Me: "Man, the Pharmabro, Martin Shkreli was convicted of fraud in the millions and raised the price on Daraprim 5000%. Is there bigger more entitled asshole who could not be more hated?"
Philip Esformes: "Hold my beer..."
Philip Esformes: "Hold my beer..."
I love a deserved smear, but Shkreli doesn’t deserve half as much as what he got from the uneducated public, nor his unnecessarily long jail sentence.
I cannot imagine a more tone-deaf defense of this scoundrel. Where exactly do you think insurance companies get their money?
I’m not saying he did nothing wrong (some jail time and monetary penalty was in order, but not the severity that was issued). I take issue that he was sacrificed for the public because of his brash showmanship, and the broken system marches on with little complaint. Epi Pen and insulin manufacturer execs still walk free, and they did far worse.
> "We want to hurt no one. We're here for the bank's money, not your money. Your money is insured by the federal government, you're not gonna lose a dime. Think of your families, don't risk your life. Don't try and be a hero."
Is that tone deaf, or might it work? I bet it would work. When the financial harm is spread out thin, people take it less personally. That's why people regularly fight back against muggers, but we very rarely see anybody take vigilante action against hospitals, the pharma industry or insurance companies when hospitals charge $10+ for a single aspirin pill and insurance companies spread that harm thin.
> When the financial harm is spread out thin, people take it less personally.
That is certainly true, but that doesn't make it any less harmful. In fact, it is precisely the thin spreading of the harm that causes people to be complacent about the real underlying problems. The result is that by the time people become aware of the problems again, they have become much more serious and concomitantly more difficult to solve (c.f. the 2008 financial crisis).
I didn't say it makes it less harmful. I said it makes the defense tonally aware. The people using the defense are aware of the psychological bias people have when harm is spread thin.
Besides inflation, you also have the costs of a city wide manhunt and FBI bank robbery investigation. The taxpayers are paying for those as well, and they'll likely be more expensive than anything in the vault. But the bank robbers are tonally aware; they know they can suppress vigilantism by pointing out that the government will spread the harm thin.
Yeah, I know that's what you said. I'm saying you're wrong. Specifically, this bit:
> you're not gonna lose a dime
You will lose a dime. You will lose it in extra taxes or in reduced purchasing power of the insurance settlement you receive. And so will your friends and neighbors and strangers you have never heard of. And that's just the loss you will suffer from this one robbery. You will also lose a dime from the next robbery that the robbers get away with because people bought into this argument, and the next one and the next, until your cumulative losses will be large enough for you to feel the pain and decide to do something about it. And by the time we get to that point, it won't be just you feeling the pain, it will be everyone.
You're still missing the point. The intention of that character isn't to make a factually correct statement about how the FDIC system works; his intention is to suppress vigilantism. Pointing out that the people witnessing the robbery actually are paying for it is tone deaf.
Of course I understand that. But the success of the argument depends entirely on the people in the bank being short-sighted and considering only the short-term consequences to themselves and not the long-term consequences to society.
[1] https://www.reference.com/government-politics/many-u-s-taxpa...
In any case, I believe this sort of thing would be covered by insurance or, in the worst case, the FDIC. Everyone with a bank account helps pay for those.
Agreed about missing the point. I just took the “dime” figure and ran with it.
Companies during the home loan crisis provided fake info(eg: fake income) to qualify for the home loans. And they got away with non-prosecution agreements and just fines. People's life savings were wiped out during the crisis.
If you rob a bank, spend all that money on lottery tickets, then leave a sack of money for the exact amount you stole in the lobby after getting lucky, do you think everything should be copacetic?
1. You still robbed the bank!
2. Gambling with someone else's money isn't virtuous.
I am willing to bet most startups’ financial decks have material mistatements.
Edit:
> "So people are defending him on #1 because they think other people are too mad about #2? "
Yes that's my belief.
Imagine Mel Gibson was caught bringing weed into an authoritarian SEA country, and was sentenced to caning. Now imagine there were people celebrating that sentencing, because Mel Gibson is a racist. In this hypothetical, is he a drug smuggling racist? Yes. I wager you'd see people defend him though, and accuse people celebrating his caning as being biased by his racism.
As far as I can tell he's done two things;
1. Profited handsomely off of white collar crime while defrauding his original investors.
2. The whole Daraprim thing.
So people are defending him on #1 because they think other people are too mad about #2?
The effect of Shkreli’s actions, to me personally, are functionally the same as hackers who hack into FB... only to have FB pay them for exposing the holes in their security system. Shkreli exposed a hole in the healthcare system. That he did so opportunistically is legitimately kinda gross, but the net benefit of his actions is that guys like me are now way more aware of the broken system that allowed him to operate in the first place. THAT’S what he’s done that’s worth defending.
There are things broken with the way the criminal justice system judges the severity of crimes, but the idea that fraud shouldn’t be punished so long as investors get their money back leads to an even worse system.
Yes, it is. Very easy.
And why would a hospital buy so many pills if they knew they're eventually going to throw them away by the 100s?
And what supplier only sells low demand pills by the 100 count?
Here is another one where they charge $1 for uninsured patients that make less than 5x the poverty line (most Americans): https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-s...
While not my original claim, my point remains, the 5000% number is incredibly misleading.
For example, let’s say that the price of the drug was $0. Then he raised it to $1. Is he an awful person for raising the drug infinite %? It’s simply bad reporting. If you hate Fox News and their headlines, you should also hate these headlines.
Yes, it is incredibly misleading. How many people are affected? In practice, do the end consumers see this price increase? What caused the price increase? When was the last price increase?
I understand, 5000% is a fact in the story. However, it is sensational and the exact reason why you see it in about half the headlines of the story.
I want to know how it actually is misleading in this particular case. You were happy to provide specifics before. If you don’t have any now, then it’s wrong to insist that it definitely is misleading.
I'm saying statistics can be used to sensationalize a topic which clearly HN is on this issue due to my down votes.
Note that I never defended his actions, simply stated that Shkreli is demonized for a stupid number with no context instead of focusing on his crimes - lying to investors - or the underlying issues that allowed him to raise prices - broken health insurance.
Shkreli ultimately just trolled the media too hard and they HAD to shut him down because if he kept going he was going to inspire a lot of copycats.