CHAPTER 1
Profit, Purpose, and Progress
IN 2015, THE WU-TANG CLAN, the greatest hip-hop group ever, sold just one copy of their seventh studio album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. It was the only copy, and it was sold at an auction for $2 million. It was at the time the highest price ever paid for a piece of music.
The winning bidder was Martin Shkreli, a young New York City pharmaceutical executive. Shkreli made part of his wealth by acquiring the rights to drugs, then raising their prices exponentially. In 2015, his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired the rights for Daraprim, a drug used for treating parasitic infections. If untreated, such infections could lead to seizures, birth defects, fever, confusion, blindness, and death. Daraprim ...
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