Recent posts by lord_azaral on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / Earth is now "legally" in a DEPRESSION!

Already we’ve seen the value of the USD raise
in global markets. Milk- formally 3.99 has gone
down to 3.00 (in my store at least). The price
of oil constantly falls, not just because of
OPEC realizing its limits, but because of the
expanding dollar!
The deflation is happening at such speed, that
it could potentially cause the retail market to
wobble.

Don’t confuse effect for cause. The cause of the depression is not deflation, the depression is the cause of deflation, which is a GOOD THING. In a time when people are losing their jobs and seeing their income reduced, prices are dropping which is making it easier for them to get by. The level of prices does not matter, only the difference between what it takes to buy and how much it can be sold for and then how much this profit will buy.

The markets have needed a good shock for
some time. They serve to diminish corruption
and make people realise that they can’t be
constantly greedy and excessive.

Very true, but the government is doing all it can to keep this from happening with all these bailouts. The malinvestment needs to be purged and purged as quickly as possible so that we can get back to building a sound economy, not an economy that brought us here.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Marriage?

Do you want to spend the rest of your life with her? If yes, marry her, if no, don’t do it right now.

Topic: Serious Discussion / The Solution to the Economic Crisis?

zmmaji actually I think the projections are to kill more like 9/10ths of population of earth (for all you conspiracy theorists out there)

I do believe that the target population for this is 500million.

Topic: Serious Discussion / The Solution to the Economic Crisis?

First, stop trying to fix it, you can’t and the more you try the worse it will be and the longer it will last.

Second, cut government spending and taxes as much as possible. The first and easiest thing to do would be to stop spending a trillion dollars a year policing the world. Bring the troops home from all around the world. Cut taxes everywhere. This will instantly help a lot of people as it lessens their financial burden.

Third, continue to do nothing government wise.

Fourth, continue further to do nothing government wise.

Fifth, rejoice a year or so later as we are completely recovered.

The alternative, many years or decades of depression as teh government tries and tries and fails and fails to fix it.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

when you buy drugs, the active ingredient is always the same, whether it be name brand or not, the only reason name brand costs more is because it used that money for advertising which in turn gets people to buy it instead of store brand and makes more profits.

Not always true. There are supplemental agents in some medicines that make them work better or faster. Excedrin is one example, they add caffine which speeds up the pain relief process of acetaphenomine

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Look at, well, nearly any other market. You have higher-quality (or name-brand), more expensive products, and cheaper, generic, lower-quality products. I see no reason for the drug market to be different.

I didn’t say there wouldn’t be cheap generics and expensive quality stuff, I’m saying that overall, all prices are going to go down a lot. The drugs that are 100 dollars a pill could go down to fifty, twenty, 10, and teh ones that are 50 cents could become 2-3 cents a pill. Who knows. All I know is that they all WILL become cheaper.

Also, keep in mind many of the drugs that kill you or seriously harm you are not to cure life-threatening illnesses, so it’s not a question of “might die” or “will die”, it’s a question of “might die” or “will feel less pain”, or “will lose weight”, or “will gain mobility again”.

Yeah, actually there are probably a lot of drugs that are risky but life saving, as well as treatments and procedures cause remember the FDA regulates pretty much everything done in medicine. As for the other stuff, that is up to each patient to weigh based on their own values, at least now they get to make the choice instead of the FDA.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Here’s a question for you: with new competition in the drug accreditation and certification business, you’re likely to have both Lexus and Kia – high-end, expensive, paranoid ones and low-end, cheap, less-careful ones. The result is that you’ll also have expensive drugs and cheap drugs, with the cheap drugs having an increased risk associated with them. So, the lower-income families now can afford drugs, but also have greater risk. Many of them will be treated, but also some of them will likely die or have serious side effects. Is this better or worse? I’m honestly not sure.

This is not necessarily true. It is equally likely that the better tester could also be the cheaper one. Just because they do more does not mean they are inherently going to be more expensive. They could posses better employees able to do more thus lowering their overhead. They could have more streamlined processes. They will strive to find ways to do more with less in order to lower their expenses in order to lower the amount they have to charge in order to get more customers in order to make more money.

And all drugs will be cheaper than they are now, so what is expensive now could end up being cheap, and what is cheap now could end up being so cheap that they could be sold them en mass to poorer nations that you see on TV all the time, the ones where they beg for donations so they can buy medicines to help those people out. I think that between using a drug that has a chance to kill you vs. not taking it and dying of disease that is almost sure to kill you, most people will take their chances with the drug.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Alot of people want to go back in time to kill Hitler.

i daresay this is ever impossiblererier than time travel itself. what would happen to the realm you left when you entered the time machine? it was certainly there, so where does it go? do you create an alternate universe? does the one you left just vanish?

Well, who knows lol.

We hear this a lot, but is it at all valid? I would agree with significant or tremendous consequences, but what makes them disastrous? (ignoring apparent contradictions with physics and logic I guess…)

Well its not guaranteed I suppose, but most likely. A simple event like tripping over your shoe lace could set off an onforseeable chain of events that leads to the world ending. Chaos theory baby!

Topic: Serious Discussion / Alot of people want to go back in time to kill Hitler.

But what if going back in time separates you the future so you remember what happened in the past before you changed it. Thus, you kill Hitler, WW2 is avoided, no one ever experiences it, but you know that it would have happened. Though, playing with the time line would most likely have DISASTROUS unintended consequences.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

The number of people dieing despite FDA approval is mostly due to people like you constantly complaining about them being forced to prove it safe first, and undermining the process.

Huh? I fail to see how forcing them to prove things being safe makes them unsafe and undermines the process to prove something safe…. And I’m not complaining about them proving it safe first, I’m complaining about them being the only ones that can do it.

People dieing while waiting for the drug to be approved… you claim that companies would do the tests anyway to prove the drugs were safe… so what would change under your system exactly?
Looks like nothing so far.

The FDA does not allow people to take the treatments while they are experimental. Without this, people could take them if they want to, which they often do because it will probably save their life.

The closest I can find to this figure is a study that estimated an average cost of bringing a drug to market of about $800 million. NOT the cost of FDA approval, but the whole cost of R&D, approval, marketing to doctors and so on. Another study estimated about $200 million, with about 29% of that being the cost of FDA approval.
*figures taken from the wiki, sources are available on pubmed for those with access
Do you have any sources that aren’t simply the opinion of the author?

That was 2 seconds of a Google search… And the costs will not remain the same, competition will make it cheaper as the testers lower prices, develop new techniques, new devices, etc etc. Right now, there is no incentive to do so because they HAVE to go through the FDA.

Just like the existence of diploma mills guarantees that your qualified lawyer or doctor is really good because of all those fancy certificates. Very few people are able to differentiate between good and bad certification.

Because they rely on the government too much, and if the government gets it wrong, its no different. This government regulation actually exists to limit the number of people in the ‘x’ profession, allowing those in it to charge more, but that’s a different debate. It is for the benefit of any profession to regulate itself because if there are too many bad people practicing it, it gives them all a bad name and will limit their business. Companies will arise to rate doctors or whatever, the same as happens for a lot of things.

The market will do nothing more than get people killed, in this case. You also ignore that private entities can be bribed far easier than public ones, as there is no oversight to prevent it.

No, they are not easier. The risk of getting caught and ending any hope of doing anything in the future usually limits this sort of thing. The government officials face no such risk since they can’t go out of business until the government decides. If the company gets it wrong, they are finished. You are ignoring the vast risk involved in not being ethical.

The FDA does not determine the cost of the testing. Any company requiring a similar standard of testing would result in a similar cost. As for speed, you cannot make a long term study go faster without reducing quality.

You cannot know this. There could be something made that quite accurately determines long term effects. And I do believe the FDA does charge for it’s testing and no, private companies would not charge as much since they would have to charge less because of competition.

There’s a reason no one does it your way, your way is stupid.

In your opinion. No one does it my way because people have been educated to trust the government waaaay to much, which is not surprise since government runs the schools.

Because as we all know, no business executive has EVER done something that is of enormous personal benefit, but bad for the business they’re running. Right?

Sure, but they are far and few between. There are far far far more people that run their business smart than do stupid things. It doesn’t seem so because the media jumps on the stupid ones like flies to shit.

Especially when there is no guarantee of being caught.

Even less guaruntee of a goverment official getting caught and even less of a chance that they will not still be doing what they are doing.

No, the reason they do this is because, dun-dun-dunnnnnnn, people in country A are willing to pay more than people in Country B.
Basic business.

No, the reason is because the only drugs we can get in the US are ones made in the US and there are like six pharma companies, give or take. They have no real competition. Plus there are patents, which gives them a monopoly over a drug for seven years. Then, there is the fact that the patients aren’t paying this cost, the insurance companies do. The patient doesn’t care how much its costs, so they will take the 100 dollar a pill antibiotic instead of the 1 dollar a batch antibiotic that will do the job just as well.

The market will do nothing more than get people killed, in this case. You also ignore that private entities can be bribed far easier than public ones, as there is no oversight to prevent it.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

(EX)They sell a pill here for about 2 dollars meanwhile they sell the same pill in other countrys for 5 cents. It only costs them like 2 cents max to make that pill. Then to add insult, the gov passed a law 5+ ago to prevent the gov regulating prices for presription.

The reason they can do this is because the FDA limits competition.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Why? Provided those responsible are adequately replaced, that company will still be far more effective than a new fledgling company.

The company won’t go POOF. It will be bought up and replaced with new management.

True, perhaps I am just less willing to trust that won’t happen than you are.

I’d trust someone who’s livelyhood depends on doing a good job and making sure people are satisfied over a government employee who’s livelyhood only depends on the government’s ability to tax.

So they can research the candidates for the FDA jobs, knowing that they can kick out whoever they’ve elected if they mess up. It is no more difficult than researching companies. More likely it will be easier if the media decide to take an interest (which they probably would).

Yes, because this works soooo well with regular political offices…. /sarcasm

What is does mean is that there is no empirical evidence to favor you. It means that your speculation is unsupported in reality and makes such a move more risky. It doesn’t mean it’s unwise, but it means you can’t just flatly state “there won’t be more deaths”.

I can look at other areas where the private industry does work and compare it to how well the government does the same or similar things and see that in every instance the government fails in comparison to the free-market institutions. The government can do nothing better than what the free-market provides.

No, it’s not dumb, it’s bold. It’s risky. It’s a gamble, and it could pay off tremendously.

Sure it could. It could also fail miserably and destroy their long term well being.

It’s a pressure that the FDA doesn’t really feel that private companies would.

You’re right, government agencies don’t have any risk of failure, so they are much less burdened to accept bribes and practice cronyism and all sorts of other things, cause in at the end of the day, those who are responsible will most likely still be in place.

Yes, it’s probably the best move, but it’s not the little utopia you’re painting it to be.

I’m never said anything about utopia. Are there going to be problems and scams, sure. Will it be better for everyone, absolutely. Right now, the current situation only benefits the big drug companies to make billions and billions charging people hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a pill that costs a whole 10 cents to make because they can bribe the FDA officials to keep cheaper alternatives out, even cures in some cases.

I too had thought of this, but there’s a simple solution. Don’t remove the FDA. Instead, remove the ban on selling non-FDA drugs. That way, new companies can spring up and establish themselves while the public still has the comfort of the FDA. Then, if the FDA is discovered to be unneeded it could be removed, or competition could force the FDA to streamline or become obsolete.

That is my idea. You would also have to cut the FDA off from government funding if you want it to go away.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Another side to increased profits is to reduce expenditure, in this case that would mean lowering safety standards.

Not necessarily. There are numerous way to cut expenses without compromising quality….

Streamlining the process, mechanizing processes, multi-tasking, etc etc. Did you put any effort into thinking of ways to cut costs other than, dur, they have to lower their standards, only way.

It is a problem, which is why I suggest they be directly responsible to the taxpayer. The company won’t fail if they mess up, but whoever is responsible for any mistake will be kicked out.

That is just a dumb idea. The company should fail if it messes up, that way the ones who are responsible will be held responsible, instead of blaming everything but themselves.

I disagree, you can very easily elect different levels of government, and be electing different parties whilst you’re at it. It wouldn’t be too big a jump to allow people to vote for different major branches of the government. Would it be too complicated? Not any more so than doing your research to find out which private company has a good track record.

I’d rather people researched it on their own than rely on some ominous branch of government doing it for them without real accountablity or choice.

I would rather the comparison companies (and government FDA) weren’t dependent on the drugs companies’ money actually,

They aren’t, the drug companies are dependent on the safety review companies service since this is what is going to garner trust in the drug company’s product.

but onto your next point, politicians would be under the same pressure, even if it was just that saving money and getting good results quickly meant more money for pay rises and a public willing to let them have it.

No they aren’t. We just had the worse congress approval ratings in history, and 87% of them got re-elected. You can’t hold government accountable.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

but I feel that since they do have the taxpayers’ money behind them, and have no shareholders, they have less motive to do so.

This is the whole problem of the FDA, they don’t have to earn the money they make. Congress just forces the people to pay for it. PROFITS ARE GOOD. It is the motivation to satisfy customers as best as a business can in order to convince those customers to give the business money. The FDA will get paid for as long as Congress wants it to, good job or bad. There is no incentive to do a good job. There is every reason to be political in your decisions. There is every opportunity to accept bribes and practice cronyism.

Ideally, I think it would be the case that the FDA bosses were directly responsible to the public, with their jobs on the line.

Which you can only have in a free-market system free of government intervention. You would have multiple FDA style businesses, each vying for the business of drug companies, so they are going to push to produce the best results, for the cheapest cost, in the quickest amount of time.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

This is simply false. The government is held accountable to the people. If the government screws up, those in power lose their power. They have the same incentives that companies have, only it’s based on power rather than money. In either case, they still are working for the benefit of the people.

The FDA officials are not elected. They are accountable to only the government, and when 87% of the worst congress ever gets relected….

My question is: are there any countries that have private testing/approval companies instead of government regulations. If there are, how is it going?

There are none that I know of, but this doesn’t mean anything. Just because everyone does something one way doesn’t mean its the only way or that it is good.

This wild speculation doesn’t seem based on anything to me, and is contrary to common sense (early on, there is not going to be good understanding of drug-approval, and no company will have established itself as trustworthy yet, so there is likely to be a fair amount of confusion, and certainly could be some very poor approval companies, either on purpose or by accident, that will approve drugs that never should have made market).

It’s not based on speculation, but the fact that the free-market does everything better than the government because they have to do good in order to survive. The government just needs to tax people more in order to run its programs. And the government doesn’t know anything more than those working in the field do, in fact they often know less because they don’t work in the field (speaking of congress who writes this legislation). Right now we have one monolothic leviathan for approval and if they get it wrong, many suffer. If there were more options, one mistake would not cause as much suffering. Plus, look up the number of people who die waiting for drugs to be approved or a drug they are hoping for fails approval because of non-sense.

There is every possibility that they will receive pressure/bribes to do approval quickly to get a drug out to market before competitors.

Which would be dumb. If they pushed a drug on the market as safe and its not, then they can kiss their business good bye. Sure they could do it, but so can the government, which is more likely to happen because the FDA won’t go out of business or even receive a pay cut.

However, if they screw up, then they go under, file bankruptcy, and liquidate. Meanwhile, thousands of people die. Yes, I see the positive incentives you mention, but I think you’re ignoring a lot of negative ones as well. Business is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Which is no different under the FDA, except the ones who messed up stay in their job to continue to mess up and be corrupt while the free-market removes the ones who made bad decisions.

Business is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Yes it is, you are over complicating it, but, that is what we were taught in school. Businesses are evil and it is because of benevolence of government that we aren’t working slave wages and 1000 hour work weeks in order to survive. You sould listen to those links I posted in the libertarian thread about the industrial revolution.

Free-market means that those who satify the demands of the most people make the most money. People demand quality, speed, and low cost. The free-market puts the customer in charge, not business.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Though, I’m curious, what exactly do you propose? You certainly can’t have drugs without some sort of seal of approval. So how would it be handled? Why would a private approval group be any better? How many people would die in the meantime?

Let the market handle it. The most likely thing to happen would be third party companies being started for the purpose of testing drugs for safety. These companies would be hired by drug companies in order to build trust in customers. The drug companies have incentive to do this because they need consumer trust, consumers being pharmacists, doctors, and patients. The testing companies have incentive to do a good job because if they don’t, then their reputation for correctly identifying safe and unsafe drugs will not be sound, consumers will not trust them, which in turn cause their approvals to be meaningless and businesses will not hire them because it will bring no advantage. It could never cost as much as the FDA does because they also have an incentive to do it as cheaply as possible while maintaining quality in order to better compete and to make more money. They also have incentive to do it as fast as possible because higher turn over will lead to more money and more drug companies coming to them to get their stuff approved as quickly as possible. It’s the same way UL works with eletric products such as hair dryers and stuff. As well as consumer review magazines for stuff like computers and cars. Patients will still have all the levels of protection in place, but it will make drugs cheaper. Plus, it would open up the window for imports.

How many people will die? No more than they do now. Also, you won’t have people dying while they wait for experimental drugs to be FDA approved, they could use the treatments as they desired.

Then there is the whole food side to the FDA, which would also make food cheaper.

You are all under the impression that just because the government does it, ONLY the government can do it. The government is the true monopoly and there is no incentive to do well and every incentive to do bad. When the FDA does poorly, it is ALWAYS because they don’t have enough money (so they claim, same with any government program).

I’m not saying removal of approval is the thing making them cheaper. What I’m saying is, getting rid of the government monopoly on approval is going to make them cheaper. It is also going to result in more choices of treatment, and choices are good.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

ndeed, proving that your drugs are safe can be quite expensive. Your idea seems to be to let them sell whatever they like, and if enough people die from it, the rest will stop using it. What a lovely dystopian future you would build for everyone.

Have you seen the number of FDA approved drugs that are still being use despite people dying from them and the number of drugs that had people dying and got pulled? Its a lot. Plus, you also have to figure in the number of people that die while waiting for those drugs to get approved. It also tags on an extra 800million dollars to development: “Patients have also lost out because the expense of drug approval means that some other wise promising drugs will not be worth developing at all. And the high cost of the FDA approval process, about $800 million per approved drug, means that once approved, drugs are more expensive than would be the case if the FDA process were quicker and cheaper.” http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp…

And of course, no one is going to have the bright idea to test their own drugs in order to make a safe drugs in order to garner more customers and no one is going to have the idea to test these drugs for safety in third parties to garner even more trust from customers. That would simply go against your “businesses are evil” rhetoric! And no one is going to get the idea to buy off the FDA, the sole entity that can approve things, in order to get their nasty drug approved. It’s safe, after all, the FDA approved it!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi72.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi46.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grichar/grichar17.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul288.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul400.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi74.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul246.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lora/m.lora38.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi38.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe1…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi32.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker29.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi34.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/perry/perry41.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi40.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/ruwart2.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/…

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Yeah, but then they’d put poison in all of our drugs…

Right… because killing your customers is great for business.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Are pharmaceutical companies just corporate drugdealers?

Get rid of the FDA and they won’t be nearly as expensive.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Evolution, tell me please

hazaa!!! lol
no beginning no end
it’s what seems most plausible to me

Well, we will figure it out eventually, much sooner once we stop arguing over which version gets forced onto everyone and start accepting that not everyone is going to agree, no matter how much proof and evidence and disproving goes on.

Topic: Serious Discussion / A small step for man, a giant leap for the black man

/sarcasm

yay for the conflict view of history!

/sarcasm

Topic: Serious Discussion / Evolution, tell me please

First, disproving evolution does not prove creationism correct. The whole evolution vs creationism is a false dichotomy. Second, it is not a hypothesis, but a theory with lots of support. It’s not a law yet because it is not proven 100% correct. Third, who says that this stuff was ever created, why doesn’t anyone consider the possibility that it has ALWAYS existed with no beginning. Fourth, where is the evidence showing creationism is correct other than the Bible, which isn’t evidence at all.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Hooked: Illegal Drugs

Did the action of Nixon and the other presidents in that time period, lead us to the drug filled world of today?

Yes. It creates a forbidden fruit aspect, akin to telling someone not to do something and they do it just because you told them not to. It has created a very lucrative black market. It has made research to make drugs with similar benefits and no addiction impossible. It has created a vast police state that destroys people’s lives and liberties. It results in soo much spending to catch and jail criminals of non-crimes. 80%, give or take, of the prison population are non-violent drug offenders. This time, space, and money would be far better spent on real criminals committing real crimes that have actual victims that are not the criminals themselves.

Were these laws effective or not?

Obviously not.

And the drugs were first made illegal and such because of racism. Opium was first made illegal because of hatred towards the Chinese as the Chinese were the chief users of the drug. Marijuana was made illegal because of racism against Mexicans, who were the chief users of that drug. And I think cocaine was made illegal because the chief users were black, though I’m not entirely sure about that.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Don't Tread On Me: A Libertarian Thread

Talk on Industrial Revolution

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Topic: Serious Discussion / Don't Tread On Me: A Libertarian Thread

In your opinion. People don’t think its an option because the establishment tells them its not and these ideas are hardly given the light of day, which is to be expected. Why support and chariot your own downfall?