On corporate profits, human greed and why we need government

The Supreme Court's ruling yesterday -- that human genes cannot be patented, but that patents can be had on scientific discoveries altering genes' natural states and on new processes to carry out genetic tests, such as cancer screenings -- will alter the future of the biotech industry and, in many ways, medical research. It will reduce the price of many new drugs and alter investment incentives.

But it also illustrates a more basic point.

At least since economist Milton Friedman first advanced the view (popularized by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) that the basic choice is whether to rely on the market or on government to decide who gets what -- and that the market is more compatible with freedom -- we have been locked into an ideological debate that has little or no bearing on the real world.

The fact is, markets don't exist in a state of nature. All we have there is survival of the fittest. Civilized societies create markets. They decide on the rules of the game, such as whether genes can be private property. Markets can be organized in many different ways, some more equitable than others. The fundamental choice isn't between the so-called "free" market and government. It is between static efficiency or equal opportunity and access, between growing apart or growing together.

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political and economic commentator

It's regulation. It's why we need government to regulate business, clearly. Someone, some organization must oversee the human tendency for greed and the corporate propensity to cut costs at all costs, to maximize profit.  It's why there were 2 blasts yesterday in Louisiana at the oil processing plant--cost-cutting corporations for profit above all else.

Like it or not, ladies and gentlemen, we need government. We need strong government and we need government regulation of business. We don't need huge government but we do need strong government and we keep getting reminded of exactly why, too, with catastrophe after catastrophe.

Links:  Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Further proof of why we shouldn't have smoking in public areas

I still see and hear, once in a while, someone complain that they can't smoke in public. Last week, someone wrote in to The Kansas City Star, sarcastically ripping our smoking bans, saying life will be perfect one of these days, if we just keep passing laws similar to this one. And to this I say, you need to read the following scientific information on what smoking does to us, just released this morning: Scientists led by Dr. Ronald Crystal at Weill Cornell Medical College documented changes in genetic activity among nonsmokers triggered by exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke. Public-health bans on smoking have been fueled by strong population-based data that links exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke and a higher incidence of lung diseases such as emphysema and even lung cancer, but do not establish a biological cause for the correlation. Now, for the first time, researchers can point to one possible cause: the passive recipient's genes are actually being affected. The results suggest that the genetic changes among the low-exposure volunteers, some of whose exposure is exclusively secondhand, mimicked those of smokers and represent the first molecular steps toward later lung disease. ...the latest findings should reinforce public-health messages about the dangers of cigarette smoke, even if it is secondhand, says Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. "When you look at the biology, there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke," he says. "This [study] adds an important piece of evidence that inhaling secondhand smoke is deleterious and does things to the airway that are not good." Okay? Got that? It's bad enough your cigarettes make us stink. We could live with that. And the scientific data told us years ago that secondhand smoke does cause cancer, even though you may not want to believe it. But here is further proof of just what you, smoking in public, in restaurants and so on, does to us--all of us. Could we get over this now? Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201210300;_ylt=AiwAHJetTqWiLcUjXzd7otHpCcB_;_ylu=X3oDMTM1dTVqMjI1BGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMDA4MjAvMDg1OTkyMDEyMTAzMDAEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM4BHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDc2Vjb25kaGFuZGNp