6 ms·

Maybe, say maybe let us get forward some legislation, adding criminal liability to the executives ignoring such things, explicitly. Because if Purdue taught an

Maybe, say maybe let us get forward some legislation, adding criminal liability to the executives ignoring such things, explicitly. Because if Purdue taught anything to the U.S. is that their voters do not care. We should prove them wrong I suggest. (Related to the events.) If you think your vote doesn't count: congratulations, the entities you complain about convinced you wrong, and are doing their job. Demonstrate, create groups and demand things from your representative, pick someone from the group you have to run against your representative. There is no democracy otherwise. Time we start caring. These might be called rights on each constitution, but that is a misnomer: they are jobs each citizen needs to do. Sorry, but that is the truth in the end. Disclaimer: Above message is for the residents of every democratic country.

arsome 3y ago
Who the hell has time or mental capacity to do any of that when you're just trying to scrape by or make it to the end of the day though?
- eftychis 3y ago
  The rich: that is why (one of the whys) their votes matter.
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  The answer actually quite simple. Stop using things made mega corporations. It’s probably include many of the companies you’re currently working for. Note I said that it was simple, not easy.
  - eftychis 3y ago
    Agreed. Of course it is not easy. It is a job. But it is worth it.
  - CelticBard 3y ago
    Do you have any tips for us plebs?
    - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
      I would look into Buddhism in Daoism since they talk a lot about attachment and desire, where it comes from, and how to overcome it. But the reversal of consunerism has to be important enough to you to overcome the pleasurable sensation you get from using these products.
      - CelticBard 3y ago
        I meant practical advice about how avoid megacorporations, not philosophy
        quickthrower2 3y ago
        Well less consumption means less money to megacorps. You could also cancel your prime account and walk to the local shops etc.
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        I think we are all more monkey brained than that and having these products thrust upon us makes us susceptible. It is another push the blame on the individual thing like carbon footprint or identity theft.
- tru3_power 3y ago
  Or where to even start? What are you going to do? Write a letter? Protest? What does that even get you. Seems big $ is all that works.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  1a. Plenty of people, especially on this website, are not just scraping by. 1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scraping by because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, and could easily have complete financial security by consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation. 2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- before you can work on making the world better. So there are some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path.
  - ragestorm 3y ago
    1c. Plenty of people are poor without life choices. The trap of being poor is real.
    - ajkjk 3y ago
      Oh, yes, definitely; I said "plenty of people" to try to intentionally indicate that I know it's not all of them. Regardless, out of all the forums you could wander into on the internet, this is probably one of the ones with the most rich people reading it. I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.
      - ragestorm 3y ago
        Ah I misinterpreted. Indeed. I think we can safely assume vast majority of users of this forum don't fall into the 'poor trap' category but rather what you described if in fact they are living paycheck to paycheck.
  - wfhBrian 3y ago
    Re 1a. This is why I'm constantly discouraged by the lack of useful political discourse here on HN. If a well-payed anf well-educated group can't manage it, then who will?
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Hey it's almost as though we should delegate the responsibility of drafting and passing reasonable protective legislation that benefits the common good to someone else. Someone we choose by voting perhaps.
- 6510 3y ago
  Those who do have the time could spend it making life harder for those who try to scrape by, or prevent them from making it to the end of the day. I don't have to like it but it seems that is what the answer would look like. In a way people are allowed to just barely sustain themselves because they are so annoying when they cant.
- notquitehuman 3y ago
  Most people don’t. They just go on with their lives until they hit their breaking point or die. Occasionally they lash out at people with actual power, but they usually just kill children and people buying lettuce.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  Millions of people do it every day and their efforts often bear fruit, so a lot of people do! This feels like a very cynical, hand wavy response. Despite the fact that HN is full of exactly the kind of people with the time and energy to do this. I would urge you to take a step back and think about how we can help with this stuff as opposed to dissuading folks.
- travisporter 3y ago
  There’s meaning in everything you do.
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Prison for the execs, fines for the shareholders.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  This is the only thing that will work. Limited (liability) corporations are a moral disaster, with no democratic or moral accountability. Beyond a certain size they can start to pull the strings of democracy in very unhealthy and distorting ways - including "sponsorship" of lawmakers, policy lobbying, and campaigns of outright disinformation at all levels of media. If I shoot someone in the face I will go to prison and may well face the death penalty. If a corporation causes mass misery - death, disability, decades of lost life, economic decay, the corruption and subversion of democracy - it will very likely get off with no sanctions at all. If there are fines, they'll be token. Only the most egregious cases get more severe fines - uncomfortable, but not usually life-changing. Criminal charges are only likely if there's fraud that directly affects shareholders. It's almost as if the lives of ordinary people are complete disposable. Aside from prison and fines, there should be a corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, they should be held accountable in the same ways people are.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Limited liability corporations have been an enormous success and have tremendously improved our standards of living. Limits on liability allow me to safely invest in companies that build innovative products and create jobs while capping the potential downside. Sure, there are occasional situations where injured parties can't be made whole but that is an acceptable trade off for the benefits to society as a whole.
    - FpUser 3y ago
      >"but that is an acceptable trade off " Says who? The shareholders?
    - crote 3y ago
      Have they, though? Large LLCs seem to be responsible for a significant amount of worker exploitation, deliberate poisoning of consumers, and environmental pollution in general. From an economic perspective they are of course successful, because they provide great shareholder value. It's a classic "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" scenario: once you get caught doing something really bad, you just go bankrupt and let the government pay for the fallout! There is literally no reason not to - at worst your shares lose their value and you've been able to extract a healthy amount of dividend from the company. Historically many companies have been able to provide great innovations under private ownership, and I see no reason to believe that the concept of an LLC is in any way a prerequisite for improving our standards of living. They have only been around for a relatively short amount of time (especially the kind where nobody is responsible) and we've been doing quite well before that. So tell me, what is this magical benefit for society we can only achieve via LLCs which outweighs all the damage they are doing? How did Big Tobacco improve our standards of living in such a way that they should be absolved of all responsibility for knowingly poisoning their customers?
slashdev 3y ago
People care to such a small extent that most don’t even bother to vote. Good luck running a healthy democracy like that. The reality is, most people are very focused on their own problems. Complaining is free, but doing something about it is not.
- myshpa 3y ago
  Let's not pretend that in the end money doesn't dictate rules regardless of who's momentarily in the office. The laws and regulations already in place are there for a reason. Not something that could be easily changed with a new administration. The system is made by generations to persist, whatever happens.
  - slashdev 3y ago
    So change it. Drain the swamp for real.
    - ratsmack 3y ago
      And just to be clear, the swamp has no party affiliation.
- nwiswell 3y ago
  > People care to such a small extent that most don’t even bother to vote. That isn't supported by the facts: > Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them submitted ballots, totaling about 158 million. In any case, it's true that the US has lower levels of voter turnout than other Western democracies, but it's unclear how to partition the reasons (less engagement/less caring? less notion of civil duty? less ability to get to the polls, including unfriendly work laws and voter suppression?) The bottom line is that "most" eligible voters in the US DO care about something... but I'd suggest that the problem is that people care way too much about specific things that don't matter very much. If all the calories go into the hot button issues, then everything else is starved of oxygen. Our problem is perhaps one of too much emotional engagement.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Because if Purdue taught anything to the U.S. is that their voters do not care. Voters don't care because news orgs don't care (in a meaningful way). Lobbyists writing law isn't as sexy to editors as sportsball, celebs or missing pretty white girls.
- myshpa 3y ago
  News don't care because news are owned by businessmen. We don't have (almost any) independent news anymore.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > News don't care because news are owned by businessmen. I think that could explain why David Petraeus is a valued commentator after the sort of espionage that sends people to jail. I don't think it explains why journalists quote serially-lying IC agency dirs verbatim, as if they were a trustworthy source. I don't think that's corporate micromanaging. I think it's industry incompetence. It's as if they're unable to suss out the core duty implied by their extra 1A protections - to hold the powerful accountable. It's no better at the local level. Reporters consistently parrot LEO spokesbot claims without even doing a 15 second Google search that would disprove cop nonsense. I don't think the local desk is being strongarmed by overlords. I think they're being inept. That said, in the case of Sinclair media - you'd be right. That local news is directly shaped thru corporate overlording. But there, corporate is dictating the story and providing the reporter scripting. That's a different animal than what I'm referring to.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      I don't follow US media that closely. But it surely may be both ... incompetence and corporate interests. This is just one example of many (I've seen others in John Oliver's Last Week Tonight): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is controlled by just 5 companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States#The_.22Big_Six.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
simple-thoughts 3y ago
I’m not an expert in political theory nor in practice. I also have no particular interest in politics. My only concern is that my jurisdiction allows me to conduct my private business in peace. Asking people like us to do these things is ridiculous. More likely than not, we would protest for the wrong things in the wrong way and make things worse. Politics is a complex field and should be taken care of by experts.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Read up on 'institutional capture'.
  - simple-thoughts 3y ago
    Why? I just told you I have no particular interest in politics…
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Because it explains why your approach is inherently flawed. If you had no interest, you wouldn't have bothered to comment. Instead you're advocating for ignorance. Whether or not you bother to read up on it, someone else might find it helpful and avoid foolish mistakes based on your bad advice.
Alex3917 3y ago
> let us get forward some legislation, adding criminal liability to the executives ignoring such things IIRC there is government legislation that effectively mandates that tobacco companies add polonium to tobacco. Something to do with the fertilizer sticking to the trichromes on the leaves.

arsome 3y ago

Who the hell has time or mental capacity to do any of that when you're just trying to scrape by or make it to the end of the day though?

eftychis 3y ago
The rich: that is why (one of the whys) their votes matter.
FollowingTheDao 3y ago
The answer actually quite simple. Stop using things made mega corporations. It’s probably include many of the companies you’re currently working for. Note I said that it was simple, not easy.
- eftychis 3y ago
  Agreed. Of course it is not easy. It is a job. But it is worth it.
- CelticBard 3y ago
  Do you have any tips for us plebs?
  - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    I would look into Buddhism in Daoism since they talk a lot about attachment and desire, where it comes from, and how to overcome it. But the reversal of consunerism has to be important enough to you to overcome the pleasurable sensation you get from using these products.
    - CelticBard 3y ago
      I meant practical advice about how avoid megacorporations, not philosophy
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        Well less consumption means less money to megacorps. You could also cancel your prime account and walk to the local shops etc.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      I think we are all more monkey brained than that and having these products thrust upon us makes us susceptible. It is another push the blame on the individual thing like carbon footprint or identity theft.
tru3_power 3y ago
Or where to even start? What are you going to do? Write a letter? Protest? What does that even get you. Seems big $ is all that works.
ajkjk 3y ago
1a. Plenty of people, especially on this website, are not just scraping by. 1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scraping by because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, and could easily have complete financial security by consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation. 2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- before you can work on making the world better. So there are some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path.
- ragestorm 3y ago
  1c. Plenty of people are poor without life choices. The trap of being poor is real.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    Oh, yes, definitely; I said "plenty of people" to try to intentionally indicate that I know it's not all of them. Regardless, out of all the forums you could wander into on the internet, this is probably one of the ones with the most rich people reading it. I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.
    - ragestorm 3y ago
      Ah I misinterpreted. Indeed. I think we can safely assume vast majority of users of this forum don't fall into the 'poor trap' category but rather what you described if in fact they are living paycheck to paycheck.
- wfhBrian 3y ago
  Re 1a. This is why I'm constantly discouraged by the lack of useful political discourse here on HN. If a well-payed anf well-educated group can't manage it, then who will?
jvanderbot 3y ago
Hey it's almost as though we should delegate the responsibility of drafting and passing reasonable protective legislation that benefits the common good to someone else. Someone we choose by voting perhaps.
6510 3y ago
Those who do have the time could spend it making life harder for those who try to scrape by, or prevent them from making it to the end of the day. I don't have to like it but it seems that is what the answer would look like. In a way people are allowed to just barely sustain themselves because they are so annoying when they cant.
notquitehuman 3y ago
Most people don’t. They just go on with their lives until they hit their breaking point or die. Occasionally they lash out at people with actual power, but they usually just kill children and people buying lettuce.
Forgeties79 3y ago
Millions of people do it every day and their efforts often bear fruit, so a lot of people do! This feels like a very cynical, hand wavy response. Despite the fact that HN is full of exactly the kind of people with the time and energy to do this. I would urge you to take a step back and think about how we can help with this stuff as opposed to dissuading folks.
travisporter 3y ago
There’s meaning in everything you do.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

Prison for the execs, fines for the shareholders.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
This is the only thing that will work. Limited (liability) corporations are a moral disaster, with no democratic or moral accountability. Beyond a certain size they can start to pull the strings of democracy in very unhealthy and distorting ways - including "sponsorship" of lawmakers, policy lobbying, and campaigns of outright disinformation at all levels of media. If I shoot someone in the face I will go to prison and may well face the death penalty. If a corporation causes mass misery - death, disability, decades of lost life, economic decay, the corruption and subversion of democracy - it will very likely get off with no sanctions at all. If there are fines, they'll be token. Only the most egregious cases get more severe fines - uncomfortable, but not usually life-changing. Criminal charges are only likely if there's fraud that directly affects shareholders. It's almost as if the lives of ordinary people are complete disposable. Aside from prison and fines, there should be a corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, they should be held accountable in the same ways people are.
- nradov 3y ago
  Limited liability corporations have been an enormous success and have tremendously improved our standards of living. Limits on liability allow me to safely invest in companies that build innovative products and create jobs while capping the potential downside. Sure, there are occasional situations where injured parties can't be made whole but that is an acceptable trade off for the benefits to society as a whole.
  - FpUser 3y ago
    >"but that is an acceptable trade off " Says who? The shareholders?
  - crote 3y ago
    Have they, though? Large LLCs seem to be responsible for a significant amount of worker exploitation, deliberate poisoning of consumers, and environmental pollution in general. From an economic perspective they are of course successful, because they provide great shareholder value. It's a classic "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" scenario: once you get caught doing something really bad, you just go bankrupt and let the government pay for the fallout! There is literally no reason not to - at worst your shares lose their value and you've been able to extract a healthy amount of dividend from the company. Historically many companies have been able to provide great innovations under private ownership, and I see no reason to believe that the concept of an LLC is in any way a prerequisite for improving our standards of living. They have only been around for a relatively short amount of time (especially the kind where nobody is responsible) and we've been doing quite well before that. So tell me, what is this magical benefit for society we can only achieve via LLCs which outweighs all the damage they are doing? How did Big Tobacco improve our standards of living in such a way that they should be absolved of all responsibility for knowingly poisoning their customers?

slashdev 3y ago

People care to such a small extent that most don’t even bother to vote. Good luck running a healthy democracy like that. The reality is, most people are very focused on their own problems. Complaining is free, but doing something about it is not.

myshpa 3y ago
Let's not pretend that in the end money doesn't dictate rules regardless of who's momentarily in the office. The laws and regulations already in place are there for a reason. Not something that could be easily changed with a new administration. The system is made by generations to persist, whatever happens.
- slashdev 3y ago
  So change it. Drain the swamp for real.
  - ratsmack 3y ago
    And just to be clear, the swamp has no party affiliation.
nwiswell 3y ago
> People care to such a small extent that most don’t even bother to vote. That isn't supported by the facts: > Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them submitted ballots, totaling about 158 million. In any case, it's true that the US has lower levels of voter turnout than other Western democracies, but it's unclear how to partition the reasons (less engagement/less caring? less notion of civil duty? less ability to get to the polls, including unfriendly work laws and voter suppression?) The bottom line is that "most" eligible voters in the US DO care about something... but I'd suggest that the problem is that people care way too much about specific things that don't matter very much. If all the calories go into the hot button issues, then everything else is starved of oxygen. Our problem is perhaps one of too much emotional engagement.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> Because if Purdue taught anything to the U.S. is that their voters do not care. Voters don't care because news orgs don't care (in a meaningful way). Lobbyists writing law isn't as sexy to editors as sportsball, celebs or missing pretty white girls.

myshpa 3y ago
News don't care because news are owned by businessmen. We don't have (almost any) independent news anymore.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > News don't care because news are owned by businessmen. I think that could explain why David Petraeus is a valued commentator after the sort of espionage that sends people to jail. I don't think it explains why journalists quote serially-lying IC agency dirs verbatim, as if they were a trustworthy source. I don't think that's corporate micromanaging. I think it's industry incompetence. It's as if they're unable to suss out the core duty implied by their extra 1A protections - to hold the powerful accountable. It's no better at the local level. Reporters consistently parrot LEO spokesbot claims without even doing a 15 second Google search that would disprove cop nonsense. I don't think the local desk is being strongarmed by overlords. I think they're being inept. That said, in the case of Sinclair media - you'd be right. That local news is directly shaped thru corporate overlording. But there, corporate is dictating the story and providing the reporter scripting. That's a different animal than what I'm referring to.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    I don't follow US media that closely. But it surely may be both ... incompetence and corporate interests. This is just one example of many (I've seen others in John Oliver's Last Week Tonight): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is controlled by just 5 companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States#The_.22Big_Six.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

simple-thoughts 3y ago

I’m not an expert in political theory nor in practice. I also have no particular interest in politics. My only concern is that my jurisdiction allows me to conduct my private business in peace. Asking people like us to do these things is ridiculous. More likely than not, we would protest for the wrong things in the wrong way and make things worse. Politics is a complex field and should be taken care of by experts.

anigbrowl 3y ago
Read up on 'institutional capture'.
- simple-thoughts 3y ago
  Why? I just told you I have no particular interest in politics…
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Because it explains why your approach is inherently flawed. If you had no interest, you wouldn't have bothered to comment. Instead you're advocating for ignorance. Whether or not you bother to read up on it, someone else might find it helpful and avoid foolish mistakes based on your bad advice.

Alex3917 3y ago

> let us get forward some legislation, adding criminal liability to the executives ignoring such things IIRC there is government legislation that effectively mandates that tobacco companies add polonium to tobacco. Something to do with the fertilizer sticking to the trichromes on the leaves.