capitalism

Ars Technica: Since the 1980s, patent lawyers have been claiming pieces of humanity’s genetic code. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted thousands of gene patents. The Federal Circuit, the court that hears all patent appeals, has consistently ruled such patents are legal. But the judicial winds have been shifting. The Supreme Court [...]

The New York Times reports: Sheri Farley walks with a limp. The only job she could hold would be one where she does not have to stand or sit longer than 20 minutes, otherwise pain screams down her spine and up her legs. “Damaged goods,” Ms. Farley describes herself, recalling how she recently overheard a [...]

When a company’s brand becomes so successful that their brand name turns into a generic term — like Xerox or Aspirin — I would have thought that such companies would welcome this measure of brand dominance. Apparently not. Google, like many companies before, has its legal jackboots marching around the world trying to police where [...]

Paul Buchheit writes: It gets more maddening every day. Essential human needs are being packaged into products to be bought and sold. The right to food and water, education, health care, public spaces, and unrestricted speech shouldn’t be based on who can pay the most, or on who can generate profits with the slickest marketing [...]

The Independent reports: Tesco workers are being made to wear electronic armbands that managers can use to grade how hard they are working. [British-based Tesco is the world's second-largest retailer after Walmart.] A former staff member has claimed employees are given marks based on how efficiently they work in a bid to improve productivity and [...]

Gary Gutting asks: Is capitalism an enemy of the good life? Marxists and other radicals think so. Toward the end of How Much Is Enough?, Robert and Edward Skidelsky (an economist father and his philosopher son) quote one such thinker: Working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the [...]

Bruce E. Levine: What a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism! — psychologist B.F. Skinner The corporatization of society requires a population that accepts control by authorities, and so when psychologists and psychiatrists began providing techniques that could control people, the corporatocracy embraced mental health professionals. In psychologist B.F. Skinner’s best-selling book Beyond [...]

Morris Berman writes: La longue durée — the long run — was an expression made popular by the Annales School of French historians led by Fernand Braudel, who coined the phrase in 1958. The basic argument of this school is that the proper concern of historians should be the analysis of structures that lie at [...]

VOA reports: The United Nations is calling for urgent action to reduce the growing health and environmental hazards from exposure to chemical substances. A new study – “Global Chemicals Outlook” – by the U.N. Environment Program [UNEP] finds sound management of chemicals could save millions of lives and provide an economic bonanza to nations worldwide. [...]