The Big Blob: How Regulatory Capture and a Corporate State Make Americans Sick and Sad

This lecture will focus on one acute example of the emerging political economy of the developed world--which we might refer to as technocratic corporatism. It will explore how the perverse incentives of tightly regulated American markets for food and drugs have contributed to a chronic disease epidemic among children and adults. These markets involve mostly legal collusion of federal regulatory agencies and their scientific research apparatus, related private corporations in pharmaceuticals, food, and agriculture, interested nonprofits, and media that rely on ad dollars from both food and drug companies. This is neither state socialism nor a properly functioning market. And its result is an epidemic of chronic disease--"diseases of civilization"--among children and adults.