Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge por

Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge portion of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated slaughter do put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios and social networks employ psychologists to most effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news is a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above is largely true. The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there are reasonable people too. The more important point, which the comment misses, is that nobody is really in charge. Yes, there are "smoke-filled rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too large and complex for complete centralized control. The dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions), and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous, evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has its own autonomy. This is Moloch, and it doesn't even require active malice on any particular person's part. Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we are surrounded by them. We are in them.