Via NPR.
Consider the following:
- Corporations are people
- People can give money to campaigns
- Campaigns win elections
Would that mean that corporations buy elections? Does that mean your money is tied to your vote?
We're talking about election votes here, but I hope we see that our money is our vote in a lot of areas: like what is considered entertainment (stop watching the Kardashians and maybe their ratings will drop and they'll go away!), what you consider food (don't think ducks should be force-fed? buy ethical froie gras, or none at all!), if we value the environment (buy less plastic, drive a smaller car, survive on less!).
Whew! Let's bring this back down. I get excited about this stuff, as you can tell. I think its important to stand up for what you believe, but also to be tolerant of others. I'm not sure if I would sell my vote in a pinch. Of course, if I didn't need the money, I wouldn't want someone else making up my mind for me (that, to me, is what selling a vote would do). But if I were down on my luck, maybe.
What would you do?
On the flip side, would you buy a vote?
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My book club just had our meeting after reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It presents the debate of whether or not tissue samples belong to an individual, to a company or to science as a whole. With big money involved, and lives as risk, I couldn't make a conclusion on what I thought should happened to people's discarded - or harvested - cells. Chances are, pieces of us are sitting in labs all over the place and we have no right, currently, to say whether or not these cells can be used for research on anything from cancer to nuclear bombs! And with money and patents in the mix, who's in charge? Who benefits?
