3 ms·

As I recall, eventually cigarette companies had to pay out quite a bit of money, in the US at least, and now have significant limitations on their advertising a

by Fins 9y ago

As I recall, eventually cigarette companies had to pay out quite a bit of money, in the US at least, and now have significant limitations on their advertising activities. Last I checked, smoking rates are dropping pretty much everywhere. And trying to hide problems, in the end, did not work out that well either for Ford, or for VW, or others. Depends on how "long" that long-term is, really. I am all for complete information and disclosure, but it has to be somehow balanced with the general public being more clueless than it wants to think it is, and enormous amount of outright propaganda from the "GMOs are scary" and "Monsanto is teh devil" crowd.

TangoTrotFox 9y ago
Cigarette companies today are literally more profitable than ever. They've killed and continue to kill their customers and are making a killing doing it. Har har. The fines they paid (and continue to pay) amount to a completely negligible fraction of their profit (not even their revenue!). Companies can and do engage in malicious behavior for profit when the yields are great enough. Your opinions of the public aside, you don't get to force people to use things because you think they should, except for the tiny handful of exceptions where not using something would cause an immediate public danger - such as vaccines. In some cases inferior products do win out, or good products die out. That's fine. If you cannot create a compelling case for your product in the public eye, then your product dies. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441653/u-s-tobacco-profits-soar-despite-drop-in-number-of-smokers https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441653/u-s-tobacco-profits...
- Fins 9y ago
  And also, I doubt that you will find people these days who are not aware of tobacco dangers. That tobacco companies still make a good profit just shows that if you have a legal (although Mr. Escobar might argue that legality isn't required either) product that people want, you'll make money. You will lose significant money if you are hiding its dangers, though. By the logic in the second paragraph, what's the difference between vaccines and GMO food? Is it that anti-vaxxer idiots endanger people here, while anti-GMO idiots starve people way over there?
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    Actually this is great! Let's look at some data together. The first genetically engineered product was released in 1994. It was called the Flavr Savr Tomato [1]. There are a couple of big points here. The reason this is important is because we can now look at a graph of food availability [2]. You might notice that well before genetic engineering of products was a thing, there was more than bountiful food that was increasing at a steady rate. Genetic engineering has had a negligible impact on this one way or the other. The next point is worldwide share, which gets back to the original post. The primary goal of genetic engineering foodstuffs is profit, and the developed world is where that profit is at. That said the big GMO companies have increasingly started to target the developing world. But that change in direction happened as acreage growth in the developed world began to flatline, and in some cases decline. This [3] is a summary report of GMOs from ISAAA, which is a (pro) GMO advocacy group funded by Monsanto, Bayer, the USDA, and others.You'll note that GMOs are basically a US focused projected, though Brazil and Argentina also have substantial acreage. The whole point here is that GMOs are a product of no necessity. Monsanto is 'feeding a growing population' in the same way that McDonalds is, but at least you know when you're buying a Big Mac. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/slides/hunger-and-food-provision/#/kcalcapitaday-by-world-regions-mg-png https://ourworldindata.org/slides/hunger-and-food-provision/... [3] - http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/52/executivesummary/default.asp http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/52/execut...
    - Fins 9y ago
      Oh, sure, there was more than bountiful in the US and Europe. Saying that it was (or is) bountiful in, say, Africa seems to be a stretch. One could think that GMOs appear to be a US-centered because many developing countries, whose export markets are mostly European (i.e. very anti-GMO) are afraid to plant GMO crops for fear of losing those markets. I would presume, in absence of some proof of shenanigans, that 108 Nobel winners [0] had a good idea of safety and necessity of GMOs when they wrote this letter. [0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nobel-laureates-greenpeace-gmos_us_5774c1a5e4b042fba1cf2b81 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nobel-laureates-greenpe...
TangoTrotFox 9y ago
Also, another point here is that I'm speaking of the consequences having no longterm effect. But even in some parallel world where they would have a longterm effect, the short to midterm benefits would often still outweight it. CFCs are a good example. They were largely responsible for ozone depletion and the primary developer - DuPont (now another player in genetically engineering foodstuffs) - was well aware of this. They lobbied the government for about a decade to prevent regulating them until they had a new, patented, replacement and then turned 180 and acknowledged they were destroying the ozone. But even had they not managed to successfully corrupt the government there and we prohibited CFCs a decade earlier, as we should have, they would have made immense profit in the time leading up to that period such that the fear of their actions being stopped were not really a concern. The fact that modern democratic governments can be broken so easily by large enough corporations exasperates, rather than creates, the problem.
- Fins 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, how would the prohibition of CFCs work before there were a replacement? Or would that be something like the anti-GMO crowd that feasts on their organic free-range heritage breed quinoa salad while telling people in developing world that there's not enough food for them, because GMO is evil, so drop dead?
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    Do you think that CFCs were the world's first refrigerant?
    - Fins 9y ago
      There was a reason we moved to CFC, wasn't there? Switching back and forth woulds be pretty expensive.
      - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
        Yes, swapping would have obviously come with a cost. The point was that swapping would have been entirely possible. Instead DuPont, even knowing full well the potentially global and catastrophic level of damage they were causing, successfully lobbied to prevent any regulation against them for the better part of a decade after their effects became widely known. And it's highly likely that DuPont understood the dangers well before then.

by Fins 9y ago

TangoTrotFox 9y ago

Cigarette companies today are literally more profitable than ever. They've killed and continue to kill their customers and are making a killing doing it. Har har. The fines they paid (and continue to pay) amount to a completely negligible fraction of their profit (not even their revenue!). Companies can and do engage in malicious behavior for profit when the yields are great enough. Your opinions of the public aside, you don't get to force people to use things because you think they should, except for the tiny handful of exceptions where not using something would cause an immediate public danger - such as vaccines. In some cases inferior products do win out, or good products die out. That's fine. If you cannot create a compelling case for your product in the public eye, then your product dies. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441653/u-s-tobacco-profits-soar-despite-drop-in-number-of-smokers https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441653/u-s-tobacco-profits...

Fins 9y ago
And also, I doubt that you will find people these days who are not aware of tobacco dangers. That tobacco companies still make a good profit just shows that if you have a legal (although Mr. Escobar might argue that legality isn't required either) product that people want, you'll make money. You will lose significant money if you are hiding its dangers, though. By the logic in the second paragraph, what's the difference between vaccines and GMO food? Is it that anti-vaxxer idiots endanger people here, while anti-GMO idiots starve people way over there?
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  Actually this is great! Let's look at some data together. The first genetically engineered product was released in 1994. It was called the Flavr Savr Tomato [1]. There are a couple of big points here. The reason this is important is because we can now look at a graph of food availability [2]. You might notice that well before genetic engineering of products was a thing, there was more than bountiful food that was increasing at a steady rate. Genetic engineering has had a negligible impact on this one way or the other. The next point is worldwide share, which gets back to the original post. The primary goal of genetic engineering foodstuffs is profit, and the developed world is where that profit is at. That said the big GMO companies have increasingly started to target the developing world. But that change in direction happened as acreage growth in the developed world began to flatline, and in some cases decline. This [3] is a summary report of GMOs from ISAAA, which is a (pro) GMO advocacy group funded by Monsanto, Bayer, the USDA, and others.You'll note that GMOs are basically a US focused projected, though Brazil and Argentina also have substantial acreage. The whole point here is that GMOs are a product of no necessity. Monsanto is 'feeding a growing population' in the same way that McDonalds is, but at least you know when you're buying a Big Mac. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/slides/hunger-and-food-provision/#/kcalcapitaday-by-world-regions-mg-png https://ourworldindata.org/slides/hunger-and-food-provision/... [3] - http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/52/executivesummary/default.asp http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/52/execut...
  - Fins 9y ago
    Oh, sure, there was more than bountiful in the US and Europe. Saying that it was (or is) bountiful in, say, Africa seems to be a stretch. One could think that GMOs appear to be a US-centered because many developing countries, whose export markets are mostly European (i.e. very anti-GMO) are afraid to plant GMO crops for fear of losing those markets. I would presume, in absence of some proof of shenanigans, that 108 Nobel winners [0] had a good idea of safety and necessity of GMOs when they wrote this letter. [0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nobel-laureates-greenpeace-gmos_us_5774c1a5e4b042fba1cf2b81 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nobel-laureates-greenpe...

TangoTrotFox 9y ago

Also, another point here is that I'm speaking of the consequences having no longterm effect. But even in some parallel world where they would have a longterm effect, the short to midterm benefits would often still outweight it. CFCs are a good example. They were largely responsible for ozone depletion and the primary developer - DuPont (now another player in genetically engineering foodstuffs) - was well aware of this. They lobbied the government for about a decade to prevent regulating them until they had a new, patented, replacement and then turned 180 and acknowledged they were destroying the ozone. But even had they not managed to successfully corrupt the government there and we prohibited CFCs a decade earlier, as we should have, they would have made immense profit in the time leading up to that period such that the fear of their actions being stopped were not really a concern. The fact that modern democratic governments can be broken so easily by large enough corporations exasperates, rather than creates, the problem.

Fins 9y ago
Out of curiosity, how would the prohibition of CFCs work before there were a replacement? Or would that be something like the anti-GMO crowd that feasts on their organic free-range heritage breed quinoa salad while telling people in developing world that there's not enough food for them, because GMO is evil, so drop dead?
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  Do you think that CFCs were the world's first refrigerant?
  - Fins 9y ago
    There was a reason we moved to CFC, wasn't there? Switching back and forth woulds be pretty expensive.
    - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
      Yes, swapping would have obviously come with a cost. The point was that swapping would have been entirely possible. Instead DuPont, even knowing full well the potentially global and catastrophic level of damage they were causing, successfully lobbied to prevent any regulation against them for the better part of a decade after their effects became widely known. And it's highly likely that DuPont understood the dangers well before then.