impossible for them to legally acquire the drugs.
Years dragged on, millions upon millions died until, in 2001, the United States agreed on a proposal that allows countries to import manufactured generic drugs. But under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the Bush 2.0 administration quietly changed its position and sent its trade representative to the WTO to kill the proposal. Much of the world reacted with rage to this shift, and finally in 2003 the United States signed on to an agreement that technically allowed countries with no manufacturing base to import cheap lifesaving drugs. I use the word “technically” because the agreement contains so much red tape that it severely limits the amount of supplies it can import. “Today’s deal was designed to offer comfort to the U.S. and the Western pharmaceutical industry,” said Ellen Hoen of the medical-aid group Doctors Without Borders. She told the Associated Press, “Unfortunately it offers little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines.”
I only hope that she is wrong, though given the WTO’s and the pharmaceutical industry’s track record on this issue, I have little faith. The kinds of constraints intellectual-property laws impose on culture may be bad for music and creativity, but in the case of drug patents it’s literally a life-and-death matter. Patent policy is as much a moral issue as it is an economic one, solid proof that property rights trump human rights nine times out of ten. Yes, I realize that these pharmaceutical companies invest millions of dollars in research and development, but there are times when profits alone shouldn’t guide us and empathy and compassion should take over. However, we’re living in a time when, increasingly, money is the only thing that matters.
I’m not claiming that all patents are bad things, because it’s demonstrable that they can encourage investment in the development of products. However, I am arguing for two things. First, there should be some flexibility in the way patent protections are enforced, especially in situations such as the worldwide AIDS crisis. It simply should not have taken ten years for the WTO to adopt halfhearted rules about importing generic drugs, and I believe that those who tried to block it have blood on their hands. Second, there are too many instances when overly broad patents are awarded, which can cause information flow to be slowed and research and innovation to be stunted.
The most shameful detail in all of this is that all developing countries — whether they were the United States and Switzerland in the nineteenth century or Brazil and Thailand in the twentieth century — had very weak patent and copyright laws. Historically, countries left out of the technological-development loop have emphasized the right of their citizens to have free access to foreign inventions and knowledge. The United States in particular had extremely lax intellectual-property laws at the turn of the twentieth century, which allowed it to freely build up its cultural and scientific resources. Also, the United States’ agricultural economy depended on the importation of crops native to other countries because the only major crop native to North America was the sunflower. [17]
Even the music for the U.S. national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was swiped from a popular eighteenth-century English song, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” This old drinking song was written by a group of English dandies in the Anacreonic Club, which was devoted to an orgy-loving Greek bard who lived during the 500 b.c.e. era. (Little do people know when they patriotically sing the anthem at sports games that the tune originally celebrated Dionysian explosions of sex and drinking.) In 1812 lyricist Francis Scott Key borrowed the tune, and in 1931 it became the national anthem.[18] Then in 1969, at Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix famously reappropriated the anthem and drenched it in a purple haze of feedback that fit the violent and dissonant Vietnam era. We are a nation of pirates.
Now the United States and other rich countries want strict enforcements of intellectual-property laws that ensure developing countries will remain uncompetitive within the globalized economy. Again, we wonder why much of the world hates us. Defenders of overbroad gene patents, terminator seeds, and global intellectual property treaties argue that without technologies and legal protections that safeguard their investments, there would be no incentive to develop new, innovative products. Companies such as Monsanto (whose comforting motto is “Food - Health -Hope”) insist that their motivations for doing business are grounded in a desire to prevent world hunger. By creating more efficient products, biotech, agribusiness, and pharmaceutical companies can contribute to the betterment of humanity, they say.
However, if you buy that selfless line of reasoning, then I have a genetically altered monkey-boy I want to sell you (all sales final).
This essay originally appeared in the author's book, Freedom of Expression®
Killing The Corporate Person
Andrew “
There’s a quip which has become almost a statement of belief in recent years, “I will believe Corporations are people when Texas executes one.” It’s a statement that makes two points. First, Texas executes a lot of people, and has the lowest barrier of doing so, and secondly, that corporations are not people, because they don’t face the same consequences that actual people do.
It captures a key essence in that corporations are people for any positive aspect, but not people for a negative one. If a company does wrong, its board isn’t liable, unless they personally instructed and/or oversaw a criminal act. Instead, just the company is, and it only gets a financial penalty. This is as it should be, because that is the very reason for forming a company.
Let’s take it down to basics. A company, when incorporated, is a limited liability company. That is its entire Raison d'etre. It exists only to shield those behind a company from being liable for the company. How? Well, Anne and Bob open a shop. It sells cookers. They open it as a limited liability company, by incorporating. Charles and Denise open a shop next door, at the same time; they have a bed store. They decide not to incorporate.
The businesses run for 6 months and are just about making a profit (not an easy thing to do, since approximately 90% of businesses fail in the first year). They each buy a new delivery vehicle to help expand the business. 6 months after that, and disaster hits. A new superstore opens up just down the road, offering a wider range of both beds, AND cookers, at lower prices. They’ve been undercut and their businesses die. Both stores hang on for a month more, before going bankrupt. However, that’s where the differences start.
Anne and Bob incorporated, so their business is a legal entity. It holds the debt. The store’s lease belongs to the company, as does the loan on the delivery truck, and the money owed to their suppliers for the stock. These creditors can only pursue the company for the money. Anne and Bob’s house, their car, bank accounts, etc. are all safe. All they’ve lost, or put at risk, is what they’ve put into the company.
Charles and Denise aren’t so lucky; their company is only a partnership, which is an agreement between two people, and as such, they are responsible for the debts. Once the van and the stock has been sold off to pay what they owe, they'll have to cover any shortfall out of their own pockets. That means they could lose their house, car, savings, even their own bed, all because they didn’t incorporate.
That’s the benefit of a corporation. It becomes a legal entity that can operate as a party to contracts, including financial ones. The problem is that some people have taken that “legal entity” status, and expanded it, claiming that since people are legal entities, legal entities are therefore people. After all, companies can marry (mergers) split (spin-off), grow, sign contracts, sue, even file taxes (and maybe even pay them); they must be people, and hence we have the term “corporate personhood.”
The problem is, companies are not people. They never have been. If a person dies, that person is dead. They can’t be brought back to life, a corporation can. A person has a fixed lifespan, a company doesn’t (The Japanese hotel company Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan is over 1300 years old, for instance). If the company breaks the law, does the company go to jail? No. At worst, it would be shut down, and very little stops the people behind that old company from just starting a new company.
The idea that people and corporations are the same thing is clearly ludicrous, and yet that’s not stopped people from trying to make it a reality. Part of the issue in the US stems from US law, which states[1] “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise-- the words 'person' and 'whoever' include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;”
