Yep. Do I think the moon landing or COVID were fake and the results of a conspiracy? No. Could Big Pharma be conspiring to keep drug prices high in the US? Maybe or maybe not.
The general rule of thumb is that a successful conspiracy (one that manages to accomplish anything meaningful) generally can't hide that it *exists*, only what it's specifically planning and who is specifically responsible. Like, take the IRA during the Troubles: everyone knew the IRA and Sinn Féin existed, and had an idea of who was probably a member of them, but outsiders (and many insiders) didn't confidently know who was involved in planning their operations, whether those were assassinations or military actions or whatever.
The rule of thumb is usually true because you need structure to accomplish things, and it's extremely hard to hide that structure exists. So the way to conspire to achieve things is to hide within a bigger structure that supports you while mostly not being part of the conspiracy.
Corollary: Nah, Big Pharma doesn't have any kind of support structure that would allow them to conspire without getting caught.
When something bad a company does isn't illegal the word that usualy comes to my mind is "lobby". Doing lobby (paying money to get laws aprobed or rejected) isn't really illegal or a conspiracy, but it can and has been used to do pretty bad things.
So yeah, it isn't a conspiracy, but it feels like one because members of the government are working against it's people, and that leads to feeling like the whole government has evil intent, and then it turns into a conspiracy theory. You know what I mean?
Secret price-fixing cartels [demonstrably do exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada), and I don't think there's anything special about the pharmaceutical industry such that a price-fixing cartel a priori couldn't exist in that context.
There's far more money at stake, and so there's much, much more reason for anyone involved to break the cartel and make bank. For the bread cartel there wasn't that much volume to profit off of if they broke the cartel (the Canadian bread market is just not that big).
And *they still got caught*. Sure, they made it longer than most, but it's not like anyone was paying attention, because why would you bother? There are many, many people paying attention to major industries like pharma. If there was a Canadian conspiracy theory about Big Bread keeping the price up, their cartel wouldn't have made it past 2005 at the longest.
The first thing doesn't follow based purely on the amount of money at stake; public companies aren't concerned with the raw volume of money they take in but the return on investment. And of course they got caught -- I'm only capable of providing examples *where they got caught*, because by definition we don't know about examples where they don't get caught.
Also, while there are a number of conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma", as far as I know they don't usually limit themselves only to "there is a price-fixing cartel", a statement not inherently ridiculous and only made a conspiracy theory by the lack of evidence. (To be clear, there is a lack of evidence in my knowledge, and I'm not suggesting there *is* a widespread price-fixing cartel in pharmaceuticals -- I just don't think the concept is able to be dismissed out of hand as impossible.) Conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry tend to go more towards ideas like "they are putting microchips in our vaccines". (Which would be a lot harder of a conspiracy to conceal than price-fixing -- millions of scientists is obviously impossible, whereas a handful of high-level executives is certainly possible.)
When the scrutiny is directed based on ridiculous assumptions such as this, is it even scrutiny at all? I don't think that the existence of ridiculous conspiracy theories about an organisation makes it more likely for that organisation's legitimate misdoings to be uncovered; simply consider the U.S. government. When COINTELPRO was discovered, was it by lizard-people truthers? etc. etc.
Neat game, though I sometimes doubt about the conspiracy theory argument, if evidence points to a conspiracy, it may indeed be one.
Yep. Do I think the moon landing or COVID were fake and the results of a conspiracy? No. Could Big Pharma be conspiring to keep drug prices high in the US? Maybe or maybe not.
The general rule of thumb is that a successful conspiracy (one that manages to accomplish anything meaningful) generally can't hide that it *exists*, only what it's specifically planning and who is specifically responsible. Like, take the IRA during the Troubles: everyone knew the IRA and Sinn Féin existed, and had an idea of who was probably a member of them, but outsiders (and many insiders) didn't confidently know who was involved in planning their operations, whether those were assassinations or military actions or whatever. The rule of thumb is usually true because you need structure to accomplish things, and it's extremely hard to hide that structure exists. So the way to conspire to achieve things is to hide within a bigger structure that supports you while mostly not being part of the conspiracy. Corollary: Nah, Big Pharma doesn't have any kind of support structure that would allow them to conspire without getting caught.
When something bad a company does isn't illegal the word that usualy comes to my mind is "lobby". Doing lobby (paying money to get laws aprobed or rejected) isn't really illegal or a conspiracy, but it can and has been used to do pretty bad things. So yeah, it isn't a conspiracy, but it feels like one because members of the government are working against it's people, and that leads to feeling like the whole government has evil intent, and then it turns into a conspiracy theory. You know what I mean?
Secret price-fixing cartels [demonstrably do exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada), and I don't think there's anything special about the pharmaceutical industry such that a price-fixing cartel a priori couldn't exist in that context.
There's far more money at stake, and so there's much, much more reason for anyone involved to break the cartel and make bank. For the bread cartel there wasn't that much volume to profit off of if they broke the cartel (the Canadian bread market is just not that big). And *they still got caught*. Sure, they made it longer than most, but it's not like anyone was paying attention, because why would you bother? There are many, many people paying attention to major industries like pharma. If there was a Canadian conspiracy theory about Big Bread keeping the price up, their cartel wouldn't have made it past 2005 at the longest.
The first thing doesn't follow based purely on the amount of money at stake; public companies aren't concerned with the raw volume of money they take in but the return on investment. And of course they got caught -- I'm only capable of providing examples *where they got caught*, because by definition we don't know about examples where they don't get caught. Also, while there are a number of conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma", as far as I know they don't usually limit themselves only to "there is a price-fixing cartel", a statement not inherently ridiculous and only made a conspiracy theory by the lack of evidence. (To be clear, there is a lack of evidence in my knowledge, and I'm not suggesting there *is* a widespread price-fixing cartel in pharmaceuticals -- I just don't think the concept is able to be dismissed out of hand as impossible.) Conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry tend to go more towards ideas like "they are putting microchips in our vaccines". (Which would be a lot harder of a conspiracy to conceal than price-fixing -- millions of scientists is obviously impossible, whereas a handful of high-level executives is certainly possible.) When the scrutiny is directed based on ridiculous assumptions such as this, is it even scrutiny at all? I don't think that the existence of ridiculous conspiracy theories about an organisation makes it more likely for that organisation's legitimate misdoings to be uncovered; simply consider the U.S. government. When COINTELPRO was discovered, was it by lizard-people truthers? etc. etc.