The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

I’m currently reading an issue of Free Inquiry (April/May 2008) Vol. 28 No.3. at 42 and I came upon a passage that neatly encapsulates why unbridled capitalism is a bad economic system that often works against people and why libertarians and other market-worshippers are totally out to lunch. It’s a beautiful illustration of how the “invisible hand” is giving the average tax-payer the finger.

…one small biotech firm that recently developed an artificial version of high-density cholesterol. In early tests, it showed the promise of sweeping clogged arteries free of plaque after a small number of treatments, thereby reversing or even curing cardiovascular disease. This posed a threat to manufacturers of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, which are of course much more profitable than the new technique would have been, since statin drugs must be taken indefinitely. A manufacturer of one of the primary statin drugs purchased the small biotech company for twice its then-current value, and the new technique has “disappeared.”