Word: venal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...feel somewhat sorry for these pharmaceutical companies - the idea of profiting off human misery may seem reprehensible, but it is, after all, the very logic of the market economy in medicine. Pharmaceutical corporations are not venal or callous; they're simply corporations. And they behave as corporations are supposed to do, maximizing their profits, protecting and expanding their market share and pumping money into the political process to keep Washington sweet on their interests...
...critics (not necessarily venal ones, either) and patrons (no more stupid than the ones we have today) lined up, jostling to kiss the artists' nether parts. The artists were laden with gold medals, garlands and titles of honor. They were seen as tradition incarnate, worthy successors to Rubens, Donatello and Titian. Powerful systems of taste enforcement--ministries of fine arts, academies, salons--underwrote the promise of their immortality...