Privatization of Social Services. Corporate control of social services will make these vital and important services inaccessible to the people, especially to the poor and marginalized sectors. Access to water and energy will also become costlier once big corporations take over through privatization. The residents of Buenos Aires, Argentina paid higher water bills after the US water company Azurix took over the operation of the water facility. When the local government attempted to cap water prices, Azurix with its King & Spalding law firm filed a lawsuit. The investor-state tribunal decided in favor of the water company and awarded it $165 million from the taxes of the Argentinean public.10 The TPPA will also endanger the rights of citizens on access to education. This basic right and also a social service that governments should provide will be for sale once corporations decide to profit from it. Liberalizing the education sector also raises questions on whether the education system is producing graduates needed for genuine industrial development, not just skilled labor for multi-national corporations. Already, the Vietnamese government allows foreign investment in its education sector to accommodate the demand of large multinational corporations for skilled labor.11 The TPPA could also impact on educational content, especially on the formation of the national consciousness of citizens. The TPPA’s demand that the media policies that support local cultural content be abolished could also be applied to education policies. In health care, the stringent IPR rules that the US promotes extend the patent and data monopolies of corporations. This extension will delay the creation of generic medicines and allow big pharmaceutical companies to keep the prices of medicines high. It also allows corporations in general to apply evergreening tactics to hold on to their patents longer even without any improvement in the use and efficiency of their products. As a result, medicines that are highly needed such as anti-AIDS/HIV drugs will continually be out of reach for those who need them. New Zealand’s Pharmac, which buys medicines at low prices and sells them to citizens at equally low prices, could be dismantled once the TPPA is enforced. Tobacco firms will enjoy more freedom in selling their goods by the abolishment of standard packaging rules countries set to control tobacco use. The strong tobacco lobby can xxx governments with strict rules on tobacco packaging and demand the repeal of these laws.
