McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source • Hacker News Board

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#431

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #413

bumby wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major fault with these studies is there participants know the benefits will end. I think this biases them towards continued working because they view it as a short term windfall that won’t sustain them rather than a long term solution. It would be incredibly hard to design an experiment to control for this. Conversely, I think the hard part about implementing UBI is that it would be incredibly hard to rol…

The question I always wonder, when people bring this up, is if they've applied it to themselves. If they had a basic UBI of, say, $20k, would they quit their job, and not look for work, not work on personal projects, not look to go back to school, nothing, just do what they are assuming others will do, sit around, watch TV, that sort of thing? Rather than keep striving, keep working, and have both an extra $20k being…

> If they had a basic UBI of, say, $20k, would they quit their job, and not look for work, not work on personal projects, not look to go back to school, nothing, just do what they are assuming others will do, sit around, watch TV, that sort of thing? Rather than keep striving, keep working, and have both an extra $20k being paid to them currently, and that safety net in place in case they lose their job?

Depends on person and their situation.

Would I quit my job and go on UBI if I could?

Me before marriage and a kid: in my line of work and with my hobbies, sure! I'll fulfill my need of doing crazy hobby projects and after few years of doing just that (and social life) I'd probably get bored and get back to work somewhere. Or spin one of my projects into a business. Or start contracting half-time to have some more spending money.

Me now: I'd probably cut down work a bit, but I can use the extra cash to ensure good conditions and financial safety for my kid.

Me if I worked in just about any other field: fuck no, not if I knew the benefits would end. Software industry is special (and still will be for at least a couple of years) - a programmer with decent skills can just find a job or start a company. For every other field, the many years long gap in your CV will scream "not good worker material". Keeping the working history continuous is something on the minds of majority of westerners; failing to do that is likely to result in being hireable only for jobs not much better than the UBI.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#432

Post by strbean » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

foolinaround wrote: post #398

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #93

The war on drugs is responsible for the opioid crisis. Companies psychopathically seek out profits, and need to be kept in check, but that does not diminish the fact that US (and Canadian) drug policy bears direct responsibility for opioid deaths. This kind of news story, while maybe satisfying, is a red herring. As long as addiction is criminalized, and legal drug supplies dont exist, it doesn't matter how many Purd…

since we are addressing the root cause in this sub-thread, i submit that we need to go one layer deeper than just the 'war on drugs' what causes individuals to seek drugs or other harmful substances? Surely,similar substances existed throughout history? (maybe not as lethal, but still...) I think it is the despair and lack of spiritual fulfillment for a person, and i think this coincides with what has been a failure…

I think drug prohibition is the lower-hanging fruit here, but it's certainly important not to overlook the deeper causes. Spiritual malaise, a feeling of disenfranchisement and lack of buy-in to society, poverty, and desperation are all tightly intertwined root causes for so many big problems we face today.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#433

Post by StormyWeather » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

vypr007 wrote: post #190

Approaching this from a cold math perspective, like a McK consultant would.. $573M settlement for approx 450k deaths, is a a little over $1200 per death if that is given away as compensation at all. Not bad for McK I'd say. The consultants really managed this well.

I am not defending what the firm did but we are talking about a study that took place in 2017, it has nothing to do with what happened before and certainly doesn't account for all deaths after 2017 either.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#434

Post by bumby » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #426

bumby wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I’ve seen both sides. I’ve seen people get social security or disability benefits and coast for the rest of their lives without working even though they have the ability to do so without affecting their benefits. I assume they value sleeping in and not having to answer to anyone. Their idea of a good time is spending hours hiking or watching tv or various other things that have negligible cost. I’ve also…

Yeah; I wasn't saying one side doesn't exist. It was more in tandem with my parent post - the people who are happy to watch TV, hike, just kinda bum around, doing nothing else, desiring nothing else...how often are they great workers? I meant the question in response to the observation that "we don't know what happens long term if people are promised this kind of money" - right, but the presumption there is that it w…

>what's the concern?

I think the concern is there may not be enough “ambitious” people to maintain productivity to sustain the non-ambitious folks.

Thinking back to a previous job that most people would probably assume employees incredibly driven people, I can honestly say many were not. Hours wasted on long lunches/breakfasts/breaks, surfing the Internet for auctions, bouncing from office to office for hours to gossip, really anything to distract them from the work that needs done, all the while complaining there wasn’t enough time in the day to get it completed. If a “world class” organization is like this I don’t want to know what a “lesser” one is like.

The best employees are always those who value the work itself. I think very few people find their work intrinsically motivating and are only doing it because of an extrinsic reward (status, money, whatever). Unfortunately, after talking to many in that former organization I don’t think they have a very good grasp on what is intrinsically motivating to themselves.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#435

Post by StormyWeather » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

jypepin wrote: post #427

so $573M settlement for 450000 overdoses. So they value life at $1275. The Sackler family is worth $13b. Ridiculous.

copypasta from an answer to a similar comment above:

I am not defending what the firm did but we are talking about a study that took place in 2017, it has nothing to do with what happened before and certainly doesn't account for all deaths after 2017 either.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#436

Post by choward » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

> U.S. government data resulted in 450,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2018

They're paying just over $1,000 per life. According to the U.S. government a human life is worth $10,000,000. Seems totally fair.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v...

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#437

Post by orzig » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #239

cryptica wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 year olds out of university know nothing about business, management, finance or the economy. The financial system and economy are in a constant state of flux, everything they teach in university is already outdated 10 years before you even start the degree. As for economics, most of what they teach has nothing to do with the real economy; just some phony models with fancy math which bear absolutely no relationship…

Consultants are not expected to just know the answer. They're supposed to figure it out by talking to people in the company and looking at data. A 20 year old with full DB access and a python script can tell an executive a lot of things they don't know.

Agreed, starting my career as an in-house data analyst at a mid-sized public software company, I was able to show executives things they didn't know within a few months. Not because I was particularly smart, but because there was so much low hanging fruit.

While I disagreed with him on this point, here's another angle on how low hanging the fruit was: My manager _explicitly_ told us to never use statistics, because we'd be wasting our time with effects which weren't large enough to be obvious.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#438

Post by orzig » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #100

Terretta wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hear this all the time, sounds like an urban myth I didn’t hear it. I’ve spent years as an L3 (CEO is L1) of one of the largest enterprises in the free world, interacting with other enterprises at that level, and collaborating with all the top consultancies’ teams that work at that level. My take is while not always the case, the higher level the committee approving the consulting spend (because even that choice/de…

I suspect too few people understand this. The CEO works for the board. The CEO can be fired at will just like any other employee. They will get an incredibly generous pay-off, unless they have fucked up to a world-beating historic extent. (And sometimes even then.) But as soon as the CEO loses the confidence of the board, they're on their way out. And most boards are only really interested in the financials. They don…

I don't know more than is in this podcast, and n=1, but the leash isn't always very tight:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/19/538141248/epis...

> They weren't idealists or social activists--just two shareholders who thought the CEO was being grossly overpaid. And they figured that salary was paid with money taken out out of their pockets. So they tried to force a pay cut.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#439

Post by aerosmile » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #224

aerosmile wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to be critical of executives. A naive narrative could sound like this: "Bob was hired to turn the company around, and 3 months later the company is still bleeding money. Bob sucks." But it's important to understand the two difficult tasks that Bob is facing: 1) Identify all mistakes made by the previous management and come up with a plan to correct them. 2) Get buy-in for your plan and execute it. It might…

It is one thing to bring in some more workers to help you with research you don't have the ability to do. It is another thing to pay someone to make a report backing up a decision you have already made. It is another thing to pay someone to make a decision that you don't want to make, so they can take the blame. The first example is not why management consulting gets a bad name.

This is helpful for understanding why management consulting gets a bad name, and I am not pushing back on that. The parent comment I responded to was making the claim that executives who hire such consultants are incompetent, and I think we both agree that this is not about their competency.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#440

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #382

bostonsre wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If big companies face no consequences, then our society will fall apart. They have ruined millions of lives and are responsible for a large portion of the 450k overdose deaths from 1999 to 2018. It amounts to literal gambling with people's lives and the individuals responsible face almost no risk. The worst thing that happens is that their company has to pay a big fine. Someone who steals a car will face a multi year…

>If big companies face no consequences, then our society will fall apart. It currently is and I don't see any sign of it stopping. The foundation was laid in the 80s, the roof fell in on January 6th, and the Democrats don't have enough of a spine to actually fix the problem because Republicans keep calling them mean names.

The fault in our society is not that one party is bad and the other party it's good, it's that both parties think that about each other and believe a whole bunch of distortions based on the extremes of either party. Rs think Ds are destroying our society just as much as Ds think Rs are doing the same. Both sides are vilifying Is for not taking enough of a stand on The Issues That Will End The World TM.

The only way out is to fix that mutual misunderstanding, and to stop destroying the neutral space where that misunderstanding can be mended.

I'd love it if whenever politics comes up on HN, we started brainstorming ways to do that, instead of amplifying the us vs. them rhetoric that is too prevalent elsewhere.