Society

Society articles feature analysis about social policy, ethics, entertainment, and philosophy.

All society articles at Brownstone Institute are translated automatically into multiple languages.

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big pharma

Big Pharma’s Co-Pay Coupon Racket

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Drugmakers rely on shady promotional gimmicks to keep the cost of brand-name medicine high, and you’ve seen them in action. In the many, many, many television commercials you’ve seen for various drugs—and Big Pharma is the second largest advertiser by industry—consider how many mention a coupon the manufacturer offers. In fact, the share of brand-name prescription drug spending that included a coupon rose from 26 percent in 2007 to 90 percent in 2017.

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Albert Camus on the Denial of Freedom

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And then we realized that the separation was destined to continue, we had no choice but to come to terms with the days ahead. In short, we returned to our prison-house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were tempted to live in the future, they had speedily to abandon the idea—anyhow, as soon as could be—once they felt the wounds that the imagination inflicts on those who yield themselves to it. 

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hundred flowers bloom

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom – Always!

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The pandemic has shown us that research outputs can be statistical artefacts, made to order for an agenda. The most blatant example of this is the claim that the vaccines are 95 percent effective, which continues to be made even though 95 percent of people in the US have been infected. Both these facts cannot be true. If this fundamental brick turns out not to be objective truth, what else can we rely on? 

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Tragedy of the Brooklyn Literary Scene

The Tragedy of the Brooklyn Literary Scene

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Because lies embraced our whole culture since 2020, and because public intellectuals for the most part did not stand up to the lies at the time, and because many even participated in the lies (hello, Sam Harris); since horrible things happened to those of us who did stand up to the lies — most public intellectuals at this moment cannot address the really important events of the recent past.

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climate

Beware Catastrophizing Climate Models and Activists

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The final common element is the subordination of state-based decision-making to international technocrats. This is best exemplified in the proliferation of the global climate change bureaucracies and the promise—threat?—of a new global pandemic treaty whose custodian will be a mighty World Health Organisation. In both cases, the dedicated international bureaucracy will have a powerful vested interest in ongoing climate crises and serially repeating pandemics.

Beware Catastrophizing Climate Models and Activists Read Journal Article

Focused Protection: Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff

Opposition from Left Journalism 

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Within days of the pandemic’s inception, criticism of lockdowns and other restrictions became conflated with right-wing politics. This put lefties in a bind: if they didn’t support the restrictions, they might be mistaken (the horror!) for a conservative—or worse, a soldier in Orange Man’s army. They latched onto the mask, the left-wing answer to the MAGA hat, as a badge of their political allegiance. 

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Democracy Under Stress

Democracy Under Stress in America and India

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For decades, the US has tried to export and universalise bedrock American values like the rule of law, civil liberties, political freedoms and democratic practices. Now it is internalising some foreign policy vices like selective justice against unfriendly regimes while running protection for friendly ones.

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inherent deceit

The Inherent Deceit of Modern Medicine

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The dominant Western culture of the modern era will not relinquish its ingrained deceitfulness without first going through a nasty and lengthy transformation in which we are acutely reminded that life is risky and humans are imperfect. It is conceivable that long-run side effects of the covid vaccines will help to remind us of this. The best we can hope for in the longer run is to design our institutions to lead the population gradually into a mindset of comfort with human limitations.

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decline in patriotism

The Decline in Patriotism 

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The trouble with the survey is not the numbers but the interpretation. This is being seen as some weird fog of nihilism and greed that has mysteriously slipped over the population, as if it were an entirely organic trend over which no one has any control. That’s wrong. There is a definite cause and it all traces to the same egregious policies without precedent. We still do not have honesty about what happened. And until we get it, we cannot repair the grave damage to the culture or the national soul. 

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Science is

Science Is Not to Be Trusted

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Science is not a belief system, so it’s not something to be trusted. Science is a social process which anyone can join, it is a conversation with evidence to be examined, discussed, questioned, and tested. Science is not limited to Ivory Towers and people with PhDs. Anyone, no matter how anonymous or weird they are (in our idiosyncratic views of “weird”), can examine a paper, question some results, discuss them, and change our perspectives. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

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freedom is the answer

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer

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Lest the crowd that has long been properly anti-lockdown forgets, pathogens are as old as mankind is. Since they are, the accenting of where they come from is to completely miss the point. Instead, the always and everywhere expressed view should be that reality should not be used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our freedom. Freedom is precious, and authoritarians can’t have it regardless of a pathogen’s origin or its presumed lethality.

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer Read Journal Article