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Notes -
“The people who disagree with me are stupid” is massively uncharitable, and well below what I expect of this place. That’s a stereotype of boo outgroup, and you’re saying it to the very word.
There’s a lot about what you’re saying that’s right! But you don’t seem to have understanding of the reasons people are critical of big pharma, and instead are just calling them dumb. It’s exactly the fact that people who criticize these things are immediately called every insulting name in the book that makes them become distrustful, resentful, and vengeful.
Are you trying to move past shady thinking here, or are you more interested in dunking on your outgroup? It would be much more productive to try and engage with what @Primaprimaprima said and develop a greater understanding of where your opponents are coming from — that will make you much better at being able to be both compassionate and convincing.
I suppose I could have called them, "unable or unwilling to understand the production function of medical goods, the capital structure of pharmaceutical corporations, the inherent unfairness of mass tort litigation, the difficulty for an individual consumer to determine the expected utility to himself of a given medical product, p-hacking, and the extent of the natural human disease burden," but that would be just padding the word count.
Doesn't all of this get side-stepped if we're talking about a system where that isn't the case at all? Surely the Soviets developed some genuine medical tech all on their own state dime.
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No, that’s not just padding out the word count: the two things you’ve said are not equivalent.
In particular, now you’re actually discussing the values, beliefs, and arguments behind your position, which is a dramatic difference from “all my opponents are dummy dumbs”.
And actually stating plainly your values means that people who are actually smart can now productively disagree with you: maybe someone can go “actually the production function of medical goods doesn’t work like that,” or “maybe tort litigation isn’t actually all that unfair,” or “it’s actually not that difficult for the average consumer to make an informed decision about the expected utility of a medical intervention” — and then what you’ve got is an actual discussion that can illuminate both sides!
And even if you’re right about 100% of your claims, the way you stated it before didn’t make you sound right: it made you sound like a bully relying on thought-terminating cliches. Someone whose arguments are well thought out and informed by evidence doesn’t need to act like that. Providing evidence, discussing trade offs, and engaging in constructive debate is what smart and credible people do. Calling people stupid is just, well, stupid.
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