Monsanto May Have To Repay 10 Years of GM Soya Royalties In Brazil

If we can't feed the world's populations without genetically modifying crops and spraying all arable land with poison then maybe we should do something to curb population growth. The danger with companies like Monsanto is that rather than having a choice to use GM or conventional crops, in time GM will be the only choice and the companies will be able to dictate the price they choose rather than having fair competition and reasonably priced alternatives - if it's not too late already. It's similar to the way that medical providers in the USA dictate their prices to their patients, and the reason why medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcies in the USA today. Physicians groups and hospitals blame technology for higher costs, but much of the care provided today isn't substantially better than what was offered 20 years ago, especially considering that today a large number of patients cannot continue or complete their treatment because they first run out of money.

Free markets are great for consumer choices, like listen to radio with commercials or buy CDs without commercials. "Free markets" are not so great for "your money or your life" types of choices. Physicians, pharmaceutical sales reps, and hospital administrators don't necessarily have more education or qualifications than physicists, car salespeople, and school administrators, but the first class earns substantially higher incomes. Children need to go to school on a daily basis but only a small number will require a hospital, yet just one trip to a hospital can cost more than a year of school. The "cost" of healthcare in America is directly proportional to the lifestyles of those who control the healthcare industry. Current laws allow them to charge whatever fee they choose AFTER services are rendered while patients rarely have the ability to shop and compare providers by price, especially in emergency situations. Medical treatment is often literally not a choice - many states mandate that people provide and pay for the medically necessary care of their spouses and children, and even if you are unconscious you are liable for the cost of care you receive during your "implied consent", regardless of how many tens of thousands of dollars that may be. The only reason many ER visits can be invoiced an exact amount is because legally the hospitals cannot sue for "everything you have or ever will have" so they make up a price that closely approximates what they think this figure might be.

Monsanto wants to have the same kind of power. To take everything you have or ever will have (or you don't get to eat). Every person NEEDS to eat every day while most people can go years without devastating medical bills just by good luck and healthy living (which, by the way, is the only reason the GOP can drum up so much anti-Obamacare sentiment - most people haven't been screwed by the system yet so Obamacare seems unnecessary in their eyes).

Giving Monsanto or an Oligarchy of mega-corporations this kind of power will have natural consequences for all of us. I'm not saying the Monsanto or any other GM crop related company is inherently evil. It's just that the structure of our economic system leads large publicly listed companies to behave this way. Hence the universal and timeless need for regulation and oversight. Allowing companies to possess too much power or to be "too big to fail" is a failure of corporate sponsored representative democracy.

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