The Bastiat quote is on point if your criticism of Purdue Pharma is that it profited from the medical licensing laws and drug prohibition laws that unfairly proscribes teenagers from buying madak cigarettes on the free market.

If the criticism is merely that they made money selling addictive drugs, this really isn't what the quote is about.

They did not make billions from selling yet another opioid of which there are dozens available cheaply. They made billions by subverting the medical system largely though completely legal means. Essentially they sold yet another synthetic street drug through Doctors rather than on street corners. And this worked because they jumped through the correct hoops and advertised in the correct manner.

If they went and produced 'Oxycotin gets you high and it is legal!' like a head shop the operation would have not reached multimillion dollar size before it got cracked down.

Jumping through the hoops is the part the system understands as important though.

Those two differences although irrelevant to end outcome being bad and condemnable are pretty damn big distinctions akin to claiming you "unleashed a savage wolf to attack unsuspecting children" when you sold out a pit bull puppy who was sourced from a dog fighting ring and the dog mauled a kid who yanked on his tail.

Outside the pandemic, we see oil companies and other manufactures move their operations overseas to countries without power or understanding that the earth is being pillaged, or that the big company is there because they don't have modern labor laws or laws that protect their environment.

Hell, the amount of beer cans on the side of the road in my suburban neighborhood and surrounding parks areas indicates that there's a portion of the population that can't handle not drinking and driving.

I wonder if this is specific to America/capitalism, but I don't really have a frame of reference for other cultures that champion values like community over the individual, following the rules, etc.

This is another one of those situations where the crazies are driving the conversation, because they are much louder than their actual portion of the population. According to Gallup the portion of their panel who “never” wear a mask outside of their home is 10%, while those who “rarely” wear a mask is 2%.

The vast majority of the population wears masks “always” (50%), “very often” (27%), or at least “sometimes” (11%). The vast majority of us are complying with mask regulations; we’re just not making a lot of noise about it.

They repeated the stunt approximately yesterday but one of the organizers was arrested this time; he handcuffed himself to a chair but didn't consider that it was on wheels, so they just rolled him out of the building. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/25/906046911/ammon-bundy-is-arre...

This family made billions as opium dealers whose impact has been seen nationwide. But since it was 'just business' they get to turn a blind eye to the impact.

I understood the quote to be a comment on the idea that once morality free enrichment becomes codified into law what would seem to be morally 'wrong' is justified and even looks 'good' since what they are doing is legal.

I took it to be a criticism of American culture.