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3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

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Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#21

Post by billyjmc »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

If killing criminals is more expensive than caging them, that’s an implementation detail. It’s not something to make long term planning decisions based on. If improving the economics of executions were a significant concern, it’s really straightforward to address.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#22

Post by RajT88 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
wahnfrieden wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

They might get back out and are a known quantity. The premium is for assurance. Death at the hands of the state and your fellow citizens should be an absolute last resort, but still an option depending on severity of offense and when determination of guilt is ironclad. I understand the position of people who don’t believe in the death penalty, but I don’t agree with them. There are terrible humans amongst us. Everyon…

The death penalty as a deterrent does not work in our society. Nobody thinks they will actually be executed, and it is kind of a fair assumption since there are so many automatic appeals in the process due to fear of making a mistake. This is before the monied interests buy the best lawyers for their defense.

China does not care so much about mistakes, they care about the deterrent effect.

Different ideologies on law enforcement.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

rayiner wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China, there was a case of baby formula execs (Edit: pointed out to me further down thread that the execs were only jailed for 5-15 years with Sanlu's general manager receiving a life sentence, and the people executed very those directly responsible for tainting the product mentioned) knowingly selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were exec…

You’re on the right track. Maybe we can get a bipartisan coalition to push through the death penalty for corporate execs and drug kingpins.

Eddie Izzard has a great skit about mass murderers that I think of when this topic is discussed. We as a society know (or rather, have ideas on) how to handle people who kill 1-20 people just fine, but above that (hundreds of thousands or millions of people), we’re at a loss. “Well done, you must get up very early in the morning.” Feels very similar to these cases where people in positions of power cause enormous aggregate harm and we have no idea how to address it proportionally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_pHZmn5QM

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#24

Post by acdha »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

I’m generally in that camp too but there are cases where there’s no question of culpability or reform, and that’s where I’m the least inclined to argue against deterrence. I think people overstate that in general because a lot of crimes are impulse, but this kind of stuff is carefully planned over many years and I think if there is a deterrent effect you’d find it strongest there.

I’m not enthusiastic about that and would be fine jailing these guys for life, but if it’s something the state does I want guys in expensive suits to know it’s not just poor people.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#25

Post by orclev »

Waterluvian wrote: post #4
monkburger wrote: post #3

This is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical companies, can more or less, police themselves. We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 ) They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.

This kind of self regulation can probably work and be cost effective if you ruthlessly destroy any company found in violation rather than some fine and an apology. Reminds me of criminal punishment in medieval times. Incarceration was a complete economic non-start so the penalties were brutal as a deterrent.

Corporate capital punishment, the company gets seized it's patents and copyrights made public domain, and any other assets it has sold to the highest bidder and those profits used to compensate the victims.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#26

Post by ClumsyPilot »

DoktorDelta wrote: post #9
steve1977 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up to and including capital punishment. If something like this causes deaths for example, it should be treated like murder.

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one"

thats a good one. They are people when it suits them.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#28

Post by Swizec »

acdha wrote: post #5

I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end. As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning, maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too many people who’ll chase the larger number. You need the guy who gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn’t report it to the EPA, he’ll spend the rest of his life won…

> I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end.

I work in healthtech and it is fascinating how seriously everyone takes HIPAA because it includes provisions for personal liability. Every instance of exposed data costs you personally $1000 or so.

All other regulations seem to be seen as “Ehhhh how close can we push it to reasonably claim we did the things?”. But with hipaa it’s different. The conversation is always “How much extra can we do to make sure nothing could possibly leak?”

Makes me wish GDPR and friends had the same teeth. Turns out even small teeth work great when they’re personal.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#30

Post by KennyBlanken »

monkburger wrote: post #3

This is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical companies, can more or less, police themselves. We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 ) They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.

This is a huge problem across the board; industry and congress have been steadily stripping federal agencies of staff/budget, authority, etc.

Congress long figured out how to kill off regulation that is publicly popular: strangle the agency budget-wise, not appoint new department leaders, etc. Adding ever-increasing paperwork is also popular.

OSHA has the lowest number of inspectors in ~45 years. The agency is about 50 years old. https://www.nelp.org/news-releases/number-federal-workplace-...

It has one inspector for every 77,000 workers and its budget amounts to $4/worker: https://www.afge.org/article/aflcio-osha-budget-amounts-to-3...

The EPA's inspections have fallen to half the number of ten years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/02/0...

The number of ATF inspections has been falling for decades and the ATF apparently is allowing gun shops even with multiple violations to go unpunished https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2021/0...

The poultry industry pushed and got greater self-regulation around 2013 to increase line speeds: https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/2013-fall/usda-refuses-d...

The Trump administration passed widespread overhauls of the meat packing industry letting them self-regulate to increase production https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/03/federal-pork-insp...

In ten years the number of food inspections the FDA conducts have fallen to one fifth the rate in 2010: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/05/fda-food-safe...

Foreign drug manufacturing site inspections plummeted with the pandemic and have yet to recover, too.

The IRS budget has been slashed, mostly for auditing - despite audits of the 0.1% wealthiest resulting in an average of $90,000 per audit recovered: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs...

The de minimis for shipments into the US was raised from $200 to $800 in 2016 which has allowed for a massive increase in goods to be imported that are not subject to any inspection or taxes https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/de-minim...

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