$84,000 Hepatitis C Drug For $1500 by Buying It From India

Not expensive. With such bend over mentality the sky's the limit for these ripoff criminals profiting on people's lives.

 

If you don't have 84K there is no option.

 

I agree that in order for something to be stolen it must first be someone's property. Then the theft would be taking that property from them without their permission. So in order for it to be possible to steal my value, that value would have to be my property. That sort of makes no sense, given that property is defined as things we own.

 

No, it wouldn't surprise me. Medical tourism has long been a thriving industry, and it shall remain so for a long time to come.

The "I can't afford that!" whine never really made any sense to me. I can't afford lots of things myself. You know what I do when I can't afford something? I do without, or lower my sights to something similar that I can afford.

Medical care is no different.

 

Here's a perfect example of the "It's too expensive!" whine.

Can you guess why there's a honda instead of a ferrari in my garage?

 

Your value? If it's not yours who's is it?

Value is a measurement system. No one can steal your measurement system. But value is also a quality of the thing you are trying to measure.

Think of it in terms of length. No one can steal your understanding of the length of an inch, but they certainly can steal an inch of your rope. If they do so, your rope would have a change in value according to however you value the length of the rope.

Now instead of actually cutting the rope and taking a piece, what if they just use the rope to say, tow a car across your yard without your permission. The use puts strain on the rope, and weakens it. The next time you go to use your rope it's too weak to do what you want and it snaps. The thief didn't steal your rope. It never left your yard. He did steal something about it that you value. (The rope's strength)

 

You are comparing a medical saving drug to a car?? Tell me how much a profit was made on your car vs. how much a profit was made here? It's criminal to force people who need the medication to pay such an outrageous fee. Do you think your doctor is going to recommend you to buy from India when he is in the pocket of the drug companies? Get real.

 

Yes, I'm comparing medical care to a car.

Why not?

profit margins are irrelevant.

 

When you say by damaging my property he stole something about it that I value, now I understand that while I've been talking literally, you're talking metaphorically. I contend that value is not a thing that exists in the physical world other than in the mind of someone valuing something. But I can see your point that a real thing, such as a piece of rope can have (or lack) various attributes the I can value, such as it's strength.

I think we were talking past each other until I just realized this.

 

We're closer, but not there yet I don't think. The rope isn't metaphorically strong. The strength is something that can be objectively measured. It is a quality of the rope that contributes to its value. The strength isn't a social construct. It's not something that can be negotiated. No one can hand you a weaker rope, declare it to be of equal value to your stronger rope, and by making that declaration actually change the strength of the weaker rope.

That's how socialists believe they can change the way people value.

You see it in the minimum wage argument. They think that if they force people to pay more for a thing they can change the way that thing is valued.

You see it in this discussion. They think that if they can force owners to charge less for a thing they can change the way that thing is valued.

All they are doing is fiddling with the scale used to measure value. All of their fiddling does not change the way the thing is intrinsically valued. It doesn't change any of the almost infinite real properties that contribute to value.

 

Yes, I agree. The rope isn't metaphorically strong. The strength is an actual, physical attribute of the rope. And I value the rope because of its attributes.

Of course not.

Right. They can't change how much I value something by implementing price controls.

By my point to about stealing value is that any particular thing may have myriad attributes the might cause me to value it more or less, but what we call the ropes "value" isn't a real physical attribute of the rope. The ropes various attributes (eg. strength, weight, stretch, weather resistance, etc) cause me to value the rope.

So when @GoogleMurrayBookchin talks about "stealing surplus value", it makes no sense, value is simply how much each of us values something, and you can't steal that out of my head.

 

What the socialist is talking about when he says surplus value is the difference between the cost of production of a good and the value of the good. We would call that profit. The socialist imagines that profit comes from the labor used to produce it, and so if any profit exists it must have been stolen from the labor. It's really just a strained way to rationalize the theft of something they don't own simply because that thing gained value after they sold it.

It's akin to selling a painting for a dollar and then claiming 99 dollars were stolen from you because the person who bought it from you resold it for 100 dollars.

This strained argument is exactly why I'm being so picky about the term ”value", and why I believe it's a real property of the thing being valued. It's important to impress on the socialist minded that value is a incredibly complex but very real system, and that the labor theory of value is far too simplistic to even begin to accurately describe that system.

Value isn't just a figment of the imagination. It's based on the observation of millions of real points of data from millions of real perspectives.

 

Would you be happier if the medication didn't exist?

 

I agree with pretty much everything up to this last point. But nothing has intrinsic value. Rather, things have intrinsic attributes, and people value things for these attributes.

 

84k is very expensive but my life is worth more to me than that. I will pay, won't be happy about it but it bets being put in the ground.

 

84K vs 1K from India. You sure are a "spendthrift."

 

It might be worth it if you aren't a huge fan of Bollywood movies.

Personally, I quite enjoy them.

 

Where do you think the money that it takes for the next drug comes from. The cost to bring a drug to market cost around 2 billion. Think about how things were in the 70s when I was a kid. Open heart surgery was a big deal and many did not make it, now people have multiple by-pass surgery and are golfing in a few weeks. All the advancements come at a cost and that is simply money. Think of the 84k as a drug that saves your life and an investment in your kids future life saving drug.