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Maybe I read too much history - but hasn't Big Sugar been known for "nothing that a slave trader wouldn't do" ethics for the past 300+ years?
by bell-cot 10mo ago
Maybe I read too much history - but hasn't Big Sugar been known for "nothing that a slave trader wouldn't do" ethics for the past 300+ years?
- vintermann 10mo agoSure, but do you trust Big Butcher?
- Avshalom 10mo agoAnd of course big sugar is these days just big corn which is happy selling to CAFOs.
- bell-cot 10mo agoBased on the history of the past 1-ish century, I trust Big Meat & Dairy to have less capability for and competence at evil than Big Sugar. Because otherwise we'd have been hearing far more "Fat is Fine, Carbs are Crap" messages.
- vintermann 10mo agoI feel like I hear that a lot.
- zdragnar 10mo agoWell, there's the whole atkins and keto fads...
- Avshalom 10mo agoAnd Atkins really started picking up in the 90s which was https://web.archive.org/web/20120629041358/http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib43.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120629041358/http://www.ers.us... Oh hey right after beef CAFOs started dominating the industry.
- DetectDefect 10mo agoSurely you jest as the animal agriculture industry is many times larger than any "big sugar" boogeyman.
- bell-cot 10mo ago"Bigger = Badder" is quick & easy heuristic, but not a particularly accurate one.
- DetectDefect 10mo agoIt is when it comes to slaughtering 80 billion sentient animals each year.
- wang_li 10mo agoWell, there are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, but no essential carbs.
- triceratops 10mo ago> I trust Big Meat & Dairy to have less capability for and competence at evil Why? You've never heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag?
- rhyperior 10mo agoNot when so much meat has sugar added to it.
- goalieca 10mo agoSugar makes an excellent spice, not a primary ingredient. It's really useful for grilling for instance.
- qsera 10mo agoIt is beyond me how anyone can expect any business (especially public traded) to have any ethics whatsoever.
- Balinares 10mo agoIn strong democracies, regulations provide the incentive.
- qsera 10mo ago..and you think those work?
- admash 10mo agoOf course they do, if enforced. The number of eight year-olds working in factories is substantially lower than it used to be due to regulations. *in modern democracies
- qsera 10mo ago>if enforced.. There lies the problem... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528718
- jethro_tell 10mo agoIf you do regulate. We currently have full regulatory capture in most industries and regulators that are doing their jobs are either hamstrung or the laws are so far behind the industries that they can’t or won’t work. The key to proper regulation is to keep money and influence from pooling at the top, making it difficult for any single person to buy enough influence. As it is, we have a dozen monopolies that should be broken up that are making a small section of the population so rich they are essentially above laws. But, proper regulation can exist if people want it, and more specifically in the case of the USA, legislators want it. Unfortunately, Dems actively prevent it, and republicans are ripping it down, so the rest of us are kinda fucked.
- School-Cotton 10mo agoWell, it's true that in the 17th century, sugar and rum production involved one of the most heinous forms of slavery ever to exist. What's not clear is that this necessarily has anything to do with the present; after all, slaves were emancipated a long time ago. I think this is an instance of "large corporations in the 20th and 21st century have been intrinsically amoral" rather than "the sugar industry is intrinsically particularly evil (and has been since the 1600s)".