8 ms·

There are plenty of other products that literally ruin people's lives: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, pharmaceuticals, credit cards, firearms, timeshares, junk food.

by jmkd 5mo ago

There are plenty of other products that literally ruin people's lives: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, pharmaceuticals, credit cards, firearms, timeshares, junk food. Society has them all on very different parts of a stigma spectrum. Honest question: why is this line so clear for you?

malfist 5mo ago
Honest question, why isn't the line so clear for you? We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  > We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well. That's most of the products being sold today, you think the most for-profit companies sell things and services in order to improve the world? They're selling stuff because they want to make money, if they can make someone addicted + extract wealth from them, then in their world that's a no-brainer.
  - malfist 5mo ago
    > That's most of the products being sold today That's just not true at all. The fruit I buy is designed to make my life worse? The vacuum cleaner? The lawn mower? The workout equipment? The standing desk for my office? The clothing I buy?
    - embedding-shape 5mo ago
      Yes, literally all those things are decreasing in quality because the companies producing and selling these want higher margins. Have you not noticed the sharp drop in quality and durability in made stuff compared to 20-30 years ago? Almost all those things are worse and lasts less today than they used to.
      - Edman274 5mo ago
        Do you feel and have the subjective experience of feeling like you're arguing in good faith right now?
      - bombcar 5mo ago
        There's some cases where that may be true, but they listed a few: * fruit - I can get any fruit anytime in the year, and it seems fine * vacuum cleaner - my Miele is still running ten years later and still available new * The lawn mower - the M18 mower cuts great and uses no gas and just works - much better than the previous PoS * workout equipment - I don't have much here, but my rowing machine is still going strong * standing desk - the uplift desk seems quite good quality * clothing - this might be the only one, but even the walmart crap I get is better than the walmart crap from a decade ago
        subscribed 5mo ago
        If you claim you can get "any fruit anytime in the year and it seems fine", it's probably because you'd inky ever had supermarket fruit-like products which are about as similar to the proper ones as McDonald's Big Mac is similar to the proper burger. Go to the actual farm in strawberries season next time, get yourself some, and you'll get that. And it's like this with almost every single fruit.
      - TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
        German study: "The proportion of devices which had to be replaced within five years due to a defect rose quite sharply, from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012." https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/obsolescence-fact-check https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/obs... Electronics are more likely to be obsolete for technical reasons, but - for example - modern dishwashers and dryers are far more likely to have cheap plastic parts that fail more quickly. Even for brands with premium price tags. With clothes, fast fashion is designed down to a budget and up to a price. For consumer brands, the more expensive something is the more disposable it is and the shorter its working life. https://irispublishers.com/jtsft/fulltext/analysis-of-quality-indicators-through-fast-fashion-and-classic-brands-of-jeans.ID.000680.php https://irispublishers.com/jtsft/fulltext/analysis-of-qualit...
- darkwater 5mo ago
  Half of the list by GP shares these same characteristics, unfortunately. The only one that is slowly - but not even steadily - going towards the same stigma is tobacco.
- jmkd 5mo ago
  Okay sounds like we agree that sugar and junk food should be on the wrong side of the line, but turns out those industries have very little stigma. Who is standing outside the school gates protesting against big cola? My point is it's complicated, ambiguous, sometimes hypocritical, differs by jurisdiction and so on. None of it is clear.
  - mcmcmc 5mo ago
    Ah yes, the great evil of sugar… which our bodies require for energy. Seriously, your brain needs glucose. Ask a diabetic if sugar is evil
    - john_strinlai 5mo ago
      when people talk about sugar in the unhealthy context, they are referring to things like how a single can of dr. pepper has 40-50 grams of sugar in it.
    - hn_acc1 5mo ago
      You mean, like hyperglycemia?
    - everforward 5mo ago
      This is not the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s misleading. Your brain needs glucose, as does the rest of your body. You do not need to eat glucose, your body can synthesize it from non-glucose sources. You can absolutely survive on a diet with 0 glucose. I don’t have an issue with people eating sugar, but it is not a necessary nutrient.
    - gzread 5mo ago
      Are you diabetic? If you aren't diabetic, your body can manage its own sugar.
    - subscribed 5mo ago
      Does your brain necessarily *need* HFCS/sucrose, or will it work with wholegrain diet, fruits, vegetables, legumes? It just seems that you're arguing that without added, pure sugar in drinks/foods your body and brain would break down, but that would be factually incorrect* *unless you're also suffering from some exceedingly rare genetic conditions affecting certain metabolic paths but it's unlikely you'd live to tell the story.
- egorfine 5mo ago
  The majority of food sold in the US satisfies the criteria you have laid out here. Is the line still clear?
  - malfist 5mo ago
    My neighbor got robbed the other day walking home from work. That means it's okay for me to rob them too, right?
    - subscribed 5mo ago
      You're trying to make ad absurdum but this been in effect decriminalised in many countries. In the UK for example the police got so defunded, damaged and wrecked, that they will straight out do their best to refuse investigating most crimes, eg robbery, burglary, assault, theft, even if you literally hand them evidence ("I saw my neighbour Tim doing that and I have CCTV", "my stolen bike is literally in that garage, I have tracker and I made it make a sound"). Police is so defunded and demoralised that they focus on arresting disabled and pensioners for opposing genocide and throw people into the jail for having a peaceful protest planning zoom call - for longer they would serve for rape. So you tried to joke but in fact many crimes have been decriminalised.
      - gzread 5mo ago
        I think it's like this in most countries - the police will only care about protecting the elite class. Sometimes the elite class feel threatened by high crime levels so the police will crack down on petty crime, but it's always in a way that makes the numbers look good, not a way that keeps people safe. They'll investigate the crimes that are easiest to prosecute.
  - hn_acc1 5mo ago
    I would like the majority of food sold in the US to improve in quality. I would support passing legislation to force the issue.
- deleted 5mo ago
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- deleted 5mo ago
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- derangedHorse 5mo ago
  "Built to make people's lives worse" is an opinion. There are people who gamble without getting addicted and treat it as good fun. Why shouldn't I be able to bet a small amount on a team I like in Fantasy Football? I've never gambled more than I could afford to lose nor have I felt the need to do it habitually. I get that there are some people who are not like me, but you seem to think that there are only people who are not like me that use these types of services.
  - b40d-48b2-979e 5mo ago
    There's a difference between betting between your friends on FF versus creating a system of gambling that takes advantage of the least fortunate among us.
    - itake 5mo ago
      This is the same thinking that governments are justify the age verification and ID tracking: the system makes an opportunity for old people to get scammed, so everyone needs to give up their privacy.
      - conception 5mo ago
        Well… I think you’re conflating the stated reason for solving a problem versus what these “solutions” are actually trying to do.
  - mcmcmc 5mo ago
    Why do you need a commercial service to do that? Gambling isn’t bad inherently, but for-profit gambling companies have too many perverse incentives
- stronglikedan 5mo ago
  I know plenty of folks who enjoy a little gambling without letting it get them into trouble, so the product couldn't be "built to make people's lives worse". Why should they have something taken away just because some other people can't control themselves?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
gempir 5mo ago
No single person can draw that line, that's what Courts and Laws are for. And some of the industries play more dirty and try to manipulate that due process, others failed. But that's what we have, it's never black & white. Always a process and always evolving.
sakisv 5mo ago
Not the original person you replied to, but as far as I'm concerned there are a few questions that could very easily indicate which side of the line is something. E.g. - Is it addictive? - Does it have the potential to destroy lives? - Does it have the potential to destroy lives in seconds? - Does it have a strong lobbying mechanism behind it? (n.b. things that are good and nice rarely need someone to bribe people to accept them) or simply: - Would you be worried if your child did it? I think the number of "yes" that you get draws a very clear line.
- jmkd 5mo ago
  Your question ramp makes sense to me except in two ways: 1. why this "destroy lives in seconds?" question? 2. where do you see sugar sitting here?
  - ambicapter 5mo ago
    He's obviously talking about alcohol (it takes seconds to consume an amount of alcohol that can result in death, yours or someone else's from a fight or car crash) and firearms (should be obvious). Sounds like you're implying some sort of mischaracterization of sugar here which minimizes the former in a weird way.
  - sakisv 5mo ago
    I wanted to draw the distinction between something that destroys lives over a longer period of time (smoking) VS something like gambling where you could lose your life's savings in seconds. The alcohol mentioned in a sibling comment also ticks the box. For the sugar, I'd say yes, no, no, yes and "not too much, but I'm keeping an eye out".
- egorfine 5mo ago
  These questions sound very rational until you realize that sugar, performance cars, military technology and history lessons can tick all those boxes.
  - submerge 5mo ago
cael450 5mo ago
There is a stigma with all of those things except maybe pharmaceuticals (unless you are selling opioids), sugar and junk food (because of their ubiquity). The line is clear for some people right away. Other people have to see the effects first hand. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and the never-ending line of obviously poor people dropping nearly their entire paychecks on scratchoffs, then buying a case of beer was a formative memory for me. It most states, the lottery is just subsidizing the cost of education on the backs of the poor and uneducated and gambling-addicted so that they don't have to raise property taxes. And that's if the money actually gets spent on education. Sometimes they just turn into slushfunds for pet projects. It's gross.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago
Just because there's a spectrum doesn't mean that everything on it is indistinguishable. Everybody draws their own lines, some people count more or fewer things as stigmata, some people's lines are fuzzier than others.
radicalbyte 5mo ago
> pharmaceuticals A large number of these literally save people's lives. Anti-biotics, statins, anti-depressives, anti-psychotics, insulin, anti-histamines.
- subscribed 5mo ago
  Cars can come in the form of ambulances, narcotics can come in form of morphine or cocaine (note the early use in medicine). You don't just exclude / include entire class by giving a few examples.

by jmkd 5mo ago

malfist 5mo ago

Honest question, why isn't the line so clear for you? We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well.

embedding-shape 5mo ago
> We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well. That's most of the products being sold today, you think the most for-profit companies sell things and services in order to improve the world? They're selling stuff because they want to make money, if they can make someone addicted + extract wealth from them, then in their world that's a no-brainer.
- malfist 5mo ago
  > That's most of the products being sold today That's just not true at all. The fruit I buy is designed to make my life worse? The vacuum cleaner? The lawn mower? The workout equipment? The standing desk for my office? The clothing I buy?
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    Yes, literally all those things are decreasing in quality because the companies producing and selling these want higher margins. Have you not noticed the sharp drop in quality and durability in made stuff compared to 20-30 years ago? Almost all those things are worse and lasts less today than they used to.
    - Edman274 5mo ago
      Do you feel and have the subjective experience of feeling like you're arguing in good faith right now?
    - bombcar 5mo ago
      There's some cases where that may be true, but they listed a few: * fruit - I can get any fruit anytime in the year, and it seems fine * vacuum cleaner - my Miele is still running ten years later and still available new * The lawn mower - the M18 mower cuts great and uses no gas and just works - much better than the previous PoS * workout equipment - I don't have much here, but my rowing machine is still going strong * standing desk - the uplift desk seems quite good quality * clothing - this might be the only one, but even the walmart crap I get is better than the walmart crap from a decade ago
      - subscribed 5mo ago
        If you claim you can get "any fruit anytime in the year and it seems fine", it's probably because you'd inky ever had supermarket fruit-like products which are about as similar to the proper ones as McDonald's Big Mac is similar to the proper burger. Go to the actual farm in strawberries season next time, get yourself some, and you'll get that. And it's like this with almost every single fruit.
    - TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
      German study: "The proportion of devices which had to be replaced within five years due to a defect rose quite sharply, from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012." https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/obsolescence-fact-check https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/obs... Electronics are more likely to be obsolete for technical reasons, but - for example - modern dishwashers and dryers are far more likely to have cheap plastic parts that fail more quickly. Even for brands with premium price tags. With clothes, fast fashion is designed down to a budget and up to a price. For consumer brands, the more expensive something is the more disposable it is and the shorter its working life. https://irispublishers.com/jtsft/fulltext/analysis-of-quality-indicators-through-fast-fashion-and-classic-brands-of-jeans.ID.000680.php https://irispublishers.com/jtsft/fulltext/analysis-of-qualit...
darkwater 5mo ago
Half of the list by GP shares these same characteristics, unfortunately. The only one that is slowly - but not even steadily - going towards the same stigma is tobacco.
jmkd 5mo ago
Okay sounds like we agree that sugar and junk food should be on the wrong side of the line, but turns out those industries have very little stigma. Who is standing outside the school gates protesting against big cola? My point is it's complicated, ambiguous, sometimes hypocritical, differs by jurisdiction and so on. None of it is clear.
- mcmcmc 5mo ago
  Ah yes, the great evil of sugar… which our bodies require for energy. Seriously, your brain needs glucose. Ask a diabetic if sugar is evil
  - john_strinlai 5mo ago
    when people talk about sugar in the unhealthy context, they are referring to things like how a single can of dr. pepper has 40-50 grams of sugar in it.
  - hn_acc1 5mo ago
    You mean, like hyperglycemia?
  - everforward 5mo ago
    This is not the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s misleading. Your brain needs glucose, as does the rest of your body. You do not need to eat glucose, your body can synthesize it from non-glucose sources. You can absolutely survive on a diet with 0 glucose. I don’t have an issue with people eating sugar, but it is not a necessary nutrient.
  - gzread 5mo ago
    Are you diabetic? If you aren't diabetic, your body can manage its own sugar.
  - subscribed 5mo ago
    Does your brain necessarily *need* HFCS/sucrose, or will it work with wholegrain diet, fruits, vegetables, legumes? It just seems that you're arguing that without added, pure sugar in drinks/foods your body and brain would break down, but that would be factually incorrect* *unless you're also suffering from some exceedingly rare genetic conditions affecting certain metabolic paths but it's unlikely you'd live to tell the story.
egorfine 5mo ago
The majority of food sold in the US satisfies the criteria you have laid out here. Is the line still clear?
- malfist 5mo ago
  My neighbor got robbed the other day walking home from work. That means it's okay for me to rob them too, right?
  - subscribed 5mo ago
    You're trying to make ad absurdum but this been in effect decriminalised in many countries. In the UK for example the police got so defunded, damaged and wrecked, that they will straight out do their best to refuse investigating most crimes, eg robbery, burglary, assault, theft, even if you literally hand them evidence ("I saw my neighbour Tim doing that and I have CCTV", "my stolen bike is literally in that garage, I have tracker and I made it make a sound"). Police is so defunded and demoralised that they focus on arresting disabled and pensioners for opposing genocide and throw people into the jail for having a peaceful protest planning zoom call - for longer they would serve for rape. So you tried to joke but in fact many crimes have been decriminalised.
    - gzread 5mo ago
      I think it's like this in most countries - the police will only care about protecting the elite class. Sometimes the elite class feel threatened by high crime levels so the police will crack down on petty crime, but it's always in a way that makes the numbers look good, not a way that keeps people safe. They'll investigate the crimes that are easiest to prosecute.
- hn_acc1 5mo ago
  I would like the majority of food sold in the US to improve in quality. I would support passing legislation to force the issue.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
derangedHorse 5mo ago
"Built to make people's lives worse" is an opinion. There are people who gamble without getting addicted and treat it as good fun. Why shouldn't I be able to bet a small amount on a team I like in Fantasy Football? I've never gambled more than I could afford to lose nor have I felt the need to do it habitually. I get that there are some people who are not like me, but you seem to think that there are only people who are not like me that use these types of services.
- b40d-48b2-979e 5mo ago
  There's a difference between betting between your friends on FF versus creating a system of gambling that takes advantage of the least fortunate among us.
  - itake 5mo ago
    This is the same thinking that governments are justify the age verification and ID tracking: the system makes an opportunity for old people to get scammed, so everyone needs to give up their privacy.
    - conception 5mo ago
      Well… I think you’re conflating the stated reason for solving a problem versus what these “solutions” are actually trying to do.
- mcmcmc 5mo ago
  Why do you need a commercial service to do that? Gambling isn’t bad inherently, but for-profit gambling companies have too many perverse incentives
stronglikedan 5mo ago
I know plenty of folks who enjoy a little gambling without letting it get them into trouble, so the product couldn't be "built to make people's lives worse". Why should they have something taken away just because some other people can't control themselves?

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

gempir 5mo ago

No single person can draw that line, that's what Courts and Laws are for. And some of the industries play more dirty and try to manipulate that due process, others failed. But that's what we have, it's never black & white. Always a process and always evolving.

sakisv 5mo ago

Not the original person you replied to, but as far as I'm concerned there are a few questions that could very easily indicate which side of the line is something. E.g. - Is it addictive? - Does it have the potential to destroy lives? - Does it have the potential to destroy lives in seconds? - Does it have a strong lobbying mechanism behind it? (n.b. things that are good and nice rarely need someone to bribe people to accept them) or simply: - Would you be worried if your child did it? I think the number of "yes" that you get draws a very clear line.

jmkd 5mo ago
Your question ramp makes sense to me except in two ways: 1. why this "destroy lives in seconds?" question? 2. where do you see sugar sitting here?
- ambicapter 5mo ago
  He's obviously talking about alcohol (it takes seconds to consume an amount of alcohol that can result in death, yours or someone else's from a fight or car crash) and firearms (should be obvious). Sounds like you're implying some sort of mischaracterization of sugar here which minimizes the former in a weird way.
- sakisv 5mo ago
  I wanted to draw the distinction between something that destroys lives over a longer period of time (smoking) VS something like gambling where you could lose your life's savings in seconds. The alcohol mentioned in a sibling comment also ticks the box. For the sugar, I'd say yes, no, no, yes and "not too much, but I'm keeping an eye out".
egorfine 5mo ago
These questions sound very rational until you realize that sugar, performance cars, military technology and history lessons can tick all those boxes.
- submerge 5mo ago

cael450 5mo ago

There is a stigma with all of those things except maybe pharmaceuticals (unless you are selling opioids), sugar and junk food (because of their ubiquity). The line is clear for some people right away. Other people have to see the effects first hand. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and the never-ending line of obviously poor people dropping nearly their entire paychecks on scratchoffs, then buying a case of beer was a formative memory for me. It most states, the lottery is just subsidizing the cost of education on the backs of the poor and uneducated and gambling-addicted so that they don't have to raise property taxes. And that's if the money actually gets spent on education. Sometimes they just turn into slushfunds for pet projects. It's gross.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago

Just because there's a spectrum doesn't mean that everything on it is indistinguishable. Everybody draws their own lines, some people count more or fewer things as stigmata, some people's lines are fuzzier than others.

radicalbyte 5mo ago

> pharmaceuticals A large number of these literally save people's lives. Anti-biotics, statins, anti-depressives, anti-psychotics, insulin, anti-histamines.

subscribed 5mo ago
Cars can come in the form of ambulances, narcotics can come in form of morphine or cocaine (note the early use in medicine). You don't just exclude / include entire class by giving a few examples.