Well, sure. But that's not what this is actually about. The titular anarchists are not inventing new drugs, they're finding alternative ways to get drugs that have already been invented.

> That is to say, with all else removed you could generate an IP only company for 17% the cost of drug sales.

I am not convinced that accurately reflects the reality of running a pharmaceutical business, even if incentives/competition is somewhat warped in healthcare. There are a lot of penny-stock pharma companies whose only mission is to generate valuable IP. They're notorious for being volatile (since their outcome is basically binary on the results of research), but not for being great investments. If what you are asserting was actually true, those sorts of firms would generate ~5x higher returns, on average.