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.
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.