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There's only one US Government and we know it did fairly bad things. There are many private entities, although often not benevolent, most still have space for

There's only one US Government and we know it did fairly bad things. There are many private entities, although often not benevolent, most still have space for the benefit of doubt. OpenAI, DeepMind or Anthropic haven't done anything that compares to, say, MKUltra or lying about Iraqi WMDs to start decade long wars.

dahart 3y ago
This is kind-of making the parent’s point. There are lots of private companies that have done very bad things, too many to even count, as bad as your examples and worse. And there are thousands upon thousands of sub-organizations of the US government, some of which do very good things and are definitely benevolent, because there is no built-in profit motive. Private companies almost cannot be benevolent and survive, by definition. There is no line between government and corporations. These are all groups of people, and some people do bad things. The only way to prevent bad things is to do them in the open and have oversight, and that’s more likely to happen in the government than in private companies, maybe.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >There are lots of private companies that have done very bad things, too many to even count, as bad as your examples and worse Absolutely not; there's no private company that's shot and bombed the life out of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in cold blood.
  - dahart 3y ago
    Of course there are private companies that have committed atrocities and attempted genocide. You haven’t taken any history classes? Your statement is false. The history of private corporate atrocities is hundreds, if not thousands of years old [1]. I don’t know what you’re referring to specifically, but a lot of what you attribute to the government is done by or with private military contractors and private weapons suppliers. Not to mention that wars in general are often driven by economic interests, fueled, justified, and supplied by private corporations. In my comment above, I also had in mind industrial and environmental damage, unintentional death by private interests, environmental accidents and disasters, and coverups, which we can’t even count but the WHO estimates is in the tens of millions per year globally, today. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214112224.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214112224.pdf

dahart 3y ago

This is kind-of making the parent’s point. There are lots of private companies that have done very bad things, too many to even count, as bad as your examples and worse. And there are thousands upon thousands of sub-organizations of the US government, some of which do very good things and are definitely benevolent, because there is no built-in profit motive. Private companies almost cannot be benevolent and survive, by definition. There is no line between government and corporations. These are all groups of people, and some people do bad things. The only way to prevent bad things is to do them in the open and have oversight, and that’s more likely to happen in the government than in private companies, maybe.

logicchains 3y ago
>There are lots of private companies that have done very bad things, too many to even count, as bad as your examples and worse Absolutely not; there's no private company that's shot and bombed the life out of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in cold blood.
- dahart 3y ago
  Of course there are private companies that have committed atrocities and attempted genocide. You haven’t taken any history classes? Your statement is false. The history of private corporate atrocities is hundreds, if not thousands of years old [1]. I don’t know what you’re referring to specifically, but a lot of what you attribute to the government is done by or with private military contractors and private weapons suppliers. Not to mention that wars in general are often driven by economic interests, fueled, justified, and supplied by private corporations. In my comment above, I also had in mind industrial and environmental damage, unintentional death by private interests, environmental accidents and disasters, and coverups, which we can’t even count but the WHO estimates is in the tens of millions per year globally, today. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214112224.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214112224.pdf