Any road to profit.

On my mind this week even more than a bright hope of a better America, has been the idea that a corporation, even in a capitalistic economy, should not take any road to profit. This question leads in an Associated Press article this past Thursday:

What does a company do when there's anecdotal evidence that two of its drugs are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, one costing patients $60 per treatment and the other $2,000?

What this corporation did was not seek FDA approval for the less expensive drug. They chose outrageous profit over making available a cure for blindness in a wider population. The whole article is here for you to read:

Those two carat flawless square cuts that women are told they must have to marry Mr. Right are still dug out of the earth with slave labor. This story was well documented in the movie Blood Diamond. The corporation, concerned with they profit, accumulated diamonds and withheld them so that they could control the market and get the highest price.

Along the shore of a remote country derelict ships are abandoned by design. Imagine being the pilot of a ship you are driving to its death. Children work in breaking up the ship. The parts are sold for scrap. The corporation has no care about the consequences. The children have no childhood. The corporation gets the profit without the responsibility for their actions.

This activity is done worldwide. When American corporations do this, it makes me mad. We should be better than that.