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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3332 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

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This seems like a topic for the culture-war thread, but the standard libertarian claim* is that big companies lobby the government to increase startup costs (your variable X), causing your case 1 to be more common than it would be in a truly free market.

*For example:

The recent era of antitrust reassessment has resulted in general agreement among economists that the most successful instances of cartelization and monopoly pricing have involved companies that enjoy the protection of government regulation of prices and government control of entry by new competitors. Occupational licensing and trucking regulation, for example, have allowed competitors to alter terms of competition and legally prevent entry into the market. Unfortunately, monopolies created by the federal government are almost always exempt from antitrust laws, and those created by state governments frequently are exempt as well. Municipal monopolies (e.g., taxicabs, utilities) may be subject to antitrust action but often are protected by statute.

I recall reading somewhere that regardless of size, every drug (or just insulin?) company has to contribute the same flat amount of cash to the FDA, which gives a huge competitive disadvantage to new/small companies.

The FDA charges fees for processing applications for drugs and medical devices. That is per application, not per company. Given the high cost of development they don't seem to be particularly high. And note that for some applications, smaller companies are indeed charged less.

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