A closer look
Pharmaceutical executives routinely engage in a parasitic economic behavior called rent-seeking, where they manipulate laws and patents to massively increase their own wealth without actually producing any new value or innovation for society. The most infamous modern example is Martin Shkreli, who legally purchased the exclusive rights to a life-saving, sixty-year-old anti-parasitic drug called Daraprim and immediately jacked up the price by an astonishing five thousand percent overnight. This infuriating tactic relies entirely on the fact that patients will literally die without the medication, creating an inelastic demand where the consumer has zero power to boycott the product or shop around for better deals. It perfectly exposes the sociopathic underbelly of applying unregulated free-market principles to human healthcare, where hoarding access to existing medical science is rewarded with astronomical Wall Street profits while working-class people are forced into total medical bankruptcy
