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That's not really true though is it. The Sackler family caused over 500,000 deaths. Nestlé has killed millions of babies. DuPont and 3M poisoned every living cr

That's not really true though is it. The Sackler family caused over 500,000 deaths. Nestlé has killed millions of babies. DuPont and 3M poisoned every living creature on Earth. Nobody spent even one day in prison for any of it. Corporations all over the world routinely and knowingly poison, injure, or outright murder their employees and their customers. They spend massive amounts of money preventing the public from knowing about the harms they are causing. Even in the most egregious cases where there is well documented proof of what they've done the heads of these companies still get away with it. They profit from it. They're just happily living their lives in their mansions and on their yachts while graves are dug and families are torn apart.

ColdStream 2mo ago
Not that it makes it any better, those people were treated as just externalities to doing business. Government violence is a lot more targeted. Yes, it has the same result but the intention is very different. One is just careless, the other is malicious.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  When corporations knowingly kill people it isn't careless. What they do is entirely calculated. For example, it wasn't carelessness that caused the Philip Morris executives to hire a bunch of scientists who were then ordered to falsify reports saying that smoking wasn't harmful in an attempt to trick the public to keep smoking when the company was sitting on a mountain of evidence showing that their product was killing people. Government violence is different though. When the government acts against the public they are generally required to follow long and complex procedures with multiple points of checks and accountability. A cop has to get enough evidence to convince a judge to issue an arrest warrant. A person is taken into custody and given access to a lawyer. A trial is held in court with a jury. At every step there are volumes of records detailing exactly what was done, by whom, and why. All of that information is public record and we can request those records to keep watch on what the government does. If the government abuses the power we give them we can vote them out of office and replace them. Obviously there are a lot of problems with our legal system and places where all of that breaks down, but the goal was for there to be transparency and accountability and nothing stops us from improving the situation. With corporations on the other hand, they act in secret, they don't have to ask anyone for permission, they aren't required to keep records of everything they do, you have no legal right to examine the records they have, and even if you find out a CEO is responsible for murdering a bunch of people for profit you have no power to vote that CEO out of office. It's pretty clear which of whose two entities is the larger threat. Which one of them has already repeatedly poisoned you and your entire family. Which one do you think was responsible for more violence done to your loved ones?
  - ColdStream 2mo ago
    I completely agree. The end results is they are two sides of the same coin but with very different mechanics. Neither should be accepted.
joenot443 2mo ago
From my perspective, the difference is that we societally condemn the Sackler family in the same way we societally condemn Robert Pickton or Ted Bundy. It is absolutely failing of the government and the American legal system that nobody spent time in prison for Purdue's lies and poison, we're in full agreement there. That said, this position alone doesn't suggest that otherwise law-abiding citizens should be more concerned about corporate surveillance than they are government surveillance.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  No, the reason that law-abiding citizens should be more concerned about corporate surveillance than they are government surveillance is that those corporations sell all your data to the government so that the government can get around the need for things like warrants and probable cause while at the same time those companies are also exploiting your data every chance that they get in any and every way that they think will make them more money or give them power and influence over you. It wasn't until the current administration that the US government handed over the people's most sensitive private data in bulk to private corporations in exchange for bribes.

ColdStream 2mo ago

Not that it makes it any better, those people were treated as just externalities to doing business. Government violence is a lot more targeted. Yes, it has the same result but the intention is very different. One is just careless, the other is malicious.

autoexec 2mo ago
When corporations knowingly kill people it isn't careless. What they do is entirely calculated. For example, it wasn't carelessness that caused the Philip Morris executives to hire a bunch of scientists who were then ordered to falsify reports saying that smoking wasn't harmful in an attempt to trick the public to keep smoking when the company was sitting on a mountain of evidence showing that their product was killing people. Government violence is different though. When the government acts against the public they are generally required to follow long and complex procedures with multiple points of checks and accountability. A cop has to get enough evidence to convince a judge to issue an arrest warrant. A person is taken into custody and given access to a lawyer. A trial is held in court with a jury. At every step there are volumes of records detailing exactly what was done, by whom, and why. All of that information is public record and we can request those records to keep watch on what the government does. If the government abuses the power we give them we can vote them out of office and replace them. Obviously there are a lot of problems with our legal system and places where all of that breaks down, but the goal was for there to be transparency and accountability and nothing stops us from improving the situation. With corporations on the other hand, they act in secret, they don't have to ask anyone for permission, they aren't required to keep records of everything they do, you have no legal right to examine the records they have, and even if you find out a CEO is responsible for murdering a bunch of people for profit you have no power to vote that CEO out of office. It's pretty clear which of whose two entities is the larger threat. Which one of them has already repeatedly poisoned you and your entire family. Which one do you think was responsible for more violence done to your loved ones?
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  I completely agree. The end results is they are two sides of the same coin but with very different mechanics. Neither should be accepted.

joenot443 2mo ago

From my perspective, the difference is that we societally condemn the Sackler family in the same way we societally condemn Robert Pickton or Ted Bundy. It is absolutely failing of the government and the American legal system that nobody spent time in prison for Purdue's lies and poison, we're in full agreement there. That said, this position alone doesn't suggest that otherwise law-abiding citizens should be more concerned about corporate surveillance than they are government surveillance.

autoexec 2mo ago
No, the reason that law-abiding citizens should be more concerned about corporate surveillance than they are government surveillance is that those corporations sell all your data to the government so that the government can get around the need for things like warrants and probable cause while at the same time those companies are also exploiting your data every chance that they get in any and every way that they think will make them more money or give them power and influence over you. It wasn't until the current administration that the US government handed over the people's most sensitive private data in bulk to private corporations in exchange for bribes.