An Unequal Society

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The Effects of Institutions on the Science
Institutions are crucial for our society to be successful because it is a social and academic construction of a community in that institutions help us interact with each other and promote scientific research and findings, regardless of the cultures and values that each individual believes in; without institutions, there would be no order and stability in society. However, in the essay “Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society” by Joseph Stiglitz, Stiglitz disagrees by arguing that institutions actually prevent scientific research to evolve into scientific discoveries because monopolists and dominant forms such as Microsoft suppress innovation; however, this statement is unconscionable …show more content…

In both “Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society” and “Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” both authors share a common theme; the decisions of a few key people in an organization could influence the whole population. In the essay “Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society” by Joseph Stiglitz, Stiglitz states that the government has the power to do anything, especially in the economy; For example, when he states “Government has the power to move money from the top to the bottom and the middle, or vice versa,”(394) he is stating that the government has the power to either contribute to the financial gap between the rich and the poor or lessen the financial gap between the rich and the poor. Stiglitz is arguing that because the government is only either contributing to the financial gap or not doing anything to lessen the gap, giving all the power to only a few people is ridiculous. Although Stiglitz is correct in that the government is contributing to the financial gap between the rich and the poor, he is not aware of how the wealthy could be spending the money; the rich could be donating to science buildings, allowing for scientists to research into greater depth. After all, research requires funding and science costs money. Clearly, giving only a few people a lot of power is not always unreasonable because there’s always a possibility that the few people could donate money to scientific research, promoting scientific research . Similarly, in the essay “Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” by Ethan Watters, Watters states that giving all the power to GlaxoSmithKline is not reasonable because giving it full power allows it to control the cultural conception of anyone by manipulating or controlling. However, Watters is disregarding the notion that if all the pharmaceutical companies had equal power, there would be too much

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