McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#271

Post by cruffle_duffle » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #206

zmgsabst wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay — but we have more concerns than a single virus. It’s entirely possible to engage in net-negative behaviors because you fixate on a singular goal — a human version of the “paperclip optimizer”: we became “COVID optimizers” and produced suboptimal results. Ethics and morals are time-honed heuristics to avoid those failures. “Freedom” is the heuristic that distributed risk assessment and planning out perform centr…

And some day there may be another epidemic for which we optimize for freedom, and after which there will be no human left to enjoy the freedom (or those left will be too busy surviving to worry about things such as “freedom”). It is fortunate that the COVID-19 pandemic did not rise to that level. Maybe it couldn’t have, but that’s easier to say with the benefit of hindsight. Or some other catastrophe that threatens u…

> Maybe it couldn’t have, but that’s easier to say with the benefit of hindsight.

We knew within two weeks of most major shutdowns that Covid wasn’t even close to as bad as predicted by the Imperial College. Society decided to completely ignore that data and instead doubled down on its hysteria for more than three years.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#272

Post by rightbyte » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

jncfhnb wrote: post #248

rightbyte wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm ye. I don't have first hand experience but two class mates and a friend that worked there gave the same picture. They described it as up or out where you really have to grind long hours and the career is in sales and management not as a consultant really.

Not really what I meant. It is up or out, but I don’t really believe the long hours are an effective way to achieve the up. It’s just something a lot of people impose on themselves. The sales and management part only really comes in after you’ve passed the team manager level which is fairly advanced.

> I don’t really believe the long hours are an effective way to achieve the up.

That is an interesting comment. I think you are right. Probably more of a baseline competency but extraordinary 'soft skills'?

I meant team manager as included in 'sales'. Where I've worked as consultant (warm body, not a real consultant) team managers were essentially sales people.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#273

Post by cruffle_duffle » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #67

zmgsabst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those organizations were doing so by government mandate — at the direction of government healthcare agencies. They didn’t invent those policies on their own. That’s “imposing” and it speaks to the lack of ethics in the healthcare system they joined in coercing medical treatments rather than refusing to perform treatments people were only accepting under duress.

The alternative of continuing isolation was available though impractical for many. The ethics around vaccination is it saved well over 1 million US lives without direct force, that’s a clear win by any reasonable ethical system. Being unable to be an unvaccinated healthcare worker is little different than requiring people wash hands, or preventing them from walking around shooting patients. PS: Actual estimates for l…

> The alternative of continuing isolation was available though impractical for many.

There was, in fact, many alternatives beyond “isolation”. But thanks to society’s hysterical myopic focus and constant propaganda and suppression of information most people were not allowed to discuss them out loud.

How anybody could continue to believe what society did in response to Covid was not only okay but was the only option is absolutely wild to me. It’s a testament to the massive amount of propaganda cranked out by various governments. Their belief is not just wrong it’s insulting to the people who watched the nonsense unfold.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#274

Post by gruez » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:36 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #264

gruez wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of thinking makes no sense. Why should we care about what their global revenue is? The only thing that matters is how much money they made from opioid consulting. If Amazon did a bad in a small part of their company (eg. they violated labor laws in the state of Washington), why should their punishment be compared to their global revenue?

Because otherwise someone clever could play a shell game where every org does something bad but its split up in such a way to diffuse responsibility across the organization and minimize fines, especially since not all bad things will be caught and fined simultaneously.

>Because otherwise someone clever could play a shell game where every org does something bad but its split up in such a way to diffuse responsibility across the organization and minimize fines,

"We can't figure out who to blame because responsibility is so diffuse, so let's make everyone 100% responsible" makes as much sense as "we can't figure out who the murderers are so let's lock up anyone who vaguely looks like a gangster"[1].

More to the point, it's unclear whether this actually applies in this case. At the very least, you can confine responsibility to the consulting engagements they did with opioid producers. The value McKinsey & Company provides in their management consulting engagements might be questionable, but it's a stretch to claim their engagements with some random fortune 500 (non-pharma) company contributed to the opioid crisis, or need to be punished.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_gang_crackdown

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#275

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:38 PM UTC

gonzobonzo wrote: post #87

genocidicbunny wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure most people are against going after the suppliers, even if they support decriminalization. Decriminalization should mean that users are not prosecuted for simply using drugs, but those participating in the manufacture and distribution are still held responsible.

> I'm not sure most people are against going after the suppliers I see the claim made often, it even commonly pops up on HN. The claim is that the War on Drugs is a failure, because any prohibition efforts are doomed. Laws against a substance merely push it into the criminal sector and don't actually disrupt the supply. So the only outcome is that we get more crime and suffering, but the amount of people using the dr…

attempts against prohibition are doomed to failure because they go against human nature and going against human nature will (almost) always fail. tell teenagers they can’t drink till they are 18… well… tell a kid she/he can’t… well…

humans will do drugs. you have to start there. no matter what you try and “prohibit” this is your ground zero. from here you can decide which policy has the greatest chance of “success” once you define what success means to you.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#276

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #162

oefrha wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather live a long, happy and productive life dependent on cheap, legal opioids That’s BS. OxyContin addicts tend to experience withdrawal symptoms before the recommended 12 hours is up, they also develop tolerance, so they end up requiring larger and larger dosage with increasing frequency. You’re not going to sustainably live a long, happy and productive life even if you have a cheap, steady, relatively clean sup…

Isn't that the same for coffee, though?

I am waiting (for yeeeears now) for someone to file a lawsuit against Starbucks… if McDonald’s was forced the pay $$ for coffee being too hot prompting every cup in usage in America where hot content is poured to come with a disclaimer, no disclaimer is shown anywhere regarding addictive nature of coffee… all it will take is someone who spends like $3k/year on coffee at Starbucks to convince some hotshot lawyer to start a lawsuit. Easier rags-to-richer story for sure (provided plaintiff is “rags” :) )

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#277

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #260

toyg wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the same for coffee, though?

You don’t nod off in a ball and lose circulation in your extremities on coffee.

Starbucks will let you order 30 shot espresso machiato (trust me, I know this…) and if consumed you may experience some circulation issues :)

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#278

Post by rrr_oh_man » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 7:05 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #239

bmitc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What companies use consultants and how? In all my years, I have never seen a consultant or a need for one, so I have a tough time understanding how they make any money, much less a lot of it.

Haven’t you ever wanted research, advice or work done and your coworkers or employees were busy or not quite up to it? White glove consulting is just well-packaged, expensive help.

Why white glove? That sounds like the opposite of hands-on.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#279

Post by jncfhnb » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #272

jncfhnb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really what I meant. It is up or out, but I don’t really believe the long hours are an effective way to achieve the up. It’s just something a lot of people impose on themselves. The sales and management part only really comes in after you’ve passed the team manager level which is fairly advanced.

> I don’t really believe the long hours are an effective way to achieve the up. That is an interesting comment. I think you are right. Probably more of a baseline competency but extraordinary 'soft skills'? I meant team manager as included in 'sales'. Where I've worked as consultant (warm body, not a real consultant) team managers were essentially sales people.

> Probably more of a baseline competency but extraordinary 'soft skills'?

And luck, tbh. It’s not too different from a typical org except career velocity is fairly fast and does not depend on vacancies opening up above you.

Re: McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis

#280

Post by archagon » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

grues-dinner wrote: post #201

fakedang wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lot of ppl on the left mad at billionaires too Seems the left were always in favor of Luigi. I'm more surprised by the right in the US. The days just after the shooting, they were all in favor too, but after their media pundits took an opposing stance, they joined the bandwagon and are now ranting about "muh poor CEO". Bunch of sheep I suppose.

The period when people have their own reactions, followed by a sudden reset and synchronisation once the taking points get assembled and is really quite fascinating. I would really love to know how centralised the process of defining talking points is, or if it is, itself, emergent behaviour of a distributed system resulting in coherent outcomes.

Exactly this. It happened during Covid and January 6, too. For brief moments we were united before the talking points emerged. I think this phenomenon is entirely coordinated by right wing media and party elites.