Rent seeking is not applicable for any company developing new medicines because that by definition is creating new wealth. I wouldn’t disagree with that characterization for any company milking an out-of-patent treatment by trying to make it unfeasible for any other company to manufacture it. You are correct that does exist.

Cures are difficult to develop due to how variable human physiology is, but we still manage to do so. Vaccines are also a way more effective instrument for disease eradication; it’s better to prevent anyone getting the disease in the first place.

This would be terrible business if any pharma worked this way. The vast majority of potential treatments fail either in the lab or in early phase trials. It is not very likely that’d you’d be able to on-demand develop a novel treatment for symptoms before one of your competitors figured out your already-discovered cure. That would be unless you patented the cure, but by the time you spent years developing a new symptom-only treatment and testing it through each phase, you’d have a few years at best before your exclusivity on the cure patent expires and thus your treatment becomes worthless.

Pharmas are run by the same short-sighted wall streeters as every other corporation. Actually successfully executing this sort of long-term plan would require thinking further ahead than a few quarters, which they are not capable of doing. A new cure is a big stock boost now that they could never resist.

It really depends. One tenant could have an ant problem because another adjacent tenant is attracting them, which the landlord needs to address. If the structure has decaying wood, that can attract carpenter ants which is a landlord issue. Some ants like humid environments, so a poorly ventilated structure (like one with mold) could be the cause–also the landlord’s problem.

Frankly for short haul flights it makes sense. Would it be worth paying double or triple for a three hour flight just to get a full meal? Anyone who truly wants a taste of old time flying can get that with a first class ticket, both in terms of cost and quality.

That priest was not speaking based on the Church’s beliefs, then. Natural family planning has been largely accepted by the Church for centuries, and the Pope more formally said it was ok in the early 50s. You just have to be ok if it leads to children anyway.

It has either gotten better or just improved its suggestions for me over time. I basically never get right wing content anymore. There’s plenty of garbage, but it’s stupid garbage rather than dangerous garbage.

It was the inverse in my family. The uncle who extricated himself from most of the family was actually a huge piece of garbage and did everyone a favor by cutting us off. I don’t think he expected that nobody would make an effort to re-establish contact.

Not being in constant contact with everyone you know, and not having a neverending stream of notifications assaulting you via your phone.

When you got to see relatives who lived far away, you talked about what had been going on in their life because you probably had no idea.

You read, listened to, or watched the news when you wanted to, unless someone you know told you sooner.

If you had to wait somewhere without a book or magazine, you just sat there with your thoughts. During childhood, you learned how to be bored and practice imagining things.

Nothing beats Junior talking about his job or children.

Consequences for their families/friends. It’s not a choice I’d ever want to have to make.

Pepsi just does international distribution of it. Keurig Dr Pepper owns it.

I would love if my spouse had a weird-ass nickname for me like that.

It has to actually become a common thing for it to not be a big deal. You can’t put the cart before the horse.

That would be terribly boring. It would take the art, nuance, and fun out of language. It would also curtail the development and evolution of language. Can you imagine language without innuendo or double entendre?

It’s hyperbole. You’ve never been very hungry and said “I’m starving” or been out in very hot weather for a while and said “I’m dying out here”? I’m pretty sure the average reader is able to figure out from context she has not actually been abducted to a black site and waterboarded.