Comment by throwanem

A fair point, indeed. Now we reach the question in a way that anyone can follow: if the cost of development is already sunk, and the cost of discovery is publicly defrayed, then what justifies these absurd revenue multiples of development cost when they come at a price measurable in human suffering and death? In what way is this not sheer price gouging of a particularly vicious kind?

That's the sort of question folks like my prior interlocutor, who appears now to have abandoned the effort, really don't want to answer. And no wonder! There's no way for them to do so while maintaining the usual comfortable abstraction over the essential bloodthirstiness of their philosophy.