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Comment by nsedlet | Hacker News Reader

The Sacklers have ingratiated themselves at the highest levels of society using a fortune that's at best built on a product of dubious value, and at worst obtained at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of people. I think this piece points to a big problem: we worship money and those that accumulate it, and often ignore the question of how much societal value was created in exchange for it. The least we can collectively do is not confer status and prestige upon those who make money in a destructive way. I love the line of inquiry in this piece because it puts pressure on the high-society keepers-of-culture whose admiration the Sacklers likely most crave.

FYI you can also see an interview with the author on Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the...

(disclaimer: I am friends with the author)

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They achieved what Escobar couldn't: respectability on a mountain of skulls.

I definitely don't wanna play devils advocate for these scumbags, but can't you apply your logic to basically any product? I mean, Coca-Cola. Its at best product of dubious value, and at worst produced for the need for sugar by tens of thousands of people.

Not sure how deliberate your example was, but you can't hardly beat Coca Cola as a damaging influence on society. Coca Cola spends millions on propaganda disguised as research, designed to convince people that their product is not a health hazard. They're no better than the big tobacco companies.

And let's not forget that the sugar industry as a whole has done this on a vast scale over decades, bribing scientists and funding shoddy research in order to encourage abusive consumption of the substances they promote [2].

I don't think it's at all controversial to state that the sugar industry has cost millions of Americans their health or their lives.

1 - https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/the-food-industry-is...

2 - https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/sugar-industry-bough...

We have been too kind to the Coca Cola brand. We tell ourselves that Coca Cola started out as the product we know and love but originally there just so happened to be trace amounts of cocaine in there. These would have been harmless quantities, not likely to have any type of effect. This is the quaint legend we have arrived at.

However.

Coca Cola started as a sugary drink laced with cocaine. Much like how beer has alcohol in it to keep you buying more, Coca Cola had that magically addictive cocaine in it to keep customers coming back for more.

The name 'Coca Cola' is a celebration of this history, really there is no more insane an idea than getting a nation hooked on class A drugs in liquid form. The name and the connotations would make a right minded person want to be disassociated from that.

In theory a 'crack pipe' could be re-purposed as a nice little vase suitable for a small child to play with. But that would make you shudder. So why is it that we are happy to have this denatured liquid cocaine drink as something we give to children? We could at least change the branding, drop the 'coke' and 'coca-' drug references. With allusions to it being the real thing?

When original Coca Cola got closed down and they had to reformulate their marketing they realised that they could do just as well getting people hooked to sugary drinks laced with caffeine and salt, the cocaine wasn't actually needed to shift product. Or even the sugar, fake sweeteners work too, perhaps even more addictively. Maybe it is the marketing that is the problem and not the product ingredients. They can even get the water hooked into buying plain bottled water, something that was never bought back in the days when tap water was a luxury.

I think we all can and should apply our values towards judging companies' usefulness to society. That doesn't mean regulating or prosecuting them - moral clarity goes a long way on its own. People work hard to be held in high esteem by their peers: when we refuse to honor a useless company with prestige, it makes it harder for that company to attract talent; it reduces consumer demand for its products; it makes vendors less excited to work with them. etc. We get companies and products that reflect our values, so let's affirm the right values.

To take your example: Coca-Cola doesn't kill people as efficiently as Oxycontin, but yes, it doesn't really add much. A balanced analysis would probably acknowledge that sugar plays a huge role in our obesity crisis and other public health issues, but also acknowledge that there are many sources of sugar besides soft drinks, that sugar isn't as terrible as heroin, etc. I think Coca-Cola executives should probably feel a little bad for devoting their professional lives to it. I think schools like Emory should feel a little ashamed for taking Coca-Cola money. The fact that Coca-Cola is constantly touted as a great American company (by e.g. Warren Buffett) helps normalize the damage it inflicts on society.

I'd advocate a nuanced view: Coca-Cola isn't great, but it's not the devil. There's worse (like tobacco companies, which are probably correctly rated by society). And there's better (Bank of America, Microsoft) - those companies have their own detractors of course, but on balance they add a lot more to our lives than Coca-Cola.

It's not clear that Coca Cola is just "any product". I think the "at worst" part of your characterization of it is actually right on. It can be argued that the damage inflicted on society by excessive sugar consumption, of which Coca Cola is a most prominent promoter and beneficiary, is much larger than that caused by opioids (which is already huge).

Coca Cola and its business associates are involved in actually killing people with guns so you can add that to their 'passive body counts.

http://killercoke.org/

>>and at worst produced for the need for sugar by tens of thousands of people.

I think you mean the want for sugar. Because humans don't need sugar.

What should humans have instead of sugar?

Fat, Animal fat, Plant fat. Fat and a little bit of protein.

There is no dietary need for sugar or carbohydrates at all, your body is capable of making the tiny amount it needs through the process of gluconeogenesis. Research the Ketogenic diet.

Humans mostly don't eat sweet stuff for calorific or nutritional purposes. Rather I think they enjoy puddings, cakes, chocolate, and so on, for psychological reasons (comfort, pleasure) as well as for cultural reasons. So my question remains. What should they substitute to maintain an even mental keel? What should should be served or otherwise laid on at social gatherings that yields equivalent cheer and can be passed down from grandmother to grandaughter?

Complex carbs?

Thank the government for granting them monopoly rights.

I can hate both the player and the game, thanks.

Especially a game that the players have a hand in rigging in their favour as hard as they can.

Money can travel - your reputation, not so much. China has a solution, a social score that travels with you everywhere. Dystopian, but it could cure that worship of money thing.

China doesn't have a solution at all. They've unleashed one of the greatest money & wealth rushes ever seen, at the simultaneous cost of taking on the fastest large accumulation of debt in history.

Have you seen their asset manias from the last decade? Who worships money more than the Chinese these days?

I think you missed the word "dystopian."

Except that score is calculated on factors such as your loyalty to the government.

Every society has a fitness function. Why not make the code public? In China one is loyal to "the party", in the US one has to be loyal to "the parties". I don't see a large distinction.

Meh. Don't like your reputation? Just sift through the Equifax dump and pick a new one.

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