Blog #7: Let's play Monopoly

I’m more than ashamed to admit this, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know much about economics. While I did take an intro to microeconomics course during my sophomore year, I couldn’t explain pretty much any of the concepts that we learned in that course. I’ve always just brushed off the topic and told myself that I’d learn it eventually, maybe after graduation when I’m forced to be a real adult. Well, suddenly graduation is less than 2 months away and it’s probably a good time to learn about that economics thing that I’ve been brushing off. So my discovery of “Economix” through this class couldn’t have come at a better time. The book is fascinating and simplified to the point where a beginner like me can understand. The passage that I’m going to discuss is not new to me, or to anyone that’s been paying an ounce of attention in this class over the last few weeks. Although it’s not new, it gives a new perspective that is extremely important. The passage about competing monopolies stuck out to me because it took something that I thought I already knew and sort expanded my original understanding. If you’ve read any of my blogs in the past, you know that I’m currently a pharmacy technician and I’m about to start pharmacy school in the fall. That being said, the drug unit where we continuously harped on branded products versus the generic is an everyday occurrence for me. While we all should know by now that the generic is the cheaper equivalent to the brand, many American citizens are generally unaware. Just because it costs more, doesn’t mean that it is indeed better. But it’s not just with drugs, the same monopolies exist among virtually any consumer product on the market. Unfortunately, the big name companies in our country take advantage of us. It’s not entirely their fault that the average citizen is unaware of the difference between brand and generic, but these companies shouldn’t be able to market a product as something unique and “better” just to make an extra buck. While it is indeed unfair, I do feel that we need to do a better job of educating ourselves. The biggest lesson that I got from this passage was that brand/generic is not just limited to the pharmacy, and pretty much encompasses the entire consumer market. Additionally, this has been prevalent in our economy for decades.. and unfortunately I’m not sure if there’s an end in sight. While I’d like to think I wouldn’t take advantage of the general population if I owned a large corporation, a ton of money sounds pretty good too. It’s definitely a tricky subject, but I think we can all agree that the big monopolies aren’t being as ethical as they could be. The next time I’m stocking up on my essentials at Costco, I’ll probably take a closer look at the Kirkland products instead of Kleenex or Tide Pods.