In early February, drug company Novo Nordisk sued telehealth company Hims & Hers.

The complaint: Hims & Hers sells GLP-1 drugs at lower prices than Novo Nordisk. That’s the simple version.

The legalese version is that because semaglutide (the drug behind the Novo Nordisk’s “Wegovy” brand name) was removed from the US Food and Drug Administration’s “Drug Shortage List” more than a year ago, “compounding pharmacies” like Hims & Hers no longer operate under a Very Special Important Legal Dispensation to produce it without the permission of Novo Nordisk, which has a Very Special Important Government-Granted Monopoly, aka a patent, on the substance.

“This is a complete sham, and it has been a sham since the shortage ended,” Novo Nordisk attorney John Kuckelman tells CNBC.  “The fact is that their medicines are untested, and they’re putting patients at risk.”

That last part is a startling claim from an attorney about his own client’s product (the difference between semaglutide from Hims & Hers and semaglutide from Novo Nordisk is the name on the label), but I’m more interested in the “shortage” claim.

Novo Nordisk recently introduced Wegovy in pill form, at a price of about $150 a month. Hims & Hers had planned to offer the same chemical compound, without Wegovy branding, for about $50 a month.

The whole POINT of Novo Nordisk’s attempt to enforce its patent is to CREATE a shortage of semaglutide in pill form.

Why? Money. The patent, if enforceable, allows Novo Nordisk to charge customers AT LEAST three times as much for its pill as the market says it can  be sold profitably for. Hims & Hers wouldn’t offer it for $50 if it expected to lose money doing so.

In the theoretical economic environment of “perfect competition,” prices settle at, or infinitesimally above, the cost of production, because the seller who doesn’t offer the lowest possible price won’t move much product.

“Perfect competition” is indeed hypothetical. A million variables affect a million things. If my pencil factory is further from the store than yours, you won’t have to spend as much on shipping. If I make a better pencil commercial than you do, more people will convince themselves my pencils are better than yours. And so on, and so forth.

But even absent “perfect competition,” most people wouldn’t voluntarily pay three times as much for the same thing from Novo Nordisk as they’d pay for it from Hims & Hers.

So, what is the purpose of patents?

According to the US Constitution, it’s to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by giving inventors the “exclusive right” to their inventions for some set period of time.

But that’s just another way of saying the purpose is to create artificial shortages so that inventors don’t have to compete with others who may copy their inventions — or even independently invent similar things.

Novo Nordisk has already reaped the benefits of being first to market and promote semaglutide, and has fared well in competition with other GLP-1 products from other inventors/manufacturers. Apparently doing well in competition isn’t enough, though — it wants the government to remove its competitors from the market.

Given the hype around semaglutide and other GLP-1s — it seems we’re being led to believe that they cure, prevent, or minimize the effects of pretty much every negative human condition, physical and mental — I’d say they make a pretty good test case against the fiction of “intellectual property.”

While I’m skeptical for the wildest claims about the benefits of GLP-1s, they’re clearly beneficial to enough people, in enough ways, that we should ask why governments are handing out price-gouging opportunities, in the form of monopolies, on them.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Civilization,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1918, “grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A century later, American politics seems almost entirely centered around such hobgoblins.

Immigrants (especially “unvetted” immigrants).

Drugs (especially fentanyl, but pretty much anything purchased without a prescription).

Sex trafficking (which seems to consist of pretty much anyone buying, or selling, sex, known as “the world’s oldest profession” for a reason).

Moral panic — defined on Wikipedia as “a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society” — has become our chief political currency.

It’s in the driver’s seat.

It has the wheel.

And it manifests as a form of puritanism, also conveniently defined by Mencken: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

We can’t have that! Something must be done! There oughtta be a law! And the laws always  come down less to prohibition than to permission.

You can cross an imaginary line on the ground if you’ve been “vetted” and received a “visa.”

You can get high if you have permission from a doctor (who got permission from someone else to be a doctor).

You can have some fun in the sack if you pay for a marriage license or buy someone dinner and drinks, but not if you cut out the middlemen.

As a long-time libertarian, I naturally oppose any laws that forbid or regulate voluntary, peaceful actions undertaken by and between consenting adults.

I’ve come across many complex arguments for that position. I’ve made quite a few of those arguments myself. But more and more, I see it as a simple matter in both its both moral and practical aspects.

We don’t live in anything resembling a free society. Most of us don’t want to. We’ve let politicians use our irrational fear of Mencken’s hobgoblins turn us into, for all practical purposes, Mencken’s puritans — and that puritanism, in turn, generates new hobgoblins on demand to keep the merry-go-round turning.

The cycle is an ongoing and recurring feature of history. It has its ebbs and flows. It never goes away completely, but it comes on more strongly at some times than others.

At the moment, it’s at the worst I’ve seen it in my five decades or so of being old enough to observe it. The 1970s and 1980s had their down sides, but they were far more free (and far less irrational) than the 2020s.

How to we turn the tide and get things flowing in the other direction?

Instead of regaling you with schemes for panarchy, pleas for repealing this or that law, etc., let me propose a four-word position (which I got from “dL,” a pseudonymous commenter on my blog, years ago) that, if widely adopted, would make America a much better place to live.

The four words are: “Don’t need your permission.”

If an action doesn’t violate the rights of others, you shouldn’t need anyone else’s permission to do it.

If an action does violate the rights of others, no one can rightfully give you permission to do it anyway.

Everything else, including the entire body of libertarian political theory, is just details.

Anything else, including the entirety of political theory justifying the rule of some by others, is just excuses.

Act accordingly.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In a January 31 Texas special election to fill a vacant state Senate seat, union official Taylor Rehmet beat conservative political activist Leigh Wambsganss by 14 points — in a district where voters picked Donald Trump for president by 17 points only a little over a year ago.

It’s the latest of election victories boosting Democrats’ hopes for a “blue wave” this November and sending Republican political strategists into full-blown panic over the prospect of losing control of one or both houses of Congress.

Even if you’re convinced that the right electoral outcomes can really change the trajectory of events, though, it’s a little early to start celebrating — or mourning.

As Harold Wilson once pointed out, “a week is a long time in politics.”

The midterm congressional elections are, as I write this, 38 weeks away.

A lot can change in 38 weeks. Only 22 weeks separated Abraham Lincoln’s election in November of 1860 from the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861. Only 33 weeks separated George Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001 from the 9/11 attacks.

Events of much less long-term import have their effects as well.

Yes, the party in power historically tends to lose congressional seats in midterm elections. Sometimes a few, sometimes more. Beyond that obvious likelihood, trying to predict the mood of the electorate nine months out is a fool’s errand.

I can, however, confidently predict how much will change as a direct result of the elections’ outcomes, whatever those outcomes may be:

Not much.

Aside from a few firebrands and gadflies — some of whom may even get lucky at the polls — both parties will spend the next nine months tacking toward a wholly imaginary “center.”

We’ll hear a lot, from both sides of the aisle, about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater (even if, as Harry Browne suggested, it’s Rosemary’s Baby).

On immigration enforcement, tariffs, healthcare, you name it, we’ll see a bunch of proposals for tweaking, rather than truly disrupting, business as usual. The only reliable way to tell the two sides apart will be to listen to them yell “fascist!” and “commie!” at each other in between the echoes.

And hey, who knows? Maybe a few of those tweaks will actually get implemented in 2027. The Titanic will still be sinking, but by golly the deck chairs will be nicely arranged for just a little while longer.

Politics won’t get us out of the mess that politics got us into.

But once the celebration that’s already prematurely cranking up ends, we’ll hear endless explanations of, and excuses for, why it didn’t work last time, why it didn’t work this time, and why it will no doubt, for sure, pinky promise work next time if we just keep on voting really, really hard.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY