The Superorganic World of Transfer Pricing

Business anthropology is an emerging sub-discipline in anthropology. As an academic discipline, business anthropologists study business practices and organizations from a cultural and cross cultural perspective. As an applied discipline, the Business anthropologist works with business owners and corporations to solve cultural and cross cultural problems that arise in the course of international business and/or working with a socially and culturally diverse workforce, market place and business environment.

One problem unique to the international business corporation is the impact of "transfer pricing" on the corporation's organizational structure and operational processes. This is a concept that the business anthropologist should become familiar with when working with international\global corporation.

Transfer Pricing is an accounting tool used in international business to account for sales between a parent company and its subsidiaries located in a different tax jurisdiction. Transfer pricing deals with the problem companies face when they have operations in several different taxing jurisdictions and engage in intra-company sales of goods and services. It can also be a tool that can be used to maximize corporate income taxes savings.

A recent NPR interview on Fresh Air with reporter Jesse Drucker, from Bloomberg News, describes how this tool is being used by such global corporations as Google,Forest Laboratories and other companies to save billions of dollars of taxes.

Are Memes dangerous to humans?

Memes are those meaningful elements found in the members of a superorganic entity. They act like genes do in an organic entity to determine what the individual will look like and how they will act. Memes can be beneficial such "altruism" or they can be deleterious such as "suicidal".

In the current Deep Water Horizon disaster, where lives have been lost, careers and businesses ruined, the environment and way of life of the Gulf Coast threaten with permanent lose, we find that there is a meme which causes its infected host to be blind to the meaning and impact of the situation.

Here is an example of a politician infected by the meme "corporate capitalism." Ask yourself. "Is this politician's meme infection dangerous to the health and welfare of human beings and nature?" Or "Is it an example of a predatory parasitic meme blinding a good descent human being to the reality of his position?"




We can see from Rep. Joe Barton's statement that the "corporate capitalism" meme has lead to a misappropriate application of the "shakedown" meme in his speech. This lead to a behavioral reaction -- that of applying the "apology" meme inappropriately. The "apology" meme is normally applied by the guilty party to ask for forgiveness from the harmed party. In this case, Rep. Barton displays a pathological misunderstanding of the "apology" meme as it applies to this situation. This is evidence of how memes can be dangerous to human beings.