"If we approach this in the right way, it will spark a 21st Century Renaissance. A flourishing-forth of art, science, wealth and culture not seen since the Middle Ages."
Dear Ben, you’re absolutely correct. Like you, I observed what I called The Dirty Snowball gobble up larger and larger pharmaceutical companies through the first two thirds of my career (late 1980s to mid noughties) to the point that few, very large corporations dominated the world.
We joked that it was one of the many industries in which you could work for four different companies without leaving your office.
Size was always the ostensible motive, because R&D was becoming more and more expensive as well as *less successful. Almost everything failed to reach market or to be profitable because of poor efficacy or unacceptable side effects.
I expected the industry to all but vanish during my working life. They should have vanished. They’ve stopped producing anything useful.
What must have happened in parallel with consolidation was regulatory capture. I’ve no doubt that there has always been sporadic corruption. I remember an FDA Advisory Committee (AdCom) for a drug that was in our view hopeless which then was approved by a unanimous vote. This was around 1990. It was a market failure.
But while we slept, big pharma board rooms and the seniormost leaders of FDA merged, probably catalysed by back room conversations at Davos.
While many of us can see this expression of centralisation so clearly and can even paint the steps leading to it in this specific & highly relevant example, Ben has become aware of this kind of phenomenon much more broadly.
We’ve been gulled into accepting the inevitability of globalisation. We’re told that it’s “progress” & you can’t prevent it. It’s at minimum an organic process though obviously it can also be steered.
The dirty secret is that those who were in corporate early on, and were talented enough not to have been fired eariy in this journey of consolidation, did well financially out of globalization. Such people were paid generously to assist in merging all these functions (“building the prison camps”).
They were then advised to sock away large, tax-relieved sums into their private pensions and then to invest those savings into the shares of those companies who were busy ensuring that their profits grew, corruptly if need be, yielding astonishing returns.
Guilty as charged. I never once thought of the wider implications of what I could see happening in my own sector when applied to the wider economy.
It’s everywhere. Virtually nothing has escaped the clutches of globalization and more specifically centralisation.
The result is that a handful of people can affect substantial parts of the lives of most people on earth. This is without precedent in human history.
Swimming against the tide might seem impossible, but it really isn’t. If you want no more than to turn your back on corporate life in all its many forms and to connect with people locally for as many of your needs as possible, you absolutely can.
Only in this way do we stand a chance of creating a network of people which is resistant to the baleful and totalitarian practices of globalization.
*there is an important silver lining to this cloud. Pharma hasn’t got worse at inventing the rare, genuinely useful drug. What’s happened is that the very patent system which grants the innovator a limited duration of commercial exclusivity has created a deep thicket of off patent, low cost drugs. They don’t go away when the patent expires. The existence of the blockbuster drugs of the past inevitably formed a portfolio of affordable medicines. Most aren’t particularly safe and effective, but some are.
I vote that we create the draft shortlist of generic drugs we should have access to.
Thanks Mike, it's exactly as you've highlighted. Globalised consolidation of assets across all industries. Maximum focus on extraction of profit via cost cutting in back office functions over investment and delivery of long term value. The biggest heist in history.
Your last line: I concur. Beyond those I'm not sure we need to salvage much else from the wreckage of Big Pharma...?
Ben, this is brilliant! The ecosystem we have all become accustomed to existing in is becoming obsolete in the lives of those whose human instincts are drawn by other, more local and human friendly endeavours. I see it everywhere, you capture the hope so well, thank you
One of the important things that grew out of the work on P2P is Holochain. (a page of that name exists on facebook). Holochain is an effort to decentralise computing, data storage and collaboration through apps. It runs on users' computing hardware, there are no central servers.
The aim of Holochain to decentralise the net. It works to put computing power, data storage and opportunities for collaboration in the hands of the end users, effectivey making centralised servers and those "walled garden" social networks we are using superfluous. By linking up end user hardware, the power is pushed out to the periphery instead of the server farms that are now running things.
Ben, WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. How can I get involved in any kind of discussion groups for what you've laid out please? Following a Telegram channel is totally inadequate as I actually want to get involved. I've spent my adult life essentially working on a social system that is actually no system (because systems are the whole problem mate).
P.s. I just found the link to the website, so will sign up.
"We live in an era of unprecedented Centralisation.
Cultural, economic and political activity is largely dominated by a tiny number of increasingly powerful global institutions and wealthy individuals, at the expense of everyday citizens.
This process of Centralisation has been going on for decades, maybe centuries, and is driving levels of wealth inequality not seen before at any point in human history."
Couldn't agree more, and in fact I have been close to the P2P Foundation founded by Michel Bauwens, which has decentralisation written on its banner, for something close to three decades now. Michel was working on Facebook a lot after the era of email communications and has his own substack now, which you can find here:
Dear Ben, you’re absolutely correct. Like you, I observed what I called The Dirty Snowball gobble up larger and larger pharmaceutical companies through the first two thirds of my career (late 1980s to mid noughties) to the point that few, very large corporations dominated the world.
We joked that it was one of the many industries in which you could work for four different companies without leaving your office.
Size was always the ostensible motive, because R&D was becoming more and more expensive as well as *less successful. Almost everything failed to reach market or to be profitable because of poor efficacy or unacceptable side effects.
I expected the industry to all but vanish during my working life. They should have vanished. They’ve stopped producing anything useful.
What must have happened in parallel with consolidation was regulatory capture. I’ve no doubt that there has always been sporadic corruption. I remember an FDA Advisory Committee (AdCom) for a drug that was in our view hopeless which then was approved by a unanimous vote. This was around 1990. It was a market failure.
But while we slept, big pharma board rooms and the seniormost leaders of FDA merged, probably catalysed by back room conversations at Davos.
While many of us can see this expression of centralisation so clearly and can even paint the steps leading to it in this specific & highly relevant example, Ben has become aware of this kind of phenomenon much more broadly.
We’ve been gulled into accepting the inevitability of globalisation. We’re told that it’s “progress” & you can’t prevent it. It’s at minimum an organic process though obviously it can also be steered.
The dirty secret is that those who were in corporate early on, and were talented enough not to have been fired eariy in this journey of consolidation, did well financially out of globalization. Such people were paid generously to assist in merging all these functions (“building the prison camps”).
They were then advised to sock away large, tax-relieved sums into their private pensions and then to invest those savings into the shares of those companies who were busy ensuring that their profits grew, corruptly if need be, yielding astonishing returns.
Guilty as charged. I never once thought of the wider implications of what I could see happening in my own sector when applied to the wider economy.
It’s everywhere. Virtually nothing has escaped the clutches of globalization and more specifically centralisation.
The result is that a handful of people can affect substantial parts of the lives of most people on earth. This is without precedent in human history.
Swimming against the tide might seem impossible, but it really isn’t. If you want no more than to turn your back on corporate life in all its many forms and to connect with people locally for as many of your needs as possible, you absolutely can.
Only in this way do we stand a chance of creating a network of people which is resistant to the baleful and totalitarian practices of globalization.
*there is an important silver lining to this cloud. Pharma hasn’t got worse at inventing the rare, genuinely useful drug. What’s happened is that the very patent system which grants the innovator a limited duration of commercial exclusivity has created a deep thicket of off patent, low cost drugs. They don’t go away when the patent expires. The existence of the blockbuster drugs of the past inevitably formed a portfolio of affordable medicines. Most aren’t particularly safe and effective, but some are.
I vote that we create the draft shortlist of generic drugs we should have access to.
Thanks Mike, it's exactly as you've highlighted. Globalised consolidation of assets across all industries. Maximum focus on extraction of profit via cost cutting in back office functions over investment and delivery of long term value. The biggest heist in history.
Your last line: I concur. Beyond those I'm not sure we need to salvage much else from the wreckage of Big Pharma...?
I’ll happily preside over the biggest skip fire ever after the handful of genuinely useful drugs are pulled from the rubble.
It needs razing to the ground and ploughing in.
Trouble is, razing to the ground and ploughing in is too good for it - it could poison our good soil!
😉
"I vote that we create the draft shortlist of generic drugs we should have access to."
Fantastic Idea - but surely it's a very short list.
Ben, this is brilliant! The ecosystem we have all become accustomed to existing in is becoming obsolete in the lives of those whose human instincts are drawn by other, more local and human friendly endeavours. I see it everywhere, you capture the hope so well, thank you
thank you, so glad it resonated with you :)
One of the important things that grew out of the work on P2P is Holochain. (a page of that name exists on facebook). Holochain is an effort to decentralise computing, data storage and collaboration through apps. It runs on users' computing hardware, there are no central servers.
The aim of Holochain to decentralise the net. It works to put computing power, data storage and opportunities for collaboration in the hands of the end users, effectivey making centralised servers and those "walled garden" social networks we are using superfluous. By linking up end user hardware, the power is pushed out to the periphery instead of the server farms that are now running things.
https://www.holochain.org
Ben, WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. How can I get involved in any kind of discussion groups for what you've laid out please? Following a Telegram channel is totally inadequate as I actually want to get involved. I've spent my adult life essentially working on a social system that is actually no system (because systems are the whole problem mate).
P.s. I just found the link to the website, so will sign up.
Very interesting initiative. A move to a decentralised model will be essential. It's the only antidote to both globalism and technocracy.
"We live in an era of unprecedented Centralisation.
Cultural, economic and political activity is largely dominated by a tiny number of increasingly powerful global institutions and wealthy individuals, at the expense of everyday citizens.
This process of Centralisation has been going on for decades, maybe centuries, and is driving levels of wealth inequality not seen before at any point in human history."
Couldn't agree more, and in fact I have been close to the P2P Foundation founded by Michel Bauwens, which has decentralisation written on its banner, for something close to three decades now. Michel was working on Facebook a lot after the era of email communications and has his own substack now, which you can find here:
https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com