WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 36825809

(no title)

SQueeeeeL | 2 years 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.

discuss

order

haswell|2 years 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.

jtode|2 years 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.

Georgelemental|2 years 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.

COGlory|2 years 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.

alasarmas|2 years 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 :-)