by A Midwestern Doctor,Lew Rockwell:
The predatory business model that requires lifelong patients faces its first federal challenge with Kennedy’s historic SSRI initiative
When I was in high school, I observed a few discouraging events which led me to postulate: “no industry, organization or cause tasked with solving a problem will actually solve it because the problem disappearing threatens their economic livelihood or political power.” Since that time, I have observed more examples than I can count in so many different spheres that I’ve accepted this dynamic is a common feature of society, and likewise, have come across many similar observations by others, my favorite of which was:
TRUTH LIVES on athttps://sgtreport.tv/
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program—Milton Friedman
Recently two noteworthy examples of this principle came to my attention.
First, a frustrated patient shared with me they’d recently learned all of the online dating apps had switched from formats which allowed people to find suitable long term partners (e.g., with lengthy compatibility surveys) to ones which prevented people from matching because if someone found a good match on a platform, they would then stop paying more money for the service, whereas if they were hooked on it and spending hours each day trying to find someone, they would be a sustainable source of revenue. More remarkably, once one company figured out this approach made more money, they bought out all of their competitors (sometimes with threats of spurious lawsuits) and shifted them all over to this predatory model as well (all of which is detailed in these six articles1,2,3,4,5,6). I found this example noteworthy as:
Note: because online dating has now become so bad,the companies that monopolized the market are starting to lose a lot of users and money, signaling there may be a chance for this cycle to reset itself.
Second,a federal DOJ indictmentrecently charged the SPLC (one of the country’s leading civil rights groups that built its reputation fighting hate) with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Prosecutors alleged it paid over $3 million in donor funds to informants embedded in white supremacist groups (including the KKK and National Alliance) while soliciting donations to “end hate,” and that one paid informant participated in planning chats, attended, and helped with logistics for the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Many, in turn, were outraged about this, in part because of how much political capital was extracted from the event (e.g., Biden made opposing it a central justification for his 2020 presidential campaign and Harris to a lesser extent did so as well in 2024) but also because of just how much money it made:
Unfortunately, these are far from isolated examples, and it would be impossible for me to cover even a sliver of them here. As such, this article will focus on how this principle applies to medicine and why I believe beyond greed, complacency also plays a central role in the continual recurrence of this dynamic across societies.
Source: SGT Report
