Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a #linkdump, the 14th in the series:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/motley/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing
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It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in #46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:
https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore
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Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting *more* expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have #PricingPower, the most reliable indicator of #monopoly. #EdCara rounds up the highlights for #Gizmodo:
https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427
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What's going up? Well, #Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold *billions* for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're *raising* the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include #Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner #Plavix. I mean, why the hell not?
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These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with #evergreening:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow
The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just *oozes* out of them. It's like these guys can't even *pretend* to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.
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Take #Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by #Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an #antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.
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Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a #MaliciousCompliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must *still pay Apple a 27% fee* for every dollar their process:
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In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/
This is *obviously* not what the court had in mind, and there's no *way* this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.
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Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, #Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU
This is some real #DarthVaderMBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure
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