I need to clarify that not ALL pharma companies have immunity from all lawsuits. However, Pfizer, Moderna, J&J were guaranteed profits on Covid vaccines (OK IMO if the profit is limited to - for example - their average profit or industry average profit or some regulated number) with no risk. That is massive corruption.

Slowly people are learning about that corruption. It makes it much harder to convince people who aren't really into the details that real vaccines (i.e polio, measles, covid is not a vaccine in the traditional sense) are unbelievalbly good and valuable. That makes the entire society weaker.

IPOs originally were a way to raise capital for a business. You need a factory to build your revolutionary widgets, so you raise capital. Two major things have changed: 1) since Reagan dropped the highest marginal tax rate in the 80s, bigger and bigger piles of cash are in the hands of a few people at the top. This has lead to the rise of a class of angel investers; and 2) since the internet came around, it is more and more likely that your business doesn't require a huge amount of capital to get started.

So IPOs have now become just a cashing out process for the original investors. Facebook is a perfect example. On IPO day the price was super high. It stayed that way for a couple of days. All the original investors cashed out. The price crashed. That was when I bought, because I expected people would continue to use Facebook. The price went up over time and I made several hundred percent return on my very modest investment.

That second curve it the way IPOs are supposed to work. The first "pump and dump" curve with ridiculous returns is the perversion of the IPO.

For every Facebook there are hundreds of straight up "pump and dump" schemes where the first curve happens, but the second curve doesn't. I know as I got burned doing not enough research on a dot.com chip. I learned my lesson the hard way.