If the incentives of private business are what got us in this health crisis, why should private business be trusted to get us out of it?
Poison, Poison Everywhere
61–70 of 211 posts
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#62The solution here is the Government regulating and managing the situation. It has been recognized for a century - if not more - that the onus is on the State. The FDA, FTC, EPA, etc should be involved here.
It’s true. It’s also great that we have companies that want to do better. All it takes is a board & executive who don’t care for public good, but only for short term profit, and the entire mission of the company goes up in flames. And since profit is essentially the only thing that executives & boards are allowed to care about, it’s essentially inevitable unless the company founders stay laser focused on their mission, never take on arbitrary investors, and even consider PBCs.
VC-backed companies in the tech space have an especially horrid track record on this stuff. I was reading about how cool Blueprint seems as a company, but couldn’t help thinking “at least until they get bought out or fucked by investors”
Which is exactly why the government should be involved. Companies simply do not have incentives to protect humans in almost any way without the government stepping in. It’ll always be cheaper to fuck humans over, and always more expensive to do right by them.
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also gave better gas mileage.
It allowed people to use engines with better gas mileage, what is a different thing. Just adding the lead addictive to gasoline reduced your gas mileage. But it made better engines work.
It surely reduced it by a tiny amount compared to just straight octane, but ethanol reduced it by something like 10%. So using TEL instead of ethanol gave you about 10% higher gas mileage.
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#64Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680 > The appropriate solution is legislation.
That's not a solution. There is no practical solution for this, and has not been for the millennia on human history; it's only been in the recent decades where we've been able the hallucinate about knowing about toxins in our daily lives. Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.
To quote a previous HN post I saved:
"You gotta take what you can get. This level of concern is right out the CIA guidebook of how to infiltrate a group and make sure nothing gets done"
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#65Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…
Amazon is straight up evil at this point. People have pointed out they are selling fake fuses that have most likely gotten people killed, Amazon has done nothing. I am sure the same is occurring across other product categories like your example.
The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands, with the idea being that a company's Brand was worth more than lure of profits/shortcuts that could result in ruining the Brand.
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#66> All the exhaust fumes pooled and hung in the air there. And these were the 1970s: literally all the gasoline was leaded.1 This was lead poisoning. Over the years, the children were getting brain damage.
And if you live in a city today it's only marginally better. Remember that everyone selfishly driving their car is choosing to poison you rather than dealing with public transport. They give you lung cancer from their exhaust and microplastics in the brain from their tires. And if that wasn't enough, year after year the cars get bigger and survivability for pedestrians in an accent, especially children becomes less likely the larger the car.
The inconvenient truth is that car drivers are horrible humans causing harm to their direct environment they themselves have to life in but we as a society deem that totally a-ok. And the Road accidents every year? Necessary and unavoidable of course. But then the same people argue about gun control. The double-think is astounding.
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#67Equally as large and interesting is the industry of targeting and subverting consumer watchdog groups. Wirecutter's infiltration and takeover is a fascinating example.
Where can I read more about Wirecutter's infiltration? Disappointed to hear since I largely trusted their reviews
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#68I'm tackling part of the issue of food toxin remediation with my new venture, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com). It's a modified oat fiber supplement that selectively traps BPA, PFAS, and plasticizers in the gut and reduces levels in the blood serum. The funding for this is tough, though. Everyone loves the idea, but it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works over brand building and mar…
Except now I have the problem of trusting that this new supplement isn't contaminated with anything, _and_ that the "microscopic pores" resulting from this "patented process" don't turn out to have some harmful effect in the body.
I guess it would be sort of similar to activated charcoal? And that's surely well studied, and also "eaten"
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#69Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…
Amazon is straight up evil at this point. People have pointed out they are selling fake fuses that have most likely gotten people killed, Amazon has done nothing. I am sure the same is occurring across other product categories like your example. The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands, with the idea being that a company's Brand was worth more than lure of profits/shortcuts that could result in ruining th…
>> The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands
I dunno. Branding was my gig for a long time. I think brands were a weak substitute for artisans / bespoke makers who had to personally stand by their work. Once upon a time there was a guy named Levi Strauss who made sturdy jeans, some guy named McDonald who made good hamburgers, a couple guys named Johnson who sold talcum powder. And that guy Nobel who invented new ways to blow up the coyote. If any of their products failed, it was on them. Then branding came along and quality declined, but people paid for inferior products because they had the name and stamp of the founder on them. The notion that brands have to maintain the quality associated with their namesake is the central illusion that trillions of dollars spent on branding seeks to create. It turns out that it's cheaper to prop up the name with advertising than it is with selling quality products.
And that doesn't even touch on brands like DuPont or Chevron, where all the positive connotations are purely from brand marketing built as a shroud around selling mass death.
Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere
#70Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680 > The appropriate solution is legislation.
I disagree with this. There are plenty of counterexamples where an individual can have a measurably positive impact on their own life. Solar + batteries comes to mind.
Also in your linked example, you brought up reading and literacy as something that would not improve collective problems, and I couldn't disagree more.