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What we are missing as a society is Long Term Thinking. Yes businesses do provide value and reduce human suffering as long as its perceived to reduce human suff

What we are missing as a society is Long Term Thinking. Yes businesses do provide value and reduce human suffering as long as its perceived to reduce human suffering from the customer's point of view. For example, cigarettes. It does provide some value but only for the short term without thinking about the long term. If society makes it legal to sell Meth to the public I am sure big pharma will jump on the opportunities to provide you the highest quality.

dmix 14y ago
Big pharma is already makes billions of dollars off of amphetamines. It's used responsibly my millions of people. It hasn't stopped people from abusing them even though they are illegal without a prescription. I'm not sure that's the pharma companies responsible if individuals choose to abuse something that has legitimate uses and strong demand. If the government can't stop it, does that mean the pharma companies have a moral obligation to not sell it? This is an important question with drugs, tobacco, guns, finance and lots of other industries. Individual responsibility vs societal control.
- 31reasons 14y ago
  Individual should be assumed flawed, shortsighted and selfish. As long as the individual makes decisions for herself its all ok, it is considered freedom. The problem is big companies act like the individuals even though their effects are far reaching.
  - dmix 14y ago
    But companies are just made up of individuals. Individuals make the decisions. Therfore they should be held under the same scrutiny. The difference is individuals have tons of direct consequences for their actions, but individuals inside (big) corporations who make bad decisions are masked and protected thanks to the legal system (corporate personhood), government policy and influence of money on both of those. Acting maliciously results in bulk monetary settlements and rarely result in the individuals getting burned. Just look through the yearly pharma settlements, they pay a small percentage of their revenue and things continue on business as usual with zero market effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_...

dmix 14y ago

Big pharma is already makes billions of dollars off of amphetamines. It's used responsibly my millions of people. It hasn't stopped people from abusing them even though they are illegal without a prescription. I'm not sure that's the pharma companies responsible if individuals choose to abuse something that has legitimate uses and strong demand. If the government can't stop it, does that mean the pharma companies have a moral obligation to not sell it? This is an important question with drugs, tobacco, guns, finance and lots of other industries. Individual responsibility vs societal control.

31reasons 14y ago
Individual should be assumed flawed, shortsighted and selfish. As long as the individual makes decisions for herself its all ok, it is considered freedom. The problem is big companies act like the individuals even though their effects are far reaching.
- dmix 14y ago
  But companies are just made up of individuals. Individuals make the decisions. Therfore they should be held under the same scrutiny. The difference is individuals have tons of direct consequences for their actions, but individuals inside (big) corporations who make bad decisions are masked and protected thanks to the legal system (corporate personhood), government policy and influence of money on both of those. Acting maliciously results in bulk monetary settlements and rarely result in the individuals getting burned. Just look through the yearly pharma settlements, they pay a small percentage of their revenue and things continue on business as usual with zero market effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_...