These stories posted on Cryptogon recently have been reminding me how deeply corrupt our economic system is. While we all know that capitalism is based on self-interest and greed and that corporations are essentially obligated to maximize profits at the expense of all other concerns, I think we are often in denial about how blatantly this manifests in our society. If a company (or individual) is trying to maximize its profits, it has an inverse motivation to provide real, accessible, inexpensive/free, effective, or permanent solutions to our needs or problems. This is one of those mind-bending ideas that we may accept intellectually, but that our continual conditioning often prevents from truly being integrated into our consciousness. Corporations hate open source solutions; in fact, they have clear motivations to prevent you from knowing about solutions that they cannot profit off of. Our system is not based on solving problems but rather on creating and maintaining them so that capitalists can continue to profit and maintain their advantage.
I think the grand pyramid scheme that the elite have been running for centuries may be starting to crack. I hope stories like those below get people angry enough to take some risks for change.
Pot compound seen as tool against cancer
http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Pot-compound-...
Drug giants fined $11bn for criminal wrongdoing
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and...
A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/95088...
Sitting in a refrigerator in a Swedish laboratory is what promises to be a cheap and effective cancer treatment. So why are the trials to bring it to market not going ahead?
‘It is so,’ Magnus agrees sorrowfully. Swedishly uninterested in profiteering, devoted only to the purity of science, >Magnus and his co-workers on this virus have already published the details of their experiments in leading journals >around the world, which means that the modified virus as it stands can no longer be patented. And without a patent to >make the virus commercial, no one will invest. Even if I could raise the £2 million (I want only the best version) to get >the therapy to the end of phase II trials, no organisation is going to step forward to run the phase III trial that is >necessary to make the therapy public.