It is sad to me how effective the smear campaign against Shkreli was.

Insurance firms send a clear message- fuck with us and we completely ruin you.

And before anybody downvotes me- please inform yourself- not a single person had to pay a penny more than what they had to pay before the price increase, except the insurance firms.

Customers definitely had to.

Here’s vanity fair, with their profile on him.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/martin-shkreli-pharm...

He went to jail for securities fraud. If he is as smart as he and others say he is, then his culpability is absolute.

I can be sympathetic, but not willfully blind to actual fault.

You realize that insurance companies pass their costs to their customers, right?

I thought the point of insurance companies was that the customers wouldn't pay the full cost.

The point of insurance is that the customers pay the full cost. (And a little extra). It's just that customers share the full cost of all the customers, not their individual costs.

The point of insurance companies is to hedge against financial scenarios that you cannot otherwise plan for.

There's no world in which adding a middleman for a regular and ongoing service lowers the overall cost of that service.

It's passed on in aggregate, spreading the burden. Except now the burden gets heavier for all because some companies find a way to leverage the most vulnerable.

So, there is such a thing as a free lunch?

The funny thing is you're being glib, but Markowitz literally is quoted as saying diversification is the closest thing there is in finance to a free lunch.

Diversification? An insurance policy is a wager made with one party on a series of closely related events. There's nothing diverse about it, from the consumer standpoint. Some diversification is possible for the insurance firm itself, although there are limits to that so most firms purchase reinsurance.

Of course it's diversification. Instead of being short your own illness only, you enter a swap where you receive coverage for your own illness (thus being flat on that clump risk), and pay a small floating leg covering (a small proportion of) everyone's illness. You have much smaller variance, but the same expected return (minus administration costs) - just like any diversification.

There was no campaign. Nobody met in a smoke filled room and decided they were going to ruin the guy's life. What actuallu happened was the guy was a douchebag, and people called him out for it.

HN is the only place I find people defending that guy. I suspect it's because this forum is full of douchebags who identify with him.

Humans are complex creatures with many facets, and a crime and shitty PR doesn't change that. Most people don't defend criminals or unpopular opinions as to avoid alienation and judgement.

Generalizing people or groups of people over shallow associations says more about the commenter than those commented on.

Or maybe he is a peer of ours and we actually know something about him beyond ridiculous and disgusting media depictions.

Here's a fun question for you as an HN'er: what was the name of Shkreli's pharmaceutical company?

Starts with R? Checks... retrophin.

Shkreli was one of many finance types who have fully drunk the koolaid. He is not alone, and the others too would be prosecuted if people had the time and awareness to be incensed with the culture.

In his defense, shkrelli didn’t know he was a tool. On the one hand singing praises of the free market and on the other taking advantage of every loophole someone could find.

I mean the argument that “no body has to pay a dime more.” Is so patently ludicrous for someone who works in finance, that it can only be called disingenuous.

The difference between HN and New York is that finance thinks it’s ok. HN was founded by people/culture who saw Wall Street as everything they didn’t want to be. (And now a sad reminder of how money changes perception)

Finance people don’t think this type of behavior is OK either despite the ridiculous views of some people here.

BTW, I could similarly make ridiculous statements about technologists or scientists.

I’ve worked number of places and can’t think of a single person out of hundreds that would think this behavior is OK.

I know many those who don’t think it’s ok, and are bothered by it, and many who think he is stupid and didn’t do anything particularly wrong. The morality of it is separated from the legality of it.

The defense on this issue is pretty clear cut, raising the price is not illegal. If there is something illegal, then it should be in a regulation somewhere.

If he is doing something the market is open to, then it’s not a problem and he is doing a service by forcing the market or regulators to respond.

Maybe he was a douche about it, but that’s a stylistic issue, not a practical one.

He did get dinged for securities fraud, not price gouging as I recall.

> Starts with R? Checks... retrophin.

No. Starts with T. Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Retrophin was his first pharma firm, the one he made after leaving his hedge fund.

That firm later sued him.

Turing was his second pharma firm. Made soon after his ouster/leaving.

And it was Turing that raised the price of Daraprim, which earned Shkreli the attention and reputation still being echoed in this thread.

You’ve never seen /r/wallstreetbets then

Really, dude? That made you “sad”?