This is a primary example of Foucault's strategies of power: the way government and business and intimately tied with few checks or balances between them.
The techniques of power are more overt. These relate to what we can or cannot do as law-abiding citizens. For example, drug laws in the United States are notoriously strident. The possession of small amounts of marijuana are punishable by imprisonment. Whereas Americans have the liberty to drink themselves to death or eat fried foods until their arteries burst, they do not have the freedom to smoke. Prohibition of drugs...
In fact, the drug laws are a perfect example of how power strategies and the penal system work hand in hand. A large number of prison inmates are drug offenders. Many if not most of them also share certain ethnic and class characteristics that indicate how power manifests in different demographics.
Another important point Foucault raises relates to the primacy of science and the power science institutions have over our lives. If I go to the doctor, he or she uses cryptic language to tell me about my body, keeping my file a secret. The doctor demonstrates distinct power over the individual patient, by exclaiming that
medical science provides the only "truth" to understanding health and healing. This is only one example of how endowing science with the label of "truth" affects power relations in our
society. Other examples are easy to point out, including the way the media selectively reports from scientific journals, or the way peer-reviewed scientific journals select which authors and which subjects to publish.
Work Cited
Foucault, Michel. "Strategies of Power." Chapter 6.
