The world we live in today is dominated by the outstretched hands of corporations that seek to influence and manipulate our every decision. The corporate world is leading a multi-pronged assault for total control over the consumer through deceptive marketing practices and relentless exploitation untapped markets, and a lack of government regulation. In “Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society” by Joseph Stiglitz, we are presented with the concept of rent-seeking. It is an umbrella ideology that includes various unethical practices used by the wealthy to drain the lower classes of their wealth and redistribute it at the top. The corporations that are solely after monetary gain, are doing so at the expense of the poor and are taking
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The issue of inequality exists on a global platform and touches on all facets our lives. The power to accumulate and redistribute wealth is with the wealthy elite that can manipulate markets at will, however, Stiglitz clearly defines the dangers of such to society, “…there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it…” (Stiglitz 396). The blame cannot be placed on the lower classes when there poverty is a direct result of faulty and deceptive practices carried out by corporations. Stiglitz offers a key example, “But the form of rent seeking that is most egregious—and that has been most perfected in recent years—has been the ability of those in the financial sector to take advantage of the poor and uninformed, as they made enormous amounts of money by preying upon these groups with predatory lending and abusive card practices” (Stiglitz 399). These corporations and financial institutions will stop at nothing to achieve wealth creation, even if it means misguiding the lower classes and using unjust methods for extracting wealth from them. Similarly, in Japan, inequality existed in the form of healthcare because pharmaceutical corporations were bent on yielding enormous profits from a lucrative market, instead of curing the Japanese people. Corporations like GlaxoSmithKline lied to the Japanese people about the efficacy of their drug, “As often repeated as this story is, it turns out that there is no scientific consensus that depression is linked to serotonin deficiency or that SSRIs restore the brain’s normal “balance” of this neurotransmitter” (Watters 529). They repeatedly misinformed the Japanese public and did nothing to stop the mainstream usage of their drug as long as profits grew, even though
The issue of inequality exists on a global platform and touches on all facets our lives. The power to accumulate and redistribute wealth is with the wealthy elite that can manipulate markets at will, however, Stiglitz clearly defines the dangers of such to society, “…there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it…” (Stiglitz 396). The blame cannot be placed on the lower classes when there poverty is a direct result of faulty and deceptive practices carried out by corporations. Stiglitz offers a key example, “But the form of rent seeking that is most egregious—and that has been most perfected in recent years—has been the ability of those in the financial sector to take advantage of the poor and uninformed, as they made enormous amounts of money by preying upon these groups with predatory lending and abusive card practices” (Stiglitz 399). These corporations and financial institutions will stop at nothing to achieve wealth creation, even if it means misguiding the lower classes and using unjust methods for extracting wealth from them. Similarly, in Japan, inequality existed in the form of healthcare because pharmaceutical corporations were bent on yielding enormous profits from a lucrative market, instead of curing the Japanese people. Corporations like GlaxoSmithKline lied to the Japanese people about the efficacy of their drug, “As often repeated as this story is, it turns out that there is no scientific consensus that depression is linked to serotonin deficiency or that SSRIs restore the brain’s normal “balance” of this neurotransmitter” (Watters 529). They repeatedly misinformed the Japanese public and did nothing to stop the mainstream usage of their drug as long as profits grew, even though