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Can someone enlighten me on the psychological wiring of people like these? Do you even think a moment about anything else than you very own well-being, no matte

Can someone enlighten me on the psychological wiring of people like these? Do you even think a moment about anything else than you very own well-being, no matter the (societal) costs? Is your relation to the world a purely instrumental one? Where does this destructive energy comes from?

wilde 6y ago
Few people play the villain in their own story. More likely they thought they were helping people with chronic pain and justified it by thinking that “more good than harm comes of it”. Plenty of people on this site are employed in work with large negative externalities with similar justifications. We just haven’t had the 20 years to see the outcomes yet.
- d4mi3n 6y ago
  There's also a cruel irony in the fact that addiction has very negative impacts on folk's self esteem. One of the negative cycles in addiction is when someone does become the villain in their own story. It's heart breaking to talk to a loved one suffering from addiction and hearing that they think they deserve to have it due to some self-perceived failing. I really wish the U.S. would get it's act together culturally around how addicts are perceived, treated, and helped.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Perverse unintentional incentives at one more places in the stack are more than sufficient to create the appearance of villainy without any intentional malice. Hanlon's Razor is far more common than people want to admit. In this story, doctors are looking for easy solutions they can prescribe in 5-15 minute appointments so they can see as many patients in a day. Management is looking to increase sales. Account managers are trying to get doctor's to prescribe. The only "villainy" at the board/shareholder level could be as simple as tasking management with finding other legitimate well meaning use cases for opioids. That incentive alone is enough to create pressure all the way down the stack and when people in the stack are presented with the challenge of meeting goals, all of them in concert making small compromises within their role are enough to produce the illusion of villainy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Or perhaps they had involvement, but it was too abstract to register as obviously "villainy" in their conscience. I sometimes quip that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough layers of indirection. Perhaps that's one of those cases.
- gooseus 6y ago
  I think this is exactly it, the stories we tell ourselves (and each other) about ourselves allow for every kind of justification for any kind of action. It reminds me of studies in confabulation in split-brains: >> Some of the most famous examples of confabulation come "split-brain" patients, whose left and right brain hemispheres have been surgically disconnected for medical treatment. Neuroscientists have devised clever experiments in which information is provided to the right hemisphere (for instance, pictures of naked people), causing a change in behavior (embarrassed giggling). Split-brain individuals are then asked to explain their behavior verbally, which relies on the left hemisphere. Realizing that their body is laughing, but unaware of the nude images, the left hemisphere will confabulate an excuse for the body's behavior ("I keep laughing because you ask such funny questions, Doc!").[1] People are driven by one part of their brain to consume and acquire pleasure/status/money and simultaneously convinced by another part of their brain to believe they are good, deserving, and entitled to everything they enjoy. I see this with all sorts of people who are caught doing something they know is wrong and immediately respond with "well, everyone else does even worse..." or "yeah, but I do X, so it evens out...". [1] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513
- iamdbtoo 6y ago
  I would also argue that we've noralized the idea that if you achieve massive wealth that is the real success and you shouldn't be held responsible for the bad things you had to do to get there. Most people can't achieve that level of wealth without sacraficing some morality along the way, but when very few of them are held accountable it's just the cost of making billions of dollars.
  - devilduck 6y ago
    Another psychological component is that if you don't demonize the ones who have taken the Billions, then maybe you can get some of that too. Maybe like playing the lottery while ignoring the obvious predation of the lottery system
  - owenmarshall 6y ago
    No one can accumulate billions without decisions that the average person would describe as clearly immoral.
    - no_wizard 6y ago
      I don’t know if that’s absolutely true. Google was successful simply because they built a better mousetrap in search and selling ads around it. The more shady things I’d argue came much later, from what I can gather about the publicly available information on the company and what it’s been like to work there through the years. I’m actually far more worried about what these people and companies do to maintain their wealth and status. That tends to be where things go much much more sideways and ends up more often than not being very harmful historically
  - SantalBlush 6y ago
    There is also the idea that wealth is a reasonable measure of one's contribution to society. This way, any personal wealth that is acquired by legal means is not just morally acceptable, but good for all.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    I am not sure if you typo'd "moralized" or "normalized". I think the latter, but it might be good to edit your comment with the intended version (if you see this before the edit period ends).
- brandonmenc 6y ago
  > more good than harm comes of it I have yet to see any compelling argument that opioids do not provide a net good to society. A cursory glance at the statistics re: opioid abuse suggests that it negatively affects us at about the same level as alcohol, which has absolutely zero therapeutic use.
  - KptMarchewa 6y ago
    Only if you consider only therapeutic use good.
- yread 6y ago
  Very true. Also it's difficult to judge whether “more good than harm comes of it”. I mean: I work in cancer research but maybe it would be better for the world if I didn't and somebody smarter would take my place
- digitaltrees 6y ago
  This sounds true until you hear the Sackler family speak, after that it’s clear they fundamentally detest other people and don’t care about the harm they cause. They wanted money that’s where the analysis stops.
klyrs 6y ago
Top article right now is about ants decorating their homes with the heads of their enemies. Plenty of fun speculation about "human nature" there.
shadykiller 6y ago
Reminds of this podcast below which sheds light on the theory of cognitive dissonance. About how people justify their actions to reduce cognitive dissonance - basically sleep at night. Link: https://peterattiamd.com/caroltavris-elliotaronson/ https://peterattiamd.com/caroltavris-elliotaronson/
HowFarFallen 6y ago
There is some Talmudic justification for this kind of behaviour, which contributes to the relatively high exhibition of these traits among those who practice Judaism or whose environment is heavily influenced by that culture (the Sacklers are indeed Jewish)[see below]. The Talmud teaches us quite explicitly that non-Jews may be treated as we may treat cattle - they are ours to exploit in pursuit of our own security and prosperity. There is little that is not justifiable so long as it serves that goal. In fact, more concern is afforded in the Talmud to the interests of other Jews who may be harmed by conflicting exploitation of goyim, than to the subjects themselves. Of course this is taboo in the extreme by the standards of modern Western society, and of course I have no idea of the Sacklers' private convictions, but just as some may use their Bible as justification for their homophobia or the Koran for justification of their misogyny, some may well use the Talmud as justification for xenophobic sadism and exploitation - which includes the deceptive popularisation of opioids for extraordinary profits in spite of (or because of) the physical, spiritual and financial suffering of others. [Some quotes for the uninitiated] "An orthodox Jew is not bound to observe principles of morality towards people of other tribes. He may act contrary to morality, if profitable to himself or to Jews in general." Zohar, Vayshlah 177b "On the house of the Goy one looks as on the fold of cattle." Mas. Shabbath 31b "The non-Jew is consequently an animal in human form, and condemned to serve the Jew day and night." Zohar, Shemoth, Toldoth Noah, Lekh-Lekha Sanhedrin 58b provides that Jews may not be held responsible for the deaths of non-Jews.
loxs 6y ago
Chances are, almost everyone, including me and you will act exactly the same given the right circumstances. At this point I don't even think of it as something "bad". It's just the way it is. Edit: proof... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sneak 6y ago
I think a lot of it is perhaps fundamental attribution error, which is ridiculously common in people. I actually tend toward the idea that people that manufacture and sell potentially harmful, but inanimate things are in no way responsible for their final use (or misuse). They're not forcing anyone to take these drugs, nor is the prescriber, nor is the pharmacist, nor is the truck driver who drove it to the corner store. That said, I also recognize that while the person who put the opiates into a human body is the ultimately 100% responsible party for any harm caused by those opiates, the fact remains that many people would choose such self-harm in various circumstances (such as massively addictive drugs being prescribed by their doctor), and that we must consider the effects of circumstances on people and their decisionmaking. Treating people as sheep that are entirely dependent upon their circumstances to determine whether or not they make good (in your and my view) choices is the wrong move, however. Ultimately though, it's simply not the fault of the manufacturer or vendor if adults misuse their products. There seems to be a lot of support for ending the drug war in the United States. (I'm one of those people.) If that happens, opiate addiction seems to become much more likely, as opiates will be cheaper, safer, and more plentiful/available. I guess I'm just not sure where the outrage at this manufacturer comes from, given the disaster that the drug war's been. What they're doing is (mostly) legal, and the parts that they're trying to hang criminal charges on shouldn't be crimes.
- Klinky 6y ago
  You certainly should be liable if your product is highly dangerous and addictive, and you've purposefully created an environment that incentivizes over proscribing of your dangerous addictive product. If you actively encourage the misuse, you are the problem. You could make similar arguments against Wells Fargo account fraud or Boeing 737 MAX. Both involve executives creating environments that resulted in abuse or "misuse" by employees or customers. Did these policies cause harm? Were there safeguards in place to reduce abuse/misuse, or were those ignored because they would have stopped the gravy train?
- ves 6y ago
  > I actually tend toward the idea that people that manufacture and sell potentially harmful, but inanimate things are in no way responsible for their final use (or misuse). They're not forcing anyone to take these drugs, nor is the prescriber, nor is the pharmacist, nor is the truck driver who drove it to the corner store. This might be admissible in the case of the sacklers if all they did was create the drug and make it available, but they did much more than that: they marketed opiates heavily, they aggressively downplayed the negative affects, and they incentivized doctors to prescribe (which of course apportions some of the blame to the doctors as well). And even the prescribing doctors share in the blame through their deliberate actions: first, when a doctor prescribes opiates, they’re not prescribing some other treatment, but you (the patient) still have the issue, so you can’t really not take the opiates, ie forego treatment, especially since you’re also out the money and using up your insurance (if you even have that!); second, not behaving in line with your doctor’s wishes can have its own set of consequences, ranging from ticking your doctor off (which is bad, since you need them to help you with your condition, and finding new doctors takes time and money, and you’re ill all the while) to getting sent to the psychiatrist. So much to say, I think this attitude is incorrect in the case of the Sacklers, as it doesn’t comport with the evidence, and in the general case it’s naive.
ramraj07 6y ago
The fundamental flaw in human nature is the universality of the thought "I'm a nice person, I'll never do what they did!" Yet, few of us forego our comforts and vacations when that could measurably help many with basic life necessities. If you contribute 20% of your salary to charity, you're already in the significant minority, leave alone higher ratios. Many here work in facebook, or Palantir, and find ways to justify how it's not that bad a company. Other tech companies too, but the point is made more clearly with these examples. On a far simpler example, a few years back, most everyone in this forum probably used to pirate movies. Whatever Robinhood justification we all used, in the end we broke the law. Probably because we thought it didn't matter, that we somehow deserved what we took, and that we won't caught. That's the first rung in the ladder that after a very large number of steps leads to where this family has ended. If you were ready to break a small law to just watch a movie, is it that unfathomable that these people will do dastardlier things to keep billions?
- snarf21 6y ago
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
- danans 6y ago
  > Yet, few of us forego our comforts and vacations when that could measurably help many with basic life necessities. Paying for those comforts helps pay for the basic life necessities of those who provide the comforts. > If you contribute 20% of your salary to charity, you're already in the significant minority, leave alone higher ratios. Few common workers can afford to contribute 20% to charity without living paycheck to paycheck. This is what progressive taxation is for. The marginal utility of money for funding the basics of life diminishes as you move into the .1% of the income/wealth distribution, which is the argument for taxing those people more. The marginal utility for political power, however scales up with wealth, which is an even more compelling argument for strongly progressive taxation.
bluthru 6y ago
“The launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white,” -Richard Sackler Blizzards are always white, so why did he say it? Jewish supremacists like the Sacklers hate white people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hnracer 6y ago
They are protecting their property from theft by force by the state. They view themselves as the moral owners of that earned private property, and the state as the thug hired by the masses which is attempting literal theft (in the moral, not legal sense) at figurative gunpoint (don't obey - go to prison). They view their wealth as the fruits of value adding voluntary exchanges that is theirs and only theirs to reap, distribute, horde, burn, spend, etc. That is the libertarian philosophy that undergirds these kind of actions.
- ves 6y ago
  This comment is obviously not an endorsement of these beliefs, for the down voters.
  - hnracer 6y ago
    I am a libertarian although you're right that that comment wasn't supposed to be an endorsement, just an explanation of the mindset of its more stringent adherents
rebuilder 6y ago
I think hardly anyone is able to really face the suffering our normal daily lives cause, to humans and animals, now and in the future. It's too much and the implications, if we were to face them, are too radical. So we tend to look at the effect we have on the people close to us and call it good. Now imagine you're a billionaire, and your behaviour is like this. Won't you look like a monster, because of how distanced you are from most people, and the extent of your influence?
snarf21 6y ago
The Sacklers should definitely be in jail. But everyone in the value chain is culpable. Why did insurance pay for these for almost anyone? Why did doctors prescribe it so liberally? What about the med reps that (until recently) basically all but bribed doctors to push their new drugs? What about the FDA and monitoring the quantity and velocity of these prescriptions? It used to be that, outside of the hospital, people only got morphine at end of life. What did we think would happen when we started handling them out like Skittles?
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > What about the FDA and monitoring the quantity and velocity of these prescriptions? Why would you think it should? It had to have a warning as a schedule 2, nothing more. The hindsight that the FDA should have monitored it or that it should have been classified higher, was the responsibility of the universally corrupt idiots that are elected to the US Congress.
LatteLazy 6y ago
What they're doing is no different to what other people do. They're just doing it by in billions of dollars instead of thousands. Every day, people take the easy choice, they go for the quick buck, they ignore inconvenient evidence of problems they don't want to admit, they maximise their own returns and minimise their risks, they justify and minimise their own failings. The issue here isn't that these people were people. The issue is that they were left unsupervisored and simply "trusted" to get on with it.

wilde 6y ago

Few people play the villain in their own story. More likely they thought they were helping people with chronic pain and justified it by thinking that “more good than harm comes of it”. Plenty of people on this site are employed in work with large negative externalities with similar justifications. We just haven’t had the 20 years to see the outcomes yet.

d4mi3n 6y ago
There's also a cruel irony in the fact that addiction has very negative impacts on folk's self esteem. One of the negative cycles in addiction is when someone does become the villain in their own story. It's heart breaking to talk to a loved one suffering from addiction and hearing that they think they deserve to have it due to some self-perceived failing. I really wish the U.S. would get it's act together culturally around how addicts are perceived, treated, and helped.
malandrew 6y ago
Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Perverse unintentional incentives at one more places in the stack are more than sufficient to create the appearance of villainy without any intentional malice. Hanlon's Razor is far more common than people want to admit. In this story, doctors are looking for easy solutions they can prescribe in 5-15 minute appointments so they can see as many patients in a day. Management is looking to increase sales. Account managers are trying to get doctor's to prescribe. The only "villainy" at the board/shareholder level could be as simple as tasking management with finding other legitimate well meaning use cases for opioids. That incentive alone is enough to create pressure all the way down the stack and when people in the stack are presented with the challenge of meeting goals, all of them in concert making small compromises within their role are enough to produce the illusion of villainy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Or perhaps they had involvement, but it was too abstract to register as obviously "villainy" in their conscience. I sometimes quip that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough layers of indirection. Perhaps that's one of those cases.
gooseus 6y ago
I think this is exactly it, the stories we tell ourselves (and each other) about ourselves allow for every kind of justification for any kind of action. It reminds me of studies in confabulation in split-brains: >> Some of the most famous examples of confabulation come "split-brain" patients, whose left and right brain hemispheres have been surgically disconnected for medical treatment. Neuroscientists have devised clever experiments in which information is provided to the right hemisphere (for instance, pictures of naked people), causing a change in behavior (embarrassed giggling). Split-brain individuals are then asked to explain their behavior verbally, which relies on the left hemisphere. Realizing that their body is laughing, but unaware of the nude images, the left hemisphere will confabulate an excuse for the body's behavior ("I keep laughing because you ask such funny questions, Doc!").[1] People are driven by one part of their brain to consume and acquire pleasure/status/money and simultaneously convinced by another part of their brain to believe they are good, deserving, and entitled to everything they enjoy. I see this with all sorts of people who are caught doing something they know is wrong and immediately respond with "well, everyone else does even worse..." or "yeah, but I do X, so it evens out...". [1] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513
iamdbtoo 6y ago
I would also argue that we've noralized the idea that if you achieve massive wealth that is the real success and you shouldn't be held responsible for the bad things you had to do to get there. Most people can't achieve that level of wealth without sacraficing some morality along the way, but when very few of them are held accountable it's just the cost of making billions of dollars.
- devilduck 6y ago
  Another psychological component is that if you don't demonize the ones who have taken the Billions, then maybe you can get some of that too. Maybe like playing the lottery while ignoring the obvious predation of the lottery system
- owenmarshall 6y ago
  No one can accumulate billions without decisions that the average person would describe as clearly immoral.
  - no_wizard 6y ago
    I don’t know if that’s absolutely true. Google was successful simply because they built a better mousetrap in search and selling ads around it. The more shady things I’d argue came much later, from what I can gather about the publicly available information on the company and what it’s been like to work there through the years. I’m actually far more worried about what these people and companies do to maintain their wealth and status. That tends to be where things go much much more sideways and ends up more often than not being very harmful historically
- SantalBlush 6y ago
  There is also the idea that wealth is a reasonable measure of one's contribution to society. This way, any personal wealth that is acquired by legal means is not just morally acceptable, but good for all.
- smichel17 6y ago
  I am not sure if you typo'd "moralized" or "normalized". I think the latter, but it might be good to edit your comment with the intended version (if you see this before the edit period ends).
brandonmenc 6y ago
> more good than harm comes of it I have yet to see any compelling argument that opioids do not provide a net good to society. A cursory glance at the statistics re: opioid abuse suggests that it negatively affects us at about the same level as alcohol, which has absolutely zero therapeutic use.
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  Only if you consider only therapeutic use good.
yread 6y ago
Very true. Also it's difficult to judge whether “more good than harm comes of it”. I mean: I work in cancer research but maybe it would be better for the world if I didn't and somebody smarter would take my place
digitaltrees 6y ago
This sounds true until you hear the Sackler family speak, after that it’s clear they fundamentally detest other people and don’t care about the harm they cause. They wanted money that’s where the analysis stops.

klyrs 6y ago

Top article right now is about ants decorating their homes with the heads of their enemies. Plenty of fun speculation about "human nature" there.

shadykiller 6y ago

Reminds of this podcast below which sheds light on the theory of cognitive dissonance. About how people justify their actions to reduce cognitive dissonance - basically sleep at night. Link: https://peterattiamd.com/caroltavris-elliotaronson/ https://peterattiamd.com/caroltavris-elliotaronson/

HowFarFallen 6y ago

There is some Talmudic justification for this kind of behaviour, which contributes to the relatively high exhibition of these traits among those who practice Judaism or whose environment is heavily influenced by that culture (the Sacklers are indeed Jewish)[see below]. The Talmud teaches us quite explicitly that non-Jews may be treated as we may treat cattle - they are ours to exploit in pursuit of our own security and prosperity. There is little that is not justifiable so long as it serves that goal. In fact, more concern is afforded in the Talmud to the interests of other Jews who may be harmed by conflicting exploitation of goyim, than to the subjects themselves. Of course this is taboo in the extreme by the standards of modern Western society, and of course I have no idea of the Sacklers' private convictions, but just as some may use their Bible as justification for their homophobia or the Koran for justification of their misogyny, some may well use the Talmud as justification for xenophobic sadism and exploitation - which includes the deceptive popularisation of opioids for extraordinary profits in spite of (or because of) the physical, spiritual and financial suffering of others. [Some quotes for the uninitiated] "An orthodox Jew is not bound to observe principles of morality towards people of other tribes. He may act contrary to morality, if profitable to himself or to Jews in general." Zohar, Vayshlah 177b "On the house of the Goy one looks as on the fold of cattle." Mas. Shabbath 31b "The non-Jew is consequently an animal in human form, and condemned to serve the Jew day and night." Zohar, Shemoth, Toldoth Noah, Lekh-Lekha Sanhedrin 58b provides that Jews may not be held responsible for the deaths of non-Jews.

loxs 6y ago

Chances are, almost everyone, including me and you will act exactly the same given the right circumstances. At this point I don't even think of it as something "bad". It's just the way it is. Edit: proof... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

sneak 6y ago

I think a lot of it is perhaps fundamental attribution error, which is ridiculously common in people. I actually tend toward the idea that people that manufacture and sell potentially harmful, but inanimate things are in no way responsible for their final use (or misuse). They're not forcing anyone to take these drugs, nor is the prescriber, nor is the pharmacist, nor is the truck driver who drove it to the corner store. That said, I also recognize that while the person who put the opiates into a human body is the ultimately 100% responsible party for any harm caused by those opiates, the fact remains that many people would choose such self-harm in various circumstances (such as massively addictive drugs being prescribed by their doctor), and that we must consider the effects of circumstances on people and their decisionmaking. Treating people as sheep that are entirely dependent upon their circumstances to determine whether or not they make good (in your and my view) choices is the wrong move, however. Ultimately though, it's simply not the fault of the manufacturer or vendor if adults misuse their products. There seems to be a lot of support for ending the drug war in the United States. (I'm one of those people.) If that happens, opiate addiction seems to become much more likely, as opiates will be cheaper, safer, and more plentiful/available. I guess I'm just not sure where the outrage at this manufacturer comes from, given the disaster that the drug war's been. What they're doing is (mostly) legal, and the parts that they're trying to hang criminal charges on shouldn't be crimes.

Klinky 6y ago
You certainly should be liable if your product is highly dangerous and addictive, and you've purposefully created an environment that incentivizes over proscribing of your dangerous addictive product. If you actively encourage the misuse, you are the problem. You could make similar arguments against Wells Fargo account fraud or Boeing 737 MAX. Both involve executives creating environments that resulted in abuse or "misuse" by employees or customers. Did these policies cause harm? Were there safeguards in place to reduce abuse/misuse, or were those ignored because they would have stopped the gravy train?
ves 6y ago
> I actually tend toward the idea that people that manufacture and sell potentially harmful, but inanimate things are in no way responsible for their final use (or misuse). They're not forcing anyone to take these drugs, nor is the prescriber, nor is the pharmacist, nor is the truck driver who drove it to the corner store. This might be admissible in the case of the sacklers if all they did was create the drug and make it available, but they did much more than that: they marketed opiates heavily, they aggressively downplayed the negative affects, and they incentivized doctors to prescribe (which of course apportions some of the blame to the doctors as well). And even the prescribing doctors share in the blame through their deliberate actions: first, when a doctor prescribes opiates, they’re not prescribing some other treatment, but you (the patient) still have the issue, so you can’t really not take the opiates, ie forego treatment, especially since you’re also out the money and using up your insurance (if you even have that!); second, not behaving in line with your doctor’s wishes can have its own set of consequences, ranging from ticking your doctor off (which is bad, since you need them to help you with your condition, and finding new doctors takes time and money, and you’re ill all the while) to getting sent to the psychiatrist. So much to say, I think this attitude is incorrect in the case of the Sacklers, as it doesn’t comport with the evidence, and in the general case it’s naive.

ramraj07 6y ago

The fundamental flaw in human nature is the universality of the thought "I'm a nice person, I'll never do what they did!" Yet, few of us forego our comforts and vacations when that could measurably help many with basic life necessities. If you contribute 20% of your salary to charity, you're already in the significant minority, leave alone higher ratios. Many here work in facebook, or Palantir, and find ways to justify how it's not that bad a company. Other tech companies too, but the point is made more clearly with these examples. On a far simpler example, a few years back, most everyone in this forum probably used to pirate movies. Whatever Robinhood justification we all used, in the end we broke the law. Probably because we thought it didn't matter, that we somehow deserved what we took, and that we won't caught. That's the first rung in the ladder that after a very large number of steps leads to where this family has ended. If you were ready to break a small law to just watch a movie, is it that unfathomable that these people will do dastardlier things to keep billions?

snarf21 6y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
danans 6y ago
> Yet, few of us forego our comforts and vacations when that could measurably help many with basic life necessities. Paying for those comforts helps pay for the basic life necessities of those who provide the comforts. > If you contribute 20% of your salary to charity, you're already in the significant minority, leave alone higher ratios. Few common workers can afford to contribute 20% to charity without living paycheck to paycheck. This is what progressive taxation is for. The marginal utility of money for funding the basics of life diminishes as you move into the .1% of the income/wealth distribution, which is the argument for taxing those people more. The marginal utility for political power, however scales up with wealth, which is an even more compelling argument for strongly progressive taxation.

bluthru 6y ago

“The launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white,” -Richard Sackler Blizzards are always white, so why did he say it? Jewish supremacists like the Sacklers hate white people.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hnracer 6y ago

They are protecting their property from theft by force by the state. They view themselves as the moral owners of that earned private property, and the state as the thug hired by the masses which is attempting literal theft (in the moral, not legal sense) at figurative gunpoint (don't obey - go to prison). They view their wealth as the fruits of value adding voluntary exchanges that is theirs and only theirs to reap, distribute, horde, burn, spend, etc. That is the libertarian philosophy that undergirds these kind of actions.

ves 6y ago
This comment is obviously not an endorsement of these beliefs, for the down voters.
- hnracer 6y ago
  I am a libertarian although you're right that that comment wasn't supposed to be an endorsement, just an explanation of the mindset of its more stringent adherents

rebuilder 6y ago

I think hardly anyone is able to really face the suffering our normal daily lives cause, to humans and animals, now and in the future. It's too much and the implications, if we were to face them, are too radical. So we tend to look at the effect we have on the people close to us and call it good. Now imagine you're a billionaire, and your behaviour is like this. Won't you look like a monster, because of how distanced you are from most people, and the extent of your influence?

snarf21 6y ago

The Sacklers should definitely be in jail. But everyone in the value chain is culpable. Why did insurance pay for these for almost anyone? Why did doctors prescribe it so liberally? What about the med reps that (until recently) basically all but bribed doctors to push their new drugs? What about the FDA and monitoring the quantity and velocity of these prescriptions? It used to be that, outside of the hospital, people only got morphine at end of life. What did we think would happen when we started handling them out like Skittles?

Supermancho 6y ago
> What about the FDA and monitoring the quantity and velocity of these prescriptions? Why would you think it should? It had to have a warning as a schedule 2, nothing more. The hindsight that the FDA should have monitored it or that it should have been classified higher, was the responsibility of the universally corrupt idiots that are elected to the US Congress.

LatteLazy 6y ago

What they're doing is no different to what other people do. They're just doing it by in billions of dollars instead of thousands. Every day, people take the easy choice, they go for the quick buck, they ignore inconvenient evidence of problems they don't want to admit, they maximise their own returns and minimise their risks, they justify and minimise their own failings. The issue here isn't that these people were people. The issue is that they were left unsupervisored and simply "trusted" to get on with it.