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Comment by px43 | Hacker News Reader

Where did you live 10 years ago that wasn't run by corporate greed and corruption, or were you just too young to remember it?

If anything, things are better now than they were 10 years ago, and things were even worse 10 years before that. One reason that things are getting better is that more people are paying attention, which makes that fun paradox where a bunch of people who are new to this whole thing perceive the world as getting worse.

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I think the general attitude was not that these people are conspiracy theorists and making these things up but that there response would be something like "Why does it matter, how does it affect me?" and the answer would have been some theoretical bad thing that the average person can't imagine happening to themselves. Now its happening which makes it real for people.

> If anything, things are better now than they were 10 years ago, and things were even worse 10 years before that

While things are truly better in certain aspects, the percentage of people relying on these companies now - as opposed to then - makes up for the less bad-ness.

Very curious what specifically makes you see things as less corrupt or people as paying more attention. The CARES Act was as bad as anything passed during the financial crisis and sailed through Congress with nary a word of objection or media scrutiny.

Is there a specific metric you're thinking of? My understanding is that income inequality is at an all-time high, and I'd be very surprised if it were worse 10 and 20 years ago.

Examples: https://equitablegrowth.org/eight-graphs-that-tell-the-story...

I was mostly speaking in terms of corporate crime/greed and the general public's willingness to let it slide, which is admittedly a pretty hard thing to quantify.

But why do you believe that it was worse 10-20 years ago? How can you tell?

"Morality police" was once a 80's or 90's trope or meme against the religious right coming from the left. Now, those with interest in policing morality from a leftward slant and those with special interests at other entrenched mega-corps have both found nearly unlimited use of puppet strings at SV firms to wield their power with frightening alacrity.

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