It's popular to loathe mainstream pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma has been accused of profiteering at the expense of the poor. Of not doing enough to find solutions to the diseases of the poor. And, when they do develop cures for the poorest, the patents are promptly stolen from them through compulsory licensing.
Some scientists are even opposed to the "power" of Big Pharma and are, like the characters in John le Carré's Constant Gardener, working to bring down vested interests. The heights of that hubris was reached by Dr Andrew Wakefield, a British medical scientist, in 1998 .
Mumps, measles and rubella are terrible diseases that have plagued humanity for generations. They are so common amongst children that they are normally abbreviated together as MMR. Parents all across the world have immunised their children using a variety of vaccines. In 1988 the UK introduced a combo-MMR drug that stopped the disease dead.
At the tale-end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall fell, as Glasnost gave way to the crumbling of the USSR, Capitalists celebrated.
As the wall fell, as the unhealthy, drably dressed, survivors of the Soviet States emerged, driving clunky Communist-designed vehicles, in their lumpy Communist-designed shoes what could be a better advert for the joys of Capitalism?
Except, people forget. And, as in George Orwell's cerebral 1984 , there are Ministries of Information inventing new versions of Newspeak to obscure meaning and disguise intentions.
"Communism" has been entirely discredited. The word, that is, not the ideology. That has re-emerged. Now it is known as "new economics" or "anti-globalisation" or "people's economies".
Capitalism, in many ways, is simply the ecology of markets. We can argue about different types of capitalism, and which is better than others, much as we do with ecologies. It, as with everything, depends on the context. Baumol identifies four types of Capitalism:
Anti-capitalist demonstrators around the world should be celebrating. Robert Mugabe's government has taken those against free-markets at their word. Over 1 300 business owners have been arrested across Zimbabwe.
Their crime? Raising prices.
For the past decade Robert Mugabe has accepted every tenet of the anti-globalist anti-free-market lobby. He nationalised large commercial farms and gave them to the landless poor. He printed cash and gave it to veterans and the rural destitute. He fixed prices on essential products at low prices to benefit the poor. And, when business owners flouted those rules, he arrested them.
The results have been precisely what market-economists, such as myself, have said would happen. Agriculture collapsed, the Zimbabwe Dollar is entirely debased, essential products are unavailable, and the only real trade takes place in the informal market – now 80% of the economy.
In 1994, when we achieved our democracy, we were neck-and-neck with Brazil for the title of the country with the highest measure of inequality. Since then, as the economy has grown, the gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% has gotten much wider. It isn't a case of the rich getting richer off the backs of the poor getting poorer. But it does appear that those at the top are getting richer faster than those at the bottom.
Since 1994 legislation has made the expense and learning-curve of joining the formal sector tougher. Minimum wage laws and labour compliance increase the costs of running a business. It can be debated endlessly as to whether these things result in a better life for all.
aloft: the whythawk blog 
