Labor and equipment costs? Didn't know you could get physical chemists to work for free? I should use high school kids to make my medicines!
...In which I get conned into staying for the holiday rush...
Packed for three days and ending up here for a couple of weeks...helping out at the restaurant over the holidays.
A con job, they're not so busy, but I needed new winter tires on the jeep, other expenses, the money, however trifling, is desperately needed. A single night in the jeep, -26, I swallow my pride and find a couch..."yeah, I'll keep it warm for you...just this once...don't ask me again...".
This year, the worst ever in memory, ...but it's something. I'll resume blogging whenI'm back in the Kootenays with a computer, it's impossible on the phone, all in all I'm rather liking this abstinence from technology...
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Snow
And the first snowfall, below the highway, flurries, figures, I've a three or four day visit to Calgary, visit son, daughter, do some banking, and you could predict the weather would plan accordingly...
Snow, more, flurries, the passes, inaccessible without chains or better winter tires, via the ferry I'll only have to do the Crowsnest Pass, that's never too bad.
But the two or three nights in the back of the jeep (shoulda cleaned it, really), well, Calgary's now due for minus 20-26.
Like so many things I console myself, it'll be an adventure...
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Martin Shkreli
Capitalism rum Amok, or the logical extension of values that put profits ahead of people. There is, of course, the fine example of Mylan's EpiPen, a medication to curb severe aniaphylactic shock, which, despite being out of patent, has experienced numerous price increases - to the point where a 2 pack costs in excess of $600 US - principally because it's the company's chief "earner".
And then there's the fine example of Martin Shkreli - American born psychopath/CEO/entrepreneur, who as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. upon obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim raised its price by a factor of 56 (from US$13.5 to US$750 per pill). This despite the fact that most people requiring this drug live in 3rd world countries where $750 per pill is simply impossible (as if it isn't here, but we have healthcare...). Greed conquers all. While widely criticized and condemned, in the capitalist system he was simply "playing the game", looking to maximize profits with a minimal of investment.
Recently a group of Australian High School students synthesized the same drug for an average cost of $2.00 per pill, his response was to issue a series of tweets which ran, more or less, as follows:
Now it seems pretty clear that he rather singlehandedly embodies the worst of capitalism, and, in a fair and just world, would acquire an illness, perhaps bio-engineered and synthesized in a lab by someone a little bitter by his own (former) companies approach to medicine, and upon researching the cure find that it cost, oh, say, X Billion per pill....and after much soul searching and the selling of his company and assets afford the single pill, custom made to cure his illness, only to perhaps drop it down the sink...
An episode of Black Mirror.
Seriously, people, what will it take for you to realize these people are not like us, and that if you would cure cancer you must kill some cells...these people, they are the cancer that's devouring our society, and it's time, if it's not already too late...
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Sanders V. Trump
Trump has trumpeted how he's managed to persuade Carrier to keep 1000 jobs in the US. All it took was a bit of bribery and some costly incentives...
Read Bernie Sanders at the Washington Post to see how it could have been done: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/01/bernie-sanders-carrier-just-showed-corporations-how-to-beat-donald-trump/?utm_term=.8a95c39d53b5
Donald Trump. Just another hand puppet.
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- Category: Rants
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