Pope Francis, who visits the United States this week, has been eloquent in condemning the excesses of what he calls “unbridled capitalism.” “The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned,” he warns, producing widespread economic injustice as well as damage to the Earth placed in our care for future generations.
“An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.”
If Francis’ indictment is accurate, it shouldn’t be hard to find examples of that behavior. And in fact it isn’t. Volkswagen, for example, has just been caught doctoring software in some 11 million diesel vehicles to cheat on emissions testing, dumping millions of tons of poison into our air so it can sell more cars. And here in Georgia, the CEO of a peanut-processing plant was sentenced to 28 years this week for knowingly shipping peanut products contaminated with salmonella. Stewart Parnell considered it too expensive to clean up his plant or to trash contaminated products — “just ship it. I cannot afford to lose another customer,” he told employees in one email — and at least nine people died.
Then there’s Deraprim, a 62-year-old drug used to treat cancer patients, AIDS patients and newborn babies whose mothers are infected with toxoplasmosis, a parasite. Until last week, the drug could be purchased for the not-inexpensive price of $13.50 a tablet. As of today, the drug’s new owner is charging $750 for that same tablet.
Why? Because he can. Former hedge-fund manager Martin Shkreli, 32, founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, complained this week that at its previous price, an entire life-saving regimen of Deraprim might cost only $1,000, which he considered intolerably low. Even at $750 a pill, he says, the drug is still underpriced.
Deraprim is just the latest in a series of old drugs purchased by new companies that then jack the price to astronomical heights. Cycloserine, an anti-TB drug, went from $500 for 30 pills to $10,800. Doxycycline, an antibiotic first approved for use in 1967, went from $20 a bottle to $1,849 a bottle. You can see the logic in it: They control a product that sick people need to remain alive, and they are shamelessly willing, even eager, to leverage their customers’ desperation in order to maximize their own profit.
It’s not evil, illegal or to some minds even unethical. It’s just business.
Capitalism is without a doubt the most productive economic system ever devised, but as Francis points out, it was not handed down to us as a sacred institution that we are barred from adapting to our own goals. It is a human invention just as a VW diesel engine is a human invention, and like a diesel, it can and should be adjusted.
“The first task is to put the economy at the service of peoples,” Francis says. “Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money. Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than serves.”
The thing is, we used to know that.
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