#113 Opioids, Domar Rule And Who Moved My Chips 🎧

<em>This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><strong><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></strong><br/><br/><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em><br/><br/>Global Policy Watch #1: Deadly Advice<br/><br/><em>Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues</em><br/><br/>- <em>RSJ</em><br/><br/>There are consultants and investment bankers who floor you with their presentations. And then there is Mckinsey & Co. When the ‘smartest guys in the room’ speak, you watch them transfixed. To use <a target="_blank" href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834">Coleridge’s immortal words</a>: <br/><br/>“He holds him with his glittering eye—<br/><br/>The Wedding-Guest stood still,<br/><br/>And listens like a three years' child:<br/><br/>The Mariner hath his will.”<br/><br/>You are often the wedding-guest and you listen to them like a three-year-old.<br/><br/>I guess it didn’t exactly work out that way over the past few months when Mckinsey was answering questions about its role in abetting the opioid crisis. <br/><br/>Not Caring About the Consequences<br/><br/>On Feb. 4, McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, announced a $573 million settlement with 49 State Attorneys General for its past work for opioid manufacturers. In Nov. 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges of not doing enough to combat the opioid epidemic that has ravaged the American heartland largely