
Prison time for Insys bosses puts opioid maker on notice - yomly
https://www.ft.com/content/a27bbc80-3d35-11ea-a01a-bae547046735
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dredmorbius
Fascinating story, though I'm particularly drawn to the sidebar commentary:

 _John Kapoor insisted that Insys hire sales representatives who were “PHD” —
“poor, hungry, driven” or “poor, hungry, dumb”— Alec Burlakoff told the FT and
Frontline._

This is how you create drug pushers (criminal or corporate), corporate
fraudsters, "just following orders" rank-and-file within atrocity-committing
organisatios (government, corporate, criminal, social), propagandists, and
quite often within academic disciplines.

I'm reminded of a professor I'd had in an introductory social sciences course.
On their death, I learned that far from the patrician presence he'd come to be
when I knew him, he'd come from humble and harsh beginnings, as related in an
obituary. Though they'd published little academic work, they were able to make
a substantial endowment to the university. It also became clear to me over the
decades, substantiated by the fact that virtually all their published work was
via specifically ideological (and corporate-backed) insitutions, that he was
ragingly partisan. A realisation which explained much of his lecture and
course presentation and materials.

That personal history matches others in the field.

A background of poverty _can_ be illuminating and character-building. It can
also be the opposite. It is a tool which creates individuals who, as the Insys
quote demonstrates, manipulators and destroyers of the common weal can, will
and do, _with all deliberate intent_ exploit.

Poverty and inequality are a self-feeding cycle.

