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Incentives and Greed, Villains and Systems
Pharmabro. Epipen. Price on medicine that’s important to lots of folks has caught the attention of the country; it’s followed by massive public outcry and, of course, lots of rage. The CEOs are evil, the pharmaceutical companies are evil, possessing some powerful evil recruitment system that many other industries lack. Maybe corporations are evil or just the love of money is evil. However expressed, greed is the problem.
So let’s get mad at all these folks, let’s shame them, post on Facebook about them. Maybe that’ll fix things.
Why Congress Doesn’t Care What You Think
A paper from 2014 by Martin Gilens and Bejamin Page shook the bedrock of the American democracy by showing quite decisively that the likelihood of a policy being adopted in Congress is almost entirely unrelated to the amount of preference that citizens have for the policy. The preferences of economic elites (rich folks) and special interest groups (generally representing businesses) are far more likely to be enacted by Congress. The wedge in American politics may explain this perfectly.