Today’s links Pedophiles for Purdue Pharma: With amici like these… Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Pedophiles for Purdue Pharma (permalink) It’s not merely that the Sacklers – a multigenerational, ultra-wealthy drug-pusher dynasty – made billions while murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans by lying about the safety of Oxycontin, the flagship product of their Purdue Pharma drug company. It’s that they got away with it. After a decade-long crime spree in which the family used a combination of elite philanthropy and vicious legal threats against critics (including me!) to maintain a squeaky-clean image, the Sackler name is finally a synonym for mass murder, and will forever be a curse. But though they lost their name, they kept their billions. In so doing, the Sacklers exposed the rot at the heart of American bankruptcy, bringing an obscure, deeply corrupt system into the public eye. Bankruptcy has always been with us. As Michael Hudson reminds us, “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.” Without some system for discharging debt, control over the entire productive capacity of a society is eventually shifted to a hereditary creditor class, which precipitates calamity: https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles But America has a bifurcated bankruptcy system. For normal people, bankruptcy is more punishment than relief. For the ultra-wealthy, bankruptcy is a system of total impunity for ghastly crimes. Simply undertake those crimes through the “personage” of an LLC and you’re on…Pluralistic: Pedophiles for Purdue Pharma (05 Dec 2023)