Today’s links Brinklump Linkdump: Indiscriminate heterogeniety for the sabbath. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Brinklump Linkdump (permalink) Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I’ve arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn’t fit in this week, so it’s time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series: https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/ It’s the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn’s latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score: https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore Here’s the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have “pricing power,” the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427 What’s going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they’re raising the price. That’s how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that’s also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening: https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow…Pluralistic: Brinklump Linkdump (20 Jan 2024)