Font of Wisdom

I said before that Lina Khan was the nice version of populism, now the ugly version is here. And there are some lessons for both big business leaders and Democrats. First, corporate America has fundamentally broken trust with the American public. For years, big business built its business model on lying, cheating, and stealing. Big pharma is one of the most hated industries, so I'll use them as an example. Important drugs to address things like blindness or cancer are still coming out, but they have a sticker price of more than $1 million a year. That's lunacy. And they know it. Here's the thing, though. Almost every major blockbuster drug comes from government research. And big pharma haven't been good faith actors for decades. They played patent games costing Americans $125 apiece in 2019 alone. The Democrats put forward the Inflation Reduction Act, which was an extremely mild attempt to say the top most expensive and oldest drugs have to increase in price *slightly less* than they did before. Pharma went CRAZY! That will kill innovation! That will kill all drug discovery! You are all Communists! And yes, the IRA was a mostly stupid bill, but it went through because big pharma has completely disengaged from all reasonable policymaking except GIVE US MORE MONEY FOR COMMERCIALIZING TAXPAYER FUNDED RESEARCH. It's not just about big pharma. For a few decades, there have been sporadic attempts to roll back some of the worst behavior, constrain pharma prices, cap junk fees, regulate overdraft fees, increase wages, et al. But nope, we can't have that. Instead, anyone who tries to do anything but increase return on capital for Wall Street is an immoral DEI woke Communist. Corporate America won that fight, and put the Republicans in charge. Big business, big pharma, big tech, they were all in absolute ecstasy when Trump won, because finally the adults were back. No more annoying academics and Communists. Let's leave aside that corporate profits were at a record under Biden, that they got to do almost anything they wanted, and they only had to tolerate Lina Khan stopping an occasional massive merger and trying to mildly constrain a few multi-trillion big tech firms from eating everything in sight. Nope, Trump was back, and Wall Street boys can say 'retard' and 'pussy' again. Yahoo! Only, now the bad populists are here. Trump might mean what he says on tariffs or deportations, or he may not. But he's not going to provide 'certainty' for the business environment. Let's go back to big pharma, which is quietly panicking. This time, it's not a price hike issue. The right aren't going to stop price hikes, and may roll back the IRA. Gouge away, boys. Only, the bad populists are going to genuinely kill the innovation pipeline by cutting NIH. The rationale of 'we can't innovate if you don't let us charge a million dollars a year for a pill that costs 75 cents to make' was always bullshit. But the cancer researchers who actually find those million dollar cures? They are being laid off. And that's real. So big pharma is in a lot of trouble for the simple reason that NIH cuts are going to kill their drug pipeline. They will get no sympathy from the public, and shouldn't. They broke their side of the bargain. That said, at some point, they are going to try and sidle up to Democrats in hopes of putting pressure on Trump. It's going to be tempting to jump into the arms of corporate America. But Democrats need to force them to pay a price. Let's go back to pharma. These medicines are genuinely important and life-saving, but they shouldn't cost $1 million a year. It's the same shit with junk fees, mergers, private equity, and all that garbage. We need real reform of corporate America, a real negotiation over how these big companies operate, to force them to actually make money by doing good for society, instead of pillaging it. That means no more egregious CEO pay, no more boards of directors that do nothing as Boeing makes deadly products, no more monopolization as a strategy, more more lawless BigLaw partners, no more Citizens United, and better treatment of small business and workers. That's what the good populists should seek. The rule of law. Honest business. That probably seems like way too much to ask. But then, big business has four years to enjoy the rule of the bad populists. They brought this on themselves.