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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

You're falling into the Money Illusion.

This isn't a video game and drugs are not sold by NPC shopkeepers and that's the only way to ever obtain them. Pharmaceutical companies are not magical.

The answer, at least for the first few centuries, would be to nationalize the production of the pills, and draft people to contribute toward their manufacture. Or, depending on how difficult they are to make, just teach everybody how to manufacture them at home.

Of course, no solution would work indefinitely if dosage doubles every year, since eventually a single person's dosage would be larger than the volume of the Earth (exponential functions'll ruin your day like that). That's not a limit based on economics or politics, but on the rather unnatural hypothetical situation you've set up.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I agree. Currently, the cost of pills is not largely a function of the manufacturing cost. Since these pills are so valuable, the government will take over the company, or india will sell unauthorized generics. The price will be driven down to near the manufacturing cost.

"doubling every decade"

At some point pretty soon, you are going to need pills that weigh more than the mass of the universe. That will be a problem:

http://raju.varghese.org/ar...

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