The business of business: The vaccine business, just like the used car business

A baby squid - not  in the 

COVID vaccine

The business of business is business, usually meaning profit above all other concerns. Other concerns include human well-being and pollution. Businesses generally do their business by privatizing and trickling profits up, and socializing or externalizing human, social and environmental costs and damage. And, all this fun and games thing is routinely done in as much secrecy as business can manage it, leaving the public clueless and business free to copiously lie about how it does its standard operations and how much it is concerned about externalities like human, social and environmental damage and costs. 

It's a win-win for business and a lose-lose for the public interest or common good. The radical right loves it. So do businesses, which have bought and paid for this kind of a political-commercial system.

Although most libertarians and other anti-government ideologues vehemently deny it, the business of government is protecting the public interest. As the radical right ideologues see it, the business of government is getting out of the way of business so that unregulated markets can run free and wild, thereby best serving the public interest. That is about a crackpot of a faux reality as arguing against taking the COVID vaccine because there are tiny living creatures with tentacles in it, currently my favorite bit of COVID crackpottery.

In the vaccine, allegedly -- 

by a crackpot radical right politician

Speaking of standard business operations and the COVID vaccine, the New York Times writes:

A report released Tuesday by Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group that gained access to a number of leaked, unredacted Pfizer contracts, sheds light on how the company uses that power to “shift risk and maximize profits,” the organization argues.

The Manhattan-based pharmaceutical giant has maintained tight levels of secrecy about negotiations with governments over contracts that can determine the fate of populations. The “contracts consistently place Pfizer’s interests before public health imperatives,” said Zain Rizvi, the researcher who wrote the report.

Public Citizen found common themes across contracts, including not only secrecy but also language to block donations of Pfizer doses. Disputes are settled in secret arbitration courts, with Pfizer able to change the terms of key decisions, including delivery dates, and demand public assets as collateral.

Sharon Castillo, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said that confidentiality clauses were “standard in commercial contracts” and “intended to help build trust between the parties, as well as protect the confidential commercial information exchanged during negotiations and included in final contracts.”

Aspects of the contracts are not uncommon, including the reliance on arbitration courts and clauses designed to give companies legal protections. Pfizer’s price for its vaccine, as low as $10 per dose in Brazil, appeared to be lower than some competitors’ prices.

Pfizer has formalized 73 deals for its coronavirus vaccine. According to Transparency International, a London-based advocacy group, only five contracts have been formally published by governments, and these with “significant redactions.”

“Hiding contracts from public view or publishing documents filled with redacted text means we don’t know how or when vaccines will arrive, what happens if things go wrong and the level of financial risk buyers are absorbing,” said Tom Wright, research manager at the Transparency International Health Program.  

The contract reached with Brazil prohibits the government from making “any public announcement concerning the existence, subject matter or terms of [the] Agreement” or commenting on its relationship with Pfizer without the prior written consent of the company.

“This is next-level stuff,” said Tahir Amin, an intellectual property lawyer who co-founded I-Mak, a nonprofit global health organization.

Pfizer exerted control over the supply of vaccine doses after contracts were signed. The Brazilian government was restricted from accepting donations of Pfizer doses or making its own donations. Pfizer also included clauses in contracts with Albania, Brazil and Colombia that it could unilaterally change delivery schedules in the case of shortages.

It is true that confidentiality clauses are “standard in commercial contracts” and “intended to help build trust between the parties, as well as protect the confidential commercial information exchanged during negotiations and included in final contracts.” By that reasoning, the public is not a party to the contract and is told nothing other than what a company chooses to say. No wonder confidentiality is so dominant in commerce. Both parties to a contract can say whatever they want, true, false, crackpot or most anything else and there is no way for the public to know the real truth. 

Arbitration courts operate in secrecy, unless the contract specifies otherwise. Contracts rarely specify otherwise. 

In my opinion, dark free speech (DFS) is the most potent weapon that authoritarians and self-serving people and entities or businesses have to go about their business in secrecy. Secrecy, assuming it is different from DFS and not a subset of it, is probably the next most potent weapon. Secrecy is close to DFS in anti-democratic power, arguably close to tied for first. 

Questions:

1. Which is more powerful and deceptive, (i) public ignorance grounded in a combination of secrecy and the kind of DFS called “public relations”, (ii) public ignorance grounded in DFS (lies, emotional manipulation, crackpot motivated reasoning and the like), or (iii) are they about the same?

2. The contracts the NYT discusses were leaked and Pfizer did not want that information to become public: Did the secret contract terms mostly protect legitimate corporate needs, or did they mostly hide things that Pfizer wanted to keep from the public? What damage did this leak of contract terms cause Pfizer, e.g., loss of legitimate trade secrets, or was it mostly just embarrassing information that caused public relations damage?

3. In moral philosophy, deceit and unwarranted opacity are sometimes argued to be anti-democratic because they deprive people of their right to decide and behave on the basis of facts and truth. Power flows from the deceived to the deceivers. Are contracts like those that Pfizer coerced governments to sign more anti-democratic than pro-authoritarian, or are they something else, e.g., politically or socially neutral?

The tentacles . . . 

the tentacles . . . .