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"There are big players that deliberately created many of those problems" Could you specify which ones? I'm curious who's profiting from hunger, poverty, econom

by 0thgen 3y ago

"There are big players that deliberately created many of those problems" Could you specify which ones? I'm curious who's profiting from hunger, poverty, economic instability, and unemployment -- and thereby perpetuating it (sounds like major speculation). Maybe war gets propagated by nations military industries (though that's probably only sometimes true). The remaining problems listed (environmental damage, drug addiction, chronic disease) seems like second order consequences of other pursuits, not problems perpetuated for their own sake. Whether they're first or second order consequences might seem like a semantics debate, but it's what distinguishes your model (problems are deliberate) from Donella Meadows model (externalities, collective action, structural issues, etc). And both models suggest very different solutions (police bad actors versus change structures/incentives)

southerntofu 3y ago
I'm gonna play the devil's advocate, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Like some other commenter noted, the "shock doctrine" for example is a very widely documented/theorized phenomenon and not a conspiracy theory. > hunger There's a huge agro-food industry that profits from hunger. Its profits depend on subsistence farming being impossible or illegal so that's what they do: outlaw peasant seeds (like in France), buy all land from the owners until the population can't feed itself and needs the supermarket to survive, arrange for economic structures that allow for massive foreign subsidies (eg. EU CAP) to compete with the few local farmers left... > poverty, economic instability, and unemployment Temp work is another major industry that can only flourish when better employment conditions are not available to the workers. For those who don't find work and/or caught in the judicial system for some reason, the prison industrial complex will make profit on their incarceration. Once incarcerated, some companies will employ prisoners without working rights and protections in quasi-slavery conditions, making a ton more money than if they needed proper salaries and safety conditions. To give an example, here in France prison labor is usually < 1€/hour compared to ~10€/hour minimum wage. > drug addiction European settlers in America used alcohol as a weapon against natives. Later, during the cold war, the CIA organized for crack cocaine to destroy black neighborhoods social tissue, while financing the "contras" fascist militias. We could go on. I'm not saying reforming incentives is wrong, it's certainly part of the solution. But it would be very naive to think that alone is enough to change society because nobody would want to harm others. Fascists very much exist and very much want to harm others, not necessarily out of a profit motive but also sometimes out of pure hatred.
- 0thgen 3y ago
  Fair enough. It'd be impossible for me to argue that there aren't bad actors doing very bad things But to what extent are problems due to (a) bad actors, versus (b) structure issues, resource scarcity, trade-offs, collective action problems, etc And even if we suppose bad actors are 100% responsible for the world's problems, the systems-level analysis (if I understand it correctly) would still suggest that the solution is "structural" (cut off all the leverage points that allow bad actors to manipulate institutions) Say, in the case of the opioid crisis (which most of us agree was caused in large part from a bad actor), do we abolish pharmaceutical companies, or do we abolish the structural pathways (marketing, lobbying) that let them do bad things? I lean towards the latter, but don't know if it's any more feasible than the former
vincnetas 3y ago
I can give you couple example. Private prisons profit directly from incarceration rates (crime) Sugar factories profit from selling unhealthy food.
- yamrzou 3y ago
  Private prisons only profit because people commit crimes. So the question becomes: How to make people commit less crimes? Sugar factories are only able to sell because people are willing to buy. So the question becomes: How to make people less willing to consume unhealthy food?
  - vincnetas 3y ago
    When you have multibillion marketing machine convincing you that "Fruit" loops are healthy breakfast, there is not much you can do to educate people otherwise. Do you think if there were legal unregulated heroin factories, there would be peoples fault that they are buying/consuming highly promoted heroin? Regarding incarceration, when there is initiative to give prison time, instead of providing help (in case of light drug use) you get more people in prison. Of course you can always say that it's up to people to make a final decision, but we arguing here that there are powerful interests groups that trying to influence the outcome of everyday decisions that lead us to before mentioned outcomes.
  - nyrikki 3y ago
    While I won't touch the sugar claim, private prison companies tend to think of themselves as real estate investors. They try to get desperate rural governments to give them land for pennies on the dollar. They make empirically false claims for what the local economic impact is going to be by being obtuse. I know this because I was involved with meetings with one trying to move into my home town. I got them to admit the first in public meeting but they punted on the second. And if you think there's a direct connection between crimes and prison terms, you are just under informed. There are lots of people in prison who have long paid for their crimes but are still there because they are victims of their time (Cash) Keeping people in prison is incentivized for private prisons.

by 0thgen 3y ago

southerntofu 3y ago

I'm gonna play the devil's advocate, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Like some other commenter noted, the "shock doctrine" for example is a very widely documented/theorized phenomenon and not a conspiracy theory. > hunger There's a huge agro-food industry that profits from hunger. Its profits depend on subsistence farming being impossible or illegal so that's what they do: outlaw peasant seeds (like in France), buy all land from the owners until the population can't feed itself and needs the supermarket to survive, arrange for economic structures that allow for massive foreign subsidies (eg. EU CAP) to compete with the few local farmers left... > poverty, economic instability, and unemployment Temp work is another major industry that can only flourish when better employment conditions are not available to the workers. For those who don't find work and/or caught in the judicial system for some reason, the prison industrial complex will make profit on their incarceration. Once incarcerated, some companies will employ prisoners without working rights and protections in quasi-slavery conditions, making a ton more money than if they needed proper salaries and safety conditions. To give an example, here in France prison labor is usually < 1€/hour compared to ~10€/hour minimum wage. > drug addiction European settlers in America used alcohol as a weapon against natives. Later, during the cold war, the CIA organized for crack cocaine to destroy black neighborhoods social tissue, while financing the "contras" fascist militias. We could go on. I'm not saying reforming incentives is wrong, it's certainly part of the solution. But it would be very naive to think that alone is enough to change society because nobody would want to harm others. Fascists very much exist and very much want to harm others, not necessarily out of a profit motive but also sometimes out of pure hatred.

0thgen 3y ago
Fair enough. It'd be impossible for me to argue that there aren't bad actors doing very bad things But to what extent are problems due to (a) bad actors, versus (b) structure issues, resource scarcity, trade-offs, collective action problems, etc And even if we suppose bad actors are 100% responsible for the world's problems, the systems-level analysis (if I understand it correctly) would still suggest that the solution is "structural" (cut off all the leverage points that allow bad actors to manipulate institutions) Say, in the case of the opioid crisis (which most of us agree was caused in large part from a bad actor), do we abolish pharmaceutical companies, or do we abolish the structural pathways (marketing, lobbying) that let them do bad things? I lean towards the latter, but don't know if it's any more feasible than the former

vincnetas 3y ago

I can give you couple example. Private prisons profit directly from incarceration rates (crime) Sugar factories profit from selling unhealthy food.

yamrzou 3y ago
Private prisons only profit because people commit crimes. So the question becomes: How to make people commit less crimes? Sugar factories are only able to sell because people are willing to buy. So the question becomes: How to make people less willing to consume unhealthy food?
- vincnetas 3y ago
  When you have multibillion marketing machine convincing you that "Fruit" loops are healthy breakfast, there is not much you can do to educate people otherwise. Do you think if there were legal unregulated heroin factories, there would be peoples fault that they are buying/consuming highly promoted heroin? Regarding incarceration, when there is initiative to give prison time, instead of providing help (in case of light drug use) you get more people in prison. Of course you can always say that it's up to people to make a final decision, but we arguing here that there are powerful interests groups that trying to influence the outcome of everyday decisions that lead us to before mentioned outcomes.
- nyrikki 3y ago
  While I won't touch the sugar claim, private prison companies tend to think of themselves as real estate investors. They try to get desperate rural governments to give them land for pennies on the dollar. They make empirically false claims for what the local economic impact is going to be by being obtuse. I know this because I was involved with meetings with one trying to move into my home town. I got them to admit the first in public meeting but they punted on the second. And if you think there's a direct connection between crimes and prison terms, you are just under informed. There are lots of people in prison who have long paid for their crimes but are still there because they are victims of their time (Cash) Keeping people in prison is incentivized for private prisons.