Corruption

by Tim Lee on August 12, 2007 · View Comments

We’ll see if I agree with Larry Lessig’s ultimate concluions regarding problems of corruption, but he has certainly started things out on the right foot, with a wiki seeking examples for study. Here are my contributions, under the heading of “The Market”:

* Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul, Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System. ”’Washington Post”’, December 10, 2006

* Eric M. Jackson, The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth, World Ahead Publishing, 2004.

* The incestuous relationship between real estate developers and local government officials is certainly an example of corruption. No specific work to cite, but Kelo v. New London is obviously a good example of the interests of ordinary citizens being shoved aside for the interests of large corporations.

* Tim Carney, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money has some good examples of corruption.

And under “history”:

* Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916 Greenwood Pub Group; New Ed edition (January 1977). An excellent history of the origins of the Interstate Commerce Commission and its corruption by railroad interests. Ralph Nader produced a report documenting the outcome in 1970, which was reported on by Time magazine.

What else should be on the list? Add your suggestions in a comment here and then head over to Lessig’s wiki for more details. Be sure to read the directions at the top.

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  • dmarti
    Just pasted in a link to Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare by James Bovard.
  • My third is the way that corporations like Exxon have funded misinformation about Global Warming, behavior that deserves to be treated as the criminal, life-destroying threat to our future that it is.

    Just look at the website http://exxonsecrets.org/ for the details on that corruption.
  • Three area come to mind:

    1. The engineering of the patent trademark and tradeecret rules :
    A seminal work is the book Steal this Idea: The corporate confiscation of creativity by Michael Perelman which documents the way large corporations have engineered the patent, copyright and trademarks systems to their advantage. One of the most egregious examples is the way that publicly funded research at the N.I.H. is handed to Big Pharma without anything like just compensation.

    There are plenty of examples of corporate/government collusion, like the arrest of Stanley Adams by Swiss authorities for reporting La Roche's illegal price fixing practices to the EC.

    Another important case Michael Perelman makes is that the direction of academic work, now funded more by corporations than government, has drifted away from the public interest to serving the needs of large corporations. It is because of this effect that we have plenty of drugs for chronic conditions of high wage earners (Lipitor and Viagra, for example) but are missing crucial antibiotics for emerging disease-resistant organisms. A massive market failure, killing millions, all for the benefit of a few corporations.

    2. Public Health concerns ignored for fear of disrupting businesses:

    Another area of concern has to be the current conditions in China, which an authoritarian government is actively trying to suppress important health information, like the fact that 750,000 additional deaths in china were caused by pollution. We may think that public health issues in China are not our concern, but remember: the Chinese government kept SARS under wrap, hidden from WHO in a deceitful attempt to avoid international awareness of the way SARS had been mis-managed, and it was only good luck that SARS had a short incubation period that prevented it from becoming a public health catastrophe equal to or greater than the 1918 Spanish infuenza outbreak.
    http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/c...

    I would also put down the fact that USA is about to approve the use of a new class of antibiotics for use in farm animals despite the fact that the American Medical Association and about 12 other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals probably would speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotic, as has happened with other drugs.

    http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/s...

    Those are my top 2, although I have quite a few more on my blog, as its a major concern. A lot of it happens at a more subtle level than a direct payoff, which has fallen out of favor as business get more "sophisticated"
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