So who is fighting for the right of pharmaceutical companies to sell their wares at their prices, wherever on earth? Why, that same Uncle Sam that companies are avoiding paying taxes to: The Obama administration is negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would expand US free trade rules to eighteen countries around the Pacific rim, as well as a free trade deal with the European Union. In both, the US is pushing for “harmonization” of patent laws—including longer exclusivity for existing patents, limits on the release of drug data, restrictions on how government health care programs can control drug prices—all of which mean higher prices for medicines. It’s no wonder that pharma is the most active lobbyist when it comes to trade talks.
American drug companies don’t want to pay US taxes—but they want global customers to pay US drug prices
Maureen Dowd Freaked Out on Weed Chocolate Because She’s Stupid
I also find it interesting that she’s totally consumed with paranoia by the thought of her own rich white ass getting arrested for the fake crime of not being “able to handle” her candy, but seems largely unconcerned with the very real fate of the 800,000 Americans who will be arrested this year alone on marijuana charges. (Later in the column she describes becoming “convinced that I had died,” without ever mentioning that there’s no such thing as a fatal marijuana overdose.)
via Maureen Dowd Freaked Out on Weed Chocolate Because She’s Stupid | VICE United States.
Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
Amazon’s strategy (as I noted in 2012) is to squat on the distribution channel, artificially subsidize the price of ebooks (“dumping” or predatory pricing) to get consumers hooked, rely on DRM on the walled garden of the Kindle store to lock consumers onto their platform, and then to use their monopsony buying power to grab the publishers’ share of the profits.
via Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil? – Charlie’s Diary.
TL:DR; Amazon’s strategy against Hachette is that of a bullying combine the size of WalMart leaning on a much smaller supplier. And the smaller supplier in turn relies on really small suppliers like me. It’s anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read.
Coca-Cola’s Happiness Machines
For one thing, he said, Coke is not only using these low-income workers to advertise its product, it is also requiring them to buy soft drinks themselves—at nearly a tenth of their typical daily wages, he pointed out—to use the special phone booth. On top of that, he feels that the ads normalize and even glorify the hardship faced by migrant workers—at least some of whom may be working against their will. “If this was two hundred years ago, would it be appropriate for Coke to do adverts in the plantations of the Deep South, showing slaves holding cans of Coke?” he asked. “It is a normalization of a system of structural violence, of a state-sanctioned trafficking system.”
The Oh-So-Fragile Class of 2014 Needs to STFU And Listen to Some New Ideas
The entire point of college is to be exposed to different things: Different types of people, different ideas—and maybe some of those people will hail from organizations that negatively impacted poor countries, or maybe they were partly responsible for a war that ate up the country’s resources and resulted in human rights abuses and lots of needless death. But if, at the end of your time as an undergrad, you haven’t learned that oftentimes you find great wisdom in shitty people, or just that there might be some value in hearing what someone you don’t like or respect might have to say, what on earth have you learned?
via The Oh-So-Fragile Class of 2014 Needs to STFU And Listen to Some New Ideas – The Daily Beast.
Posted in Education
Tagged college, commencement
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