

Viagra is very likely artificially expensive as is any drug on the market thanks to the government restricting competition. Letting the free market do its thing would cause prices all around to plummet. Another thing to take into consideration here is that the price of drugs is high because people are so unhealthy to begin with. Lack of exercise and any semblance of a rational human diet among a majority of the population is going to lead to more illness and thus drive up the price of drugs. The government has played its role here as well subsidizing and promoting unhealthy diets like corn and other grains. Certainly not a free market at work.

The livestock industry, and industrial farming in general, is absolutely disgusting. No question. I pointed out before, however, how the government subsidizes these industries, and these subsidies come with a list of regulations on top of the already existing regulations. In other words, there is no free market here either. You have a market completely out of whack thanks to the government.

Your definition of free market is sound, but then you apply the term in places completely at odds with your definition.

Sure, I could have been a bit more precise with the use of the phrase however will ask (in your opinion) that if the livestock industry was completely without any subsidies or interaction from the gov't, and were allowed to transact freely with customers without taxes, etc, what mechanism would sway them away from overusing antibiotics which ultimately places a financial burden on other areas of society?

Also, would you like to completely do away with the FDA, and if so would you replace it with state/locally run agencies? I realize that if a company sells a poisonous drug that causes death/infertility after 5 years of use no one would buy the drug (or from that company) any longer and eventually the market would correct the mistake, however what about all those people that did fall victim in the 5 year period? Doesn't a regulatory agency play some sort of a role here?

 

[KevinWestern]

Sooo, your thoughts are what then? If you are wanting us to subsidize research, it would just be starting, and if what you state is true, would result in even later benefit to us. Therefore, it is better to just wait for these companies results, as the benefits of their research will get to us faster. We pay plenty for rx's now which has a cost factor for continuing R&D and since there is a need and a company knows if they are successful in their antibiotic research to help kill these super bugs, they could expand their earnings by billions relatively quickly as the need is supposedly so great.

Well, just was responding to your post. What was the point you were originally trying to make (you only provided links w/no commentary)?

That there is research going on out there. And, by your own admission, the government getting involved, other than maybe through FDA being less a deterrent to their getting new drugs approved on to the market, would not bring about any faster results.

Seems to me, reading through search, some of the universities are pushing for more grant money. That has more to do with wanting grants, than actually wanting to come up with solutions. As well, as some of the pharmaceuticals are hoping for subsidies, rather than having to fund the research for themselves, which they are plenty financially capable of doing, without added tax payer dollars. Don't blame either for asking, but it would not further the speed in which they come to market. And would rest on the shoulders of us tax payers once again.

Yep, good points.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Viagra is very likely artificially expensive as is any drug on the market thanks to the government restricting competition. Letting the free market do its thing would cause prices all around to plummet. Another thing to take into consideration here is that the price of drugs is high because people are so unhealthy to begin with. Lack of exercise and any semblance of a rational human diet among a majority of the population is going to lead to more illness and thus drive up the price of drugs. The government has played its role here as well subsidizing and promoting unhealthy diets like corn and other grains. Certainly not a free market at work.

The livestock industry, and industrial farming in general, is absolutely disgusting. No question. I pointed out before, however, how the government subsidizes these industries, and these subsidies come with a list of regulations on top of the already existing regulations. In other words, there is no free market here either. You have a market completely out of whack thanks to the government.

Your definition of free market is sound, but then you apply the term in places completely at odds with your definition.

Sure, I could have been a bit more precise with the use of the phrase however will ask (in your opinion) that if the livestock industry was completely without any subsidies or interaction from the gov't, and were allowed to transact freely with customers without taxes, etc, what mechanism would sway them away from overusing antibiotics which ultimately places a financial burden on other areas of society?

Well, for starters, the industry would shrink without government subsidies. Secondly, I think you're placing too much emphasis on the livestock industry in the first place. Not to say that you're completely wrong, but humans themselves are overdosing on antibiotics. We get the sniffles and we're in the doctor's office looking for a prescription these days. All the hoopla about the flu shots every year, which should be starting up anytime now, is just another example.

Regardless, how would industrial livestock work without government? Well they'd have to compete with healthier alternatives like grass-fed and free range and so forth. Why would you buy a chemically laced cow when you could get a healthy one for the same price?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

OK, the FDA recently took 5 years to allow the import of Prosciutto from Tuscany.

No, I'm not kidding

5 years of testing to allow processed ham from Tuscany

Real Tuscan Prosciutto Is Now Available - Finally - In U.S. - Forbes

 

[TakeAStepBack]

What free market?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

What free market?

Free to do whatever the government tells you to

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh

 

[KevinWestern]

Well, for starters, the industry would shrink without government subsidies. Secondly, I think you're placing too much emphasis on the livestock industry in the first place. Not to say that you're completely wrong, but humans themselves are overdosing on antibiotics. We get the sniffles and we're in the doctor's office looking for a prescription these days. All the hoopla about the flu shots every year, which should be starting up anytime now, is just another example.

I feel like the success of the free market is largely dependent on how educated and responsible the population is. Not directing that towards any of your comments necessarily, just sort of making a point.

Regardless, how would industrial livestock work without government? Well they'd have to compete with healthier alternatives like grass-fed and free range and so forth. Why would you buy a chemically laced cow when you could get a healthy one for the same price?

So when you get the gov't out of the equation, why would the grass-fed, free range cows be the same price as the industrial cow? I mean, isn't it always going to be much less expensive to shove a bunch of cows into a tiny shithole, and stock them full of chemicals and antibiotics than maintaining a clean, open pasture? How is the free range farm who can only fit 15 cows in the space that the industrial farm can fit 100 compete in price?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Well, for starters, the industry would shrink without government subsidies. Secondly, I think you're placing too much emphasis on the livestock industry in the first place. Not to say that you're completely wrong, but humans themselves are overdosing on antibiotics. We get the sniffles and we're in the doctor's office looking for a prescription these days. All the hoopla about the flu shots every year, which should be starting up anytime now, is just another example.

I feel like the success of the free market is largely dependent on how educated and responsible the population is. Not directing that towards any of your comments necessarily, just sort of making a point.

Regardless, how would industrial livestock work without government? Well they'd have to compete with healthier alternatives like grass-fed and free range and so forth. Why would you buy a chemically laced cow when you could get a healthy one for the same price?

So when you get the gov't out of the equation, why would the grass-fed, free range cows be the same price as the industrial cow? I mean, isn't it always going to be much less expensive to shove a bunch of cows into a tiny shithole, and stock them full of chemicals and antibiotics than maintaining a clean, open pasture? How is the free range farm who can only fit 15 cows in the space that the industrial farm can fit 100 compete in price?

The problem is that you're defining the free market as being outcomes that you consider desirable. The success of the free market can only be measured in how people are able to satisfy their wants and needs. It doesn't matter if you think what they do is stupid or wrong.

It's a snowball effect. As the government gets out of the way the chemical cows are no longer being propped up artificially, in an economic sense, so the healthy cows become more competitive. As the healthy cows become that much more competitive more people turn away from chemical cows to healthy cows, which in turn makes healthy cows even more competitive and the cycle continues. Does that mean there will never be sickly chemical cows being sold on the market? No. It just means that healthy alternatives will become more competitive.

 

[Asclepias]

We dig our graves with our mouths. If we ate the way we were supposed to then we would evolve with the bugs.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

After decades of misuse and a lack of R&D/new drug development, the age of antibiotics is coming to an end. Infections that could once be treated quite easily are proving untreatable as "superbugs" enter into the scene at an alarming rate.

This got me to thinking; is this one of those flaws in the free market system that perhaps requires gov't intervention? Due to the fact that new antibiotic research isn't as profitable as penis-hardening drugs, society is now left with a vulnerability that could threaten its very existence.

I always thought that one of the main roles of the Gov't was to "patch up" areas that the free market cannot fix; do any of you agree? Would it be crazy to suggest a public fund (maybe $25-50 billion) to foster new research into antibiotics?

Thoughts?

The End of Antibiotics has Arrived

My first thought is you should stop reading ravings from conspiracy nuts.

Then I read the article, and saw that the whacko thinks the problem is the cost of developing new drugs, which is directly caused by government regulation, and am wondering why anyone would think that government regulation would fix it.

Then I did some research, and found a source that confirmed my core understanding that the problem is much more complex than it seems.

New ideas are often based on the recognition of old truths. Prokaryotes (bacteria) “invented” antibiotics billions of years ago, and resistance is primarily the result of bacterial adaptation to eons of antibiotic exposure. What are the fundamental implications of this reality? First, in addition to antibiotics' curative power, their use naturally selects for preexisting resistant populations of bacteria in nature. Second, it is not just “inappropriate” antibiotic use that selects for resistance. Rather, the speed with which resistance spreads is driven by microbial exposure to all antibiotics, whether appropriately prescribed or not. Thus, even if all inappropriate antibiotic use were eliminated, antibiotic-resistant infections would still occur (albeit at lower frequency).
Third, after billions of years of evolution, microbes have most likely invented antibiotics against every biochemical target that can be attacked — and, of necessity, developed resistance mechanisms to protect all those biochemical targets. Indeed, widespread antibiotic resistance was recently discovered among bacteria found in underground caves that had been geologically isolated from the surface of the planet for 4 million years.2 Remarkably, resistance was found even to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the 20th century. These results underscore a critical reality: antibiotic resistance already exists, widely disseminated in nature, to drugs we have not yet invented.
Thus, from the microbial perspective, all antibiotic targets are “old” targets. Yet since the early 1930s, when Gerhard Domagk and colleagues discovered that chemical red dyes (the sulfonamides) can kill bacteria, the singular arc of antibiotic research and development has been to discover “new” targets to attack in order to kill the microbes. This strategy has saved countless lives. Ironically, it has also driven the resistance that threatens the very miracle of antibiotics. Ultimately, over centuries or millennia of selective pressure, we will run out of targets, and resistance mechanisms will become so prevalent as to preclude effective clinical deployment of antibiotics.

MMS: Error

In other words, the problem is not antibiotics it is our entire approach to treating infection instead of preventing it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It's not a flaw in the Free Market System.

Drugs are one of the most highly regulated aspects of the health care industry. It takes years to develop them and get FDA approval. And then we have the Byzantine prescription process.

The real flaw is turning Health Care into a RIGHT and making it a fertile ground for lawyers to plunder.

This results in a Sick Person seeing a doctor to DEMAND antibiotics for the sniffles. Due to the threat of malpractice, too many doctors have prescribed antibiotics for precautionary purposes.

Heckuva Job, Government!


If you want more research, get government off the back of researchers, and reform malpractice law and the FDA

I disagree and DO think it's a flaw in the free market system. Does the FDA regulate drug makers in Canada, Mexico, India, China, Japan, etc? As far as I can tell, this is a worldwide problem, and if it was a moneymaker someone would be making them somewhere.

Can you point out any antibacterial agent that hasn't been around for billions of years?

The problem here is not the free market, it is the approach to health care itself. Antibiotics were seen as a cure all for almost a century, and used indiscriminately. They are still used much more than necessary because doctors prescribe them as a precautionary measure to prevent infections instead of reserving them solely to treat specific infections. Stopping that practice would not "fix" the underlying fact that evolution has already developed resistance to every antibiotic agent on Earth, all it would do is slow down the process that selects for resistant bacteria.

Want to explain how that is flaw in the free market when the free market is about money, not health care? Especially if you factor in the fact that there is not a country on Earth that does not regulate drugs.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

After decades of misuse and a lack of R&D/new drug development, the age of antibiotics is coming to an end. Infections that could once be treated quite easily are proving untreatable as "superbugs" enter into the scene at an alarming rate.

This got me to thinking; is this one of those flaws in the free market system that perhaps requires gov't intervention? Due to the fact that new antibiotic research isn't as profitable as penis-hardening drugs, society is now left with a vulnerability that could threaten its very existence.

I always thought that one of the main roles of the Gov't was to "patch up" areas that the free market cannot fix; do any of you agree? Would it be crazy to suggest a public fund (maybe $25-50 billion) to foster new research into antibiotics?

Thoughts?

The End of Antibiotics has Arrived

So you're saying that the heavily regulated drug industry, which has drugs and other treatments kept off the market for years at the behest of the FDA, is somehow a failure of the free market?

Basically.

Not to mention that he is blaming it for evolution, and throwing in a undefined hatred of everything he doesn't understand.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'm saying that if antibiotics were profitable, they'd be developed somewhere.

They are profitable, and they are developed. The problem is that regulations make them less profitable and create a huge barrier to entry for new firms and players to enter into the market.

Sure, I agree that the FDA certainly isn't helping the situation. However, I don't think that they are the entire problem here. I think the free market is the main culprit. Why?

1.) Regulations aside, antibiotics are difficult to develop and sell at a cheaper sales price than other drugs (like viagra). From a buisness standpoint it's simply more profitable for Pfizer to pour their resources into the "money makers". They're not here to save the world, they're here to make money. This is a free market problem.

2.) One of the reasons we're seeing a lot of superbugs emerge is due to years of abuse by the livestock industry. This is a free market problem.

Not true.

1. All it takes to develop an antibiotic is to drop various chemicals into cultures of bacteria and watch the results.
2. The livestock industry is highly regulated. The regulations actually encourage the use of antibiotics in order to promote disease free meat. That is not a free market problem.

 

[KevinWestern]

They are profitable, and they are developed. The problem is that regulations make them less profitable and create a huge barrier to entry for new firms and players to enter into the market.

Sure, I agree that the FDA certainly isn't helping the situation. However, I don't think that they are the entire problem here. I think the free market is the main culprit. Why?

1.) Regulations aside, antibiotics are difficult to develop and sell at a cheaper sales price than other drugs (like viagra). From a buisness standpoint it's simply more profitable for Pfizer to pour their resources into the "money makers". They're not here to save the world, they're here to make money. This is a free market problem.

2.) One of the reasons we're seeing a lot of superbugs emerge is due to years of abuse by the livestock industry. This is a free market problem.

Not true.

1. All it takes to develop an antibiotic is to drop various chemicals into cultures of bacteria and watch the results.
2. The livestock industry is highly regulated. The regulations actually encourage the use of antibiotics in order to promote disease free meat. That is not a free market problem.

So it's just that easy to develop a new antibiotic? Lol. I think there's a little more to it than that, Quant.

 

[KevinWestern]

After decades of misuse and a lack of R&D/new drug development, the age of antibiotics is coming to an end. Infections that could once be treated quite easily are proving untreatable as "superbugs" enter into the scene at an alarming rate.

This got me to thinking; is this one of those flaws in the free market system that perhaps requires gov't intervention? Due to the fact that new antibiotic research isn't as profitable as penis-hardening drugs, society is now left with a vulnerability that could threaten its very existence.

I always thought that one of the main roles of the Gov't was to "patch up" areas that the free market cannot fix; do any of you agree? Would it be crazy to suggest a public fund (maybe $25-50 billion) to foster new research into antibiotics?

Thoughts?

The End of Antibiotics has Arrived

So you're saying that the heavily regulated drug industry, which has drugs and other treatments kept off the market for years at the behest of the FDA, is somehow a failure of the free market?

Basically.

Not to mention that he is blaming it for evolution, and throwing in a undefined hatred of everything he doesn't understand.

Hatred? Wow. Like to learn how your mind led you to that word. Please explain.

 

[KevinWestern]

Problem these days is you say a single key word and folks lump you into giant generalized buckets. Everything needs to be black and white. Not always the case. Just trying to foster some discussion here on an interesting concept, lol.

 

[Asclepias]

Problem these days is you say a single key word and folks lump you into giant generalized buckets. Everything needs to be black and white. Not always the case. Just trying to foster some discussion here on an interesting concept, lol.

Your doing a good job. Dont let the butt sore people dissuade you. I still think if we ate like we were supposed to we would evolve along with the bugs. I dont think its necessarily a problem with the free market, its a problem with the human element of the free market. There will always be dishonest people that take advantage of people that are uninformed. Free thinking is a trait that is scoffed at so its easy to manipulate the masses and guide them with a few commercials. My grand mother was Black and Native american and had lots of knowledge of herbs. We never ever got sick under her care. I use to hate all the stuff my grandma gave us when we were little. Now I know better and live a healthier life because of it.

 

[Sunshine]

After decades of misuse and a lack of R&D/new drug development, the age of antibiotics is coming to an end. Infections that could once be treated quite easily are proving untreatable as "superbugs" enter into the scene at an alarming rate.

This got me to thinking; is this one of those flaws in the free market system that perhaps requires gov't intervention? Due to the fact that new antibiotic research isn't as profitable as penis-hardening drugs, society is now left with a vulnerability that could threaten its very existence.

I always thought that one of the main roles of the Gov't was to "patch up" areas that the free market cannot fix; do any of you agree? Would it be crazy to suggest a public fund (maybe $25-50 billion) to foster new research into antibiotics?

Thoughts?

The End of Antibiotics has Arrived

Antibiotics are available in most other countries without a prescription. Nothing we do here will change the fact that germs are becoming immune to the antibiotics. Make new ones. They will get immune to those.

 

[Sunshine]

Sure, I agree that the FDA certainly isn't helping the situation. However, I don't think that they are the entire problem here. I think the free market is the main culprit. Why?

1.) Regulations aside, antibiotics are difficult to develop and sell at a cheaper sales price than other drugs (like viagra). From a buisness standpoint it's simply more profitable for Pfizer to pour their resources into the "money makers". They're not here to save the world, they're here to make money. This is a free market problem.

2.) One of the reasons we're seeing a lot of superbugs emerge is due to years of abuse by the livestock industry. This is a free market problem.

Not true.

1. All it takes to develop an antibiotic is to drop various chemicals into cultures of bacteria and watch the results.
2. The livestock industry is highly regulated. The regulations actually encourage the use of antibiotics in order to promote disease free meat. That is not a free market problem.

So it's just that easy to develop a new antibiotic? Lol. I think there's a little more to it than that, Quant.

Actually, penicillin was discovered by accident. It's an interesting read. You should look it up sometime.

Penicillin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are things that are bacteriostatic. Not the same as bacteriocidal. One thing is the copper penny. In Micro, we grew cultures with a copper penny in the middle. The bacteria would not grow near the penny. And newsprint. We were taught how to deliver a baby in an emergency if we were ever in such an unfortunate situation. They taught us to use newspaper if it was available for wrapping the baby because newsprint is bacteriostatic and will not expose the baby to germs he/she would get from a shared item of clothing.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Sure, I agree that the FDA certainly isn't helping the situation. However, I don't think that they are the entire problem here. I think the free market is the main culprit. Why?

1.) Regulations aside, antibiotics are difficult to develop and sell at a cheaper sales price than other drugs (like viagra). From a buisness standpoint it's simply more profitable for Pfizer to pour their resources into the "money makers". They're not here to save the world, they're here to make money. This is a free market problem.

2.) One of the reasons we're seeing a lot of superbugs emerge is due to years of abuse by the livestock industry. This is a free market problem.

Not true.

1. All it takes to develop an antibiotic is to drop various chemicals into cultures of bacteria and watch the results.
2. The livestock industry is highly regulated. The regulations actually encourage the use of antibiotics in order to promote disease free meat. That is not a free market problem.

So it's just that easy to develop a new antibiotic? Lol. I think there's a little more to it than that, Quant.

Only if you factor in government regulation, which you insist is not the problem.