SIMPLE GLEN, NEW JERSEY — Marcus Palumbozo is just a few semesters shy of his Bachelor’s Degree in economics, and though the 22-year-old self-described libertarian and free market capitalist says he “still has a lot to learn” about economics, he is willing to defend Martin Shkreli — the former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical industry executive who made big headlines recently when his company acquired the rights to a drug that has been used for decades in fighting autoimmune diseases. When Shkreli gave the directive to mark up the cost of a single Daraprim pill over 5,000%, social media reacted quickly and harshly, forcing Shkreli to back down and not raise the cost of the drug so much, though there hasn’t been any concrete word on what the new price will be, or if it will go back down to what it was before Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased it.
“Hey, don’t blame Shkreli for doing what any good, clean, American, unscrupulous, sociopathic, profits first executive would do,” Palumbozo said to our interviewer. “Just because he had the free will to not jack-up the price of a vital drug by over 5,000 percent, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t act in his company’s best interests first and screw over untold thousands — if not millions — of sick people for the sake of money, money, money,” he further stated.
Palumbozo said that if people hadn’t panicked, the free market would have naturally handled the situation. He says that despite the fact that no government agency had to intercede in this case, that people were still wrong for pressuring a job creator to do something he didn’t want to do, just because it could mean “some sick people might not, like, be able to live or whatever.”
“There is literally nothing that the free market won’t solve itself,” Palumbozo said while vaporizing some tobacco. He continued to add, “From slavery to Jim Crow, there is no social issue that hasn’t been fixed by giving business owners more rights to discriminate against people, if they choose, and relying solely on the power of people’s purchases to hold bigots and misanthropes accountable.” Palmbozo said that “all the great 19th century philosophers knew that the only way to achieve greatness was to let businessmen screw people over as hard as possible, because free markets mean liberty, which means money, which is the most important thing society can strive for, and so on.”
Our reporter asked Palumbozo if the Daraprim price hike was a good example of when a government agency is needed to step in and keep a company from preying on truly sick people. “No,” Palumbozo said flatly, adding that “it’s government’s fault that this guy used his own free will to jack up the price of the drug by over 5,000%, so any idiot who tells you we can just have better, less corrupt government officials step in on the people’s behalf is just a sheeple!”
“Oh, sure the bribes, or the payoffs, or ‘campaign contributions’ come from the business sector,” Palumbozo said, “and sure, there would be no bribed officials without a bribe being given in the first place,” he continued, “but can you libtards see this is all because of government, and not the innate greediness of capitalism that gives people cover to go and buy off Senators and congresspeople?”
“Don’t you libtards see,” Palumbozo asked rhetorically, “Without government, there’d be no regulations, and therefore there’d be no regulations for the corporations to write. They’d be free to do whatever they want, to whomever they want, and literally nothing you could do would stop them, no matter how viciously greedy and terrible, because that’s the best way for society to improve…for us to embrace greed. Because greed is good,” the stay at home student emphatically declared.
“So instead of just making that kind of activity illegal and punishable,” Mr. Palumbozo said as the interview was ending, “we need to simply get rid of government altogether. It’s like when you blame the puppet for something it says, instead of the puppeteer actually controlling the puppet and putting words into its mouth, get it libtards?”
