Is Martin Shkreli a good or bad role model of a capitalist?
If you are unaware of who Martin is, a bio is below.
Martin Shkreli is a former pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager who became infamous in 2015 for raising the price of Daraprim, a life-saving drug, from $13.50 to $750 per pill while CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. He was later convicted of securities fraud in 2017 for defrauding investors in his hedge funds and served prison time until 2022.
Arguments for being a role model: - Demonstrated exceptional business acumen at a young age, founding successful companies aka Self Made. - Showed how to maximize profit within legal frameworks - Openly discussed business strategies and shared knowledge through online teaching - Successfully identified market inefficiencies and opportunities
Arguments against being a role model: - Put profits ahead of patient access to essential medicine - Defrauded investors, leading to criminal conviction - Displayed confrontational and provocative behavior toward critics and the public - Used questionable business practices that harmed vulnerable people - Damaged public trust in pharmaceutical industry
His networth is 10 to 70 millon depending on his private stock ownership.
What do you think? Do you personally look up to him?
Terrible role model if you have any moral / ethical bones in your body...
he is an arbiter for return on capital
He's a good dude, met him a few times. Definitely not a role model lol but he just got hammered by the media he's no worse than most in his sector.
And just to correct the record, his raising prices scandal made insurance have to pay more so he could get more money. Anyone who actually needed the drug and couldn't get the price covered could contact him / the company directly and get it at reduced/no cost. The only ones he was really fucking over were the health insurance companies.
Okay, so insurance companies pay more so how do they make up for those costs?
Same thing that happens every time every drug company has raised prices on various drugs, which happens every year... As I said, he did nothing any worse in pharma than literally any competitor of his you care to pick out of a hat. His crime was misuse or misappropriation of investor funds, which he did return, and nobody actually lost money so while a violation of securities law & ethics nobody was actually negatively impacted.
Aren't those health insurance companies getting refunded by the federal government?
So basically Mr Shkreli was living on government handouts?
No, he made his living being an incredibly successful HF investor and the 1st question demonstrates you're not familiar with how insurance works... What happens with insurance is not the same thing as a handout. Government "supports" HC insurance companies indirectly through Medicare/Medicaid which are god awful programs and underpay for services relative to market in the majority of cases. The subsidies they get for participating in Healthcare.gov are a joke because the government is the reason they need in the first place. Asinine regulations that require them to provide everyone with coverage (they can't discriminate against pre-existing conditions which defies risk mgmt, the fundamental building block of an industry that's literally about pricing risk), allows them to price fix while abusing the rebate process, tied health insurance to employers, etc. are what turn the incentives into "delay, deny, defend".
hes a balla
He's very smart and did nothing wrong RELATIVE to what others in the same industry do.
What he did mess up is his "pr strategty". If he had done what others did, he would probably have a 9 fig NW.
Again, RELATIVE to what others in the same industry do. Loads of funds out there have the same strat.
is this a joke? could be on the front page of The Onion
Are you serious? He copied and pasted this from The Onion.
it’ll forever piss me off that he didnt share the wu-tang album
He's not someone I'd want to work for, as I have 2 degrees of separation from someone who worked directly with him in Pharma, and it went as you'd expect - He's demanding and results-oriented, and in that sense not different from any other business leader, but he has a way with words that others do not.
That said, I love the guy. I've interacted with him online a couple dozen times and he's pleasant if you aren't an absolute idiot about how you engage with him. His streams back in 2016/17 got me really focused on maximizing my career path and thinking about how best to tackle problem solving and self-teaching. Over the past 7 months or so, on the days I have worked from home, I'll tune into a stream passively and from time to time pick up on some interesting knowledge or strategies. His streams are for the most part him advertising his company's product (imitation web-based Bloomberg Terminal), but he does do some interesting research on his short positions, and parenthetically, a large part of him probably does enjoy the constant attention.
I'll sum it up by saying he's a good resource for knowledge and a really interesting individual to study. I do like him as a person separate from some of the actions that brought him notoriety. But I would never view him as someone to directly model myself off of.
His old finance streams were such a boon in college! Glad to see someone else who benefitted from them.
He's an actual convicted criminal. The fact that anyone can try and justify him as a success story is a perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with modern capitalism.
The ethics of what he did in raising drug prices aside (which are pretty awful, mind you), it's mind boggling to me that anyone can think that someone who is literally defrauding their investors is a role model. He's the opposite of a success. He's an incompetent asshole who couldn't actually run a profitable company... hence the whole "securities fraud" thing. He was so incompetent that the only two things he actually could do were, again, commit fraud, and then also engage in behavior so unethical that he didn't even bother to try and justify it when questioned. It was so egregious that to even discuss it would be self-incriminatory
There are people living and defecating on the streets that are more competent than Mr Shkreli, if only because they at least have the potential to not be absolutely ass at the job of running a company. A mentally ill homeless person is almost certain to do better than Mr Shkreli, if only because they won't know enough about the business to direct it to engage in fraud.
He is an arbiter for capital. A medium. Capital seeks return on capital. If anything he's just playing the ball game smart.
He committed fraud. I don't understand why this is so difficult. If the only requirement for being a successful capitalist is generating returns, then he still isn't a success. There are people and gangs doing far better trafficking humans or drugs, or stealing identities or other types of scams.
Mr Shkreli is an abject failure as a legitimate businessman, because he couldn't actually hack it without committing fraud. This feels pretty self-explanatory: if he was capable of succeeding without resorting to crime, he would have done so. The fact that he engaged in fraud is the prima facie evidence that he wasn't a good enough investor.
He's also an abject failure as a criminal, because he got caught.
So explain to me in what world he's a good role model? A criminal shouldn't look up to him, because he was an incompetent criminal who got busted for his crimes. A hedge fund manager or pharmaceutical investor or whatever shouldn't look up to him, because he was an incompetent failure in that respect too, who had to turn to crime to hide up the evidence of his incompetence. Seems pretty clear cut
His finance streams are great for youngsters. He makes it approachable and walks through the basics for how to value a company and repeats this different companies while providing context for different sectors. It is not context and information a novice can easily google either. Pulling straight from company filings into an excel workbook and making a baby model helps demystify the process.
Not surprisingly, the ethical bar is very low on WSO.
#ShkreliDidNothingWrong
Saying Martin Shkreli is a good role model is almost as stupid as the people who glorify The Wolf of Wall Street and Jordan Belfort
I agree completely.
Ethics morals lol you dont know anything about the history of the Gilded Age and how wealth is made in other parts of the world.
Capitalism is much more barbaric in other continents and Shkreli or whatever his name is a mere medium.
I come from a famed developing nation and know that this is just part and parcel of the ball game.
Did I read that right? No idea who he is, but in your bio you said he defrauded investors, meaning he is basically a thief right? Why would you look up to a mini madoff?
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