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How exactly do you get rid of 3M? They make so many chemicals necessary for modern consumer products that they are an irrevocable part of the global economy. Th

How exactly do you get rid of 3M? They make so many chemicals necessary for modern consumer products that they are an irrevocable part of the global economy. There is no substitute for 3M. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually supply Intel, AMD, and other high-tech companies with chemicals necessary for photo-lithography. This is before we even get to what they supply to the military-industrial complex. Even if they don't make the end products I am certain they produce the necessary chemical precursors for so many industries that there would be no way to do anything about whatever crimes they have committed against nature. It doesn't matter how much people complain about these companies. Their existence is a necessary evil because of how the global economy is structured.

nijave 3y ago
Government acquisition, divestiture, and all IP entering the public domain? Or even just forcing them to break up into more, smaller companies.
- ThomPete 3y ago
  you live in a capitalist society not some socialist nightmare. Giving it to the government would be much much much worse.
  - jmaygarden 3y ago
    They didn’t say to let the government run it. Make the patents/trade secrets public domain and sell off the physical assets in open auctions. Someone would buy up the profitable manufacturing lines that aren’t known to be as harmful.
    - ThomPete 3y ago
      What would that help? 3M create way more value than not.
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    except we live in a capitalistic nightmare, the solution proposed is textbook free market and socialism would have not created this nightmare to begin with. people on HN regularly confuse state capitalism with socialism and I can't wrap my head around on why. the two systems couldn't be more different and actually the USSR was not socialist, Stalin was not socialist, that's the biggest fabrication in modern human history. Wanna find what socialism actually looks like? Look at the kibbutzim in Israel.
    - ThomPete 3y ago
      I would suggest you read up on the history of both communism and socialism and their relationship with pollution and their environment. In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to get businesses to create better systems over time, that doesn't exist in any other system.
      - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
        > their relationship with pollution and their environment turns out they had a pretty marginal role in it, compared to the grand total, except maybe the first generation of nuclear weapons USSR produced, that were sealed off and very hard, if not impossible, to defuse. Anyway communism and socialism are not exactly the same thing, you can't put them together in the same basket and can't generalize. Communism in Italy was not the same as communism in Cuba which was not the same as communism in East Germany which was not the same as communism in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Congo etc > In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to get businesses to create better systems over time I would gladly see some proof that one does produce the incentive (and the incentive produces a radical change for the better) while the other doesn't. My opinion is that socialism does not scale too well when the community becomes too big, but capitalism produces inherently more distortions and inequalities that need to be addressed in a never ending vice cycle of crisis that hit hard the poor and virtually spares the wealthy. Anyway my comment was more on the line of "socialism is not what people usually think it is or associate it with in the USA (or the west)" America called it a socialist system because it wanted to defame and demonize socialism. The Soviet Union called their government socialist because that was a popular and celebrated term in Europe, despite totalitarian control having nothing to do with true, democratic socialism (where workers are also the owners and have democratic control over their workplace and government). As Noam Chomsky pointed out, it was state capitalism run by a fascist regime, fascists that when they ruled non so-caledd socialist countries, the west, but I should more correctly say the USA and the UK, admired because in their view (and the propaganda) they defeated socialism and communism. In truth the people of the Soviet Union had no control over the means of production or control over their lives and were essentially slaves. It would be the same as if Stalin came to power in America, created a fascist police state, used coercive force to protect criminal banks, evicted people unjustly from their homes, suppressed protests and broke up unions, then lavished massive subsidies on big companies, gave tax breaks to the rich, allowed large corporations to pay nothing in taxes while cutting programs to help the poor, rigged all their elections with the aid of corporate media, and then proudly called this a "free-market capitalist and democratic system that represents the will of the people." In other words, just because politicians often appropriate popular words for their own twisted means, that doesn't make what they say true. To me, an Italian that looks at the American politics from afar, sounds not dissimilar to Trump's manifesto and some parts not too far from what we associate the USA with here, today.
rocqua 3y ago
Split it up, and disown the ultimate beneficiaries? You don't need every single 3M factory to make those chemicals. So make a new company that only makes these chemicals.

nijave 3y ago

Government acquisition, divestiture, and all IP entering the public domain? Or even just forcing them to break up into more, smaller companies.

ThomPete 3y ago
you live in a capitalist society not some socialist nightmare. Giving it to the government would be much much much worse.
- jmaygarden 3y ago
  They didn’t say to let the government run it. Make the patents/trade secrets public domain and sell off the physical assets in open auctions. Someone would buy up the profitable manufacturing lines that aren’t known to be as harmful.
  - ThomPete 3y ago
    What would that help? 3M create way more value than not.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  except we live in a capitalistic nightmare, the solution proposed is textbook free market and socialism would have not created this nightmare to begin with. people on HN regularly confuse state capitalism with socialism and I can't wrap my head around on why. the two systems couldn't be more different and actually the USSR was not socialist, Stalin was not socialist, that's the biggest fabrication in modern human history. Wanna find what socialism actually looks like? Look at the kibbutzim in Israel.
  - ThomPete 3y ago
    I would suggest you read up on the history of both communism and socialism and their relationship with pollution and their environment. In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to get businesses to create better systems over time, that doesn't exist in any other system.
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > their relationship with pollution and their environment turns out they had a pretty marginal role in it, compared to the grand total, except maybe the first generation of nuclear weapons USSR produced, that were sealed off and very hard, if not impossible, to defuse. Anyway communism and socialism are not exactly the same thing, you can't put them together in the same basket and can't generalize. Communism in Italy was not the same as communism in Cuba which was not the same as communism in East Germany which was not the same as communism in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Congo etc > In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to get businesses to create better systems over time I would gladly see some proof that one does produce the incentive (and the incentive produces a radical change for the better) while the other doesn't. My opinion is that socialism does not scale too well when the community becomes too big, but capitalism produces inherently more distortions and inequalities that need to be addressed in a never ending vice cycle of crisis that hit hard the poor and virtually spares the wealthy. Anyway my comment was more on the line of "socialism is not what people usually think it is or associate it with in the USA (or the west)" America called it a socialist system because it wanted to defame and demonize socialism. The Soviet Union called their government socialist because that was a popular and celebrated term in Europe, despite totalitarian control having nothing to do with true, democratic socialism (where workers are also the owners and have democratic control over their workplace and government). As Noam Chomsky pointed out, it was state capitalism run by a fascist regime, fascists that when they ruled non so-caledd socialist countries, the west, but I should more correctly say the USA and the UK, admired because in their view (and the propaganda) they defeated socialism and communism. In truth the people of the Soviet Union had no control over the means of production or control over their lives and were essentially slaves. It would be the same as if Stalin came to power in America, created a fascist police state, used coercive force to protect criminal banks, evicted people unjustly from their homes, suppressed protests and broke up unions, then lavished massive subsidies on big companies, gave tax breaks to the rich, allowed large corporations to pay nothing in taxes while cutting programs to help the poor, rigged all their elections with the aid of corporate media, and then proudly called this a "free-market capitalist and democratic system that represents the will of the people." In other words, just because politicians often appropriate popular words for their own twisted means, that doesn't make what they say true. To me, an Italian that looks at the American politics from afar, sounds not dissimilar to Trump's manifesto and some parts not too far from what we associate the USA with here, today.

rocqua 3y ago

Split it up, and disown the ultimate beneficiaries? You don't need every single 3M factory to make those chemicals. So make a new company that only makes these chemicals.