At The Crux

A couple of basic truths:

1. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the good sense or intelligence of the American consumer.
2. If there's a problem, look for who profits from the problem itself and/or from the proposed solution.

David Armstrong, ProPublica:

Not content with billions of dollars in profits from the potent painkiller OxyContin, its maker explored expanding into an “attractive market” fueled by the drug’s popularity — treatment of opioid addiction, according to previously secret passages in a court document filed by the state of Massachusetts.

In internal correspondence beginning in 2014, Purdue Pharma executives discussed how the sale of opioids and the treatment of opioid addiction are “naturally linked” and that the company should expand across “the pain and addiction spectrum,” according to redacted sections of the lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general. A member of the billionaire Sackler family, which founded and controls the privately held company, joined in those discussions and urged staff in an email to give “immediate attention” to this business opportunity, the complaint alleges.

ProPublica reviewed the scores of redacted paragraphs in Massachusetts’ 274-page civil complaint against Purdue, eight Sackler family members, company directors and current and former executives, which alleges that they created the opioid epidemic through illegal deceit. These passages remain blacked out at the company’s request after the rest of the complaint was made public on Jan. 15. A Massachusetts Superior Court judge on Monday ordered that the entire document be released, but the judge gave Purdue until Friday to seek a further stay of the ruling.

The short-hand version of Mike's General Theory of Economics (and at the risk of indulging myself in at least a couple of Logical Fallacies):

I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist.

Capitalism is the closest approximation of "the natural order of things".

To survive, I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to fuel the work necessary to find my next meal.

I should also try to put aside a little something for that rainy day when no matter how much work I do, I get nothing.

But here comes the first part of the greater truth that the Radical Libertarians always ignore in their attempts to rationalize their shitty behavior, which are driven by their equally shitty attitudes:

God also gave me a pancreas to make sure my blood sugar level - boosted by those calories I'm taking in - is regulated. Sugar is a good thing, but without a well-timed little blast of insulin it's going to kill me.

Sugar's good. Insulin's good. Too much of either sugar or insulin - and I fuckin' die.

And god provided me with a nice big brain so I can recognize the absolute need for that regulation - the need for balance - along with the need to incorporate that awareness into whatever philosophies or ideologies I might come up with.

Which leads to a second part: 

We're not the same as all those other life forms (that pesky big brain thing again).

An adult male bear will kill and eat the cubs of another bear as part of his effort to mate with a female and get his genes into the next generation of bears. That's the natural order of things - for bears.

The natural order of things is brutal. And while it seems cruel, without the necessary self-awareness, it's just how that part of the universe works.

But humans are self-aware, and because of that self-awareness, we have to know that emulating certain animal behavior is a conscious decision, and so it can be rightly identified as cruelty.

We should try to make more of an effort to be a little smarter than the average bear.