> I also think that we should have mercy for people who’ve made mistakes. Yes. When people make mistakes, they sometimes fall into holes that are hard to climb

> I also think that we should have mercy for people who’ve made mistakes. Yes. When people make mistakes, they sometimes fall into holes that are hard to climb out of. It is in society’s interest to place ladders in these holes so that these unfortunate people can climb out and become productive members of society. Instead, we have self-interested parties who have figured out how to extract rents from keeping people trapped in holes. Some of these parties are preventing ladders from being built. Others are destroying existing ladders. Others still are even inventing deeper, stickier holes—crypto scams, ubiquitous gambling, addictive gas-station drugs, dopamine-hit apps—to trap even greater numbers of their fellow human beings. When a society allows the suffering of others to become a profitable business model, good things rarely follow.