The Economist | Pharmaceutical shortages

"Foscarnet, potassium phosphate, kanamycin sulphate—for healthy people, these names are a meaningless garble. For the sick, the list is a nightmare. In 2004 America had a shortage of 58 drugs. Last year it had 211 and this year 198 so far. As the problem has spread, so too has a sense of panic, with patients lacking essential medicines, doctors fretting over alternatives and hospitals navigating a "grey market" for drugs."

"On September 26th the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a hearing with the hope of answering urgent questions: why the world's biggest pharmaceutical market is failing its customers, and what might be done about it."  See full article

As a student of the non-profit sector, I think that Hansmann might be inclined to identify this as a situation where there is a market failure because the market fails to find a price where a for-profit entity can recover it's cost of operations yet their is a social purpose to its existence.

Perhaps consideration should be given by the for-profit pharmaceutical industry to create a membership based non-profit company to manufacture and distribute these important drugs that due to their low margin status can no longer be developed profitably. This would create goodwill in the industry and fulfill their social mission to develop and provide drugs for the sick.

10 Second Sermon | Man of Real Integrity

"The man of real integrity puts the whole energy of conscience, faith, love into the smallest act as into the greatest."
James Freeman Clarke
"Faithful Over a Few Things"

Thank you to Boston Unitarian for the inspiration. Original Post.

Who is James Freeman Clarke?  Wikipedia.

Game Over? Will Greece Default This Year?

Game Over? Senior IMF Official - "I Expect A Hard Greek Default This Year"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/game-over-senior-imf-official-i-expect-hard-greek-default-year

Manga and Literature

This summer I started reading the Vagabond manga series published by Viz Media. It is an adaptation of a Japanese novel, Musashi which is a fictionalized account of real-life samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musashi who wrote the classic treatise on military strategy, The Book of Five Rings. I am also reading The Book of Five Rings.

One favorite passage in Jobs Interview from 1985

"In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system."

"And that's the problem with most philanthropy--there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can never really measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation."

"So if you can't succeed or fail, it's really hard to get better."

"Also, most of the time, the people who come to you with ideas don't provide the best ideas. You go seek the best ideas out, and that takes a lot of time."

Currently reading the Playboy interview of Steve Jobs from 1985

I am not even 2 pages into the interview and it stands out that Jobs is a genius. Perhaps I'll post some of the quotes that really stand out to me.

Late Summer Day

Late summer.
The lazy days of summer,

Slowly turn to the busy days of fall.