I thought this might be a pretty good post to have by itself because it would carry different comments compared to the other thread, but the reason that so many drug ads are on US television compared to anything else is because the US and New Zealand are the only countries that don't outright ban direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. This ban was lifted under Bill Clinton's FDA in 1997 under the caveat that the ads list all the side effects, but of course they didn't realize how much they'd advertise.
Advertising directly to doctors was never banned, which is how Purdue Pharma, run by the Sackler family, members of the Triple Parentheses Gang, were able to outright lie to doctors about how OxyContin was non-addictive, resulting in its over-prescription and the current opioid epidemic.
https://jheor.org/post/2674-with-tv-drug-ads-what-you-see-is-not-necessarily-what-you-get
It pains me, but I feel my Libertarian Arc is winding down.
I still stand by the principles, but pushing "free market" is not the best real world solution, and just allows a foot in the door for deeply bad actors, and an outflow of wealth to foreigners and corporations.
Sadly, there are no solid answers, since the elites are evil, and the people have been thoroughly de-moralized after the subversives did their long march through the institutions.
There is not, at present, a viable alternative, because the people themselves are deeply broken. Authoritarianism won't fix the issues, because the people themselves are a huge part of the problem. The will and knowledge isn't there...yet.
Things are changing, but it's a massive uphill battle because, again, everyone was so broken.
Pharma is a protected racket. The FDA controls who can and cannot participate. The government will gladly let deadly products stay on the market in exchange for money.
This is the opposite of a "free market."
For sure. I'm not saying free market is the problem just that, at least with the current morality of people, it can't really be the solution either.
Point is, even though it's not a free market, they got away with a lot of this shit because people support the idea of free markets, and don't realize how stacked everything is. "Free market," even if fake, let's them get away with a lot of evil. It's the worst of both worlds.
Again, it pains me to say, as I've always been pretty libertarian.
Heck, the concept of "markets" has been so twisted that when I hear some bad actors talk about it...it just seems like treason. I saw a video of that opposition leader lady in Venezuela talk about "opening up the markets" or whatever. That's just code for shipping real resources out to foreigners, in return for fiat currency. It sounds crazy, but they'd probably literally be better as a nation under their retarded socialism, than international "capitalism."
We'd need to completely rollback the federal reserve, banking, and fiat for anything to be viable. And if the people had the will to do that, or the knowledge to demand it, the change wouldn't even be necessary. Just seems like a bit of a Catch 22.
I think the problems are cultural and societal at the core, not economic.
I’m basically the same the past few years. I believe in free market, but that requires regulation by the people. To put it like that one video, “but the people are retarded.”
Not enough people have a policy of not rewarding bad behavior. I don’t really use drugs enough to care, but I totally might have a personal policy that I don’t buy drugs that I see constant advertising for. If I did I’d stick to it. I don’t want to reward that.
More realistically what I do have. I do not buy cosmetic items or video game currency. At all. I don’t recall having ever done it. I’m sure there’s some crazy exception where I bought a bundle of things and it happened to throw in some cosmetic item but was a better deal. Obviously I’m a weird exception because there’s things like Fortnite with many billions of revenue and my understanding is they’ve never sold anything but cosmetic items and in game currency.
So yes, we have to have regulation of the market, because the people are retarded.
I also used to be a lolbertarian until I realized the side that wants to win will always defeat those who want to be left alone