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Comment by UIUC_06 | Hacker News Reader

> In 2019, McKinsey cut ties with opioid manufacturers

So up until then, they were fine with it. In fact, abetting it. Now they're apologizing.

If ever there were an argument for the corporate death penalty, this is it.

At all levels the true service that McKinsey provides is responsibility diffusion. Whether it's a manager that doesn't want the bad rap for a stupid or unpopular decision to profiting from creating the opioid crisis, the role of McKinsey is to come in, tell you what you wanted to hear, and then walk away bearing a good chunk of the blame for whatever happens.

The blame is meaningless to them and has zero negative consequences (in fact it has positive consequences), they just perform the part of "evil" management consults. It's an important part in making sure no one takes too big of a responsibility hit.

This is what makes McKinsey so vile. It's not that they actually put these ideas in the heads of their clients, but that they perform a necessary part in making sure that even the most banal of evil actions to the most horrendous can remain ultimately consequence free.

> The blame is meaningless to them and has zero negative consequences

I would imagine this many government ties helps a little bit when it comes to consequences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_employees_of_Mc...

This I think is the reality of it all. There's a subtle hint of extortion in their work. A tone of "oh, you need to lay off thousands of workers because your business isn't doing as well as it sounds? That's a shame. That sounds a lot like securities fraud to me. We have the commissioner's daughter on our payroll, so if you let us advise on the layoffs, maybe you can avoid charges."

No, it’s not nor is it solely responsibility diffusion. The real trick of McKinsey is being everywhere. If you are a corporate strategist, you can try to do the best you can with what your analysts tell you and your own data. But if you hire McKinsey you are sure their advice will be at least as good as the one they are giving your competitors. Of course they don’t make it obvious. They have internal shielding, privacy protection, the whole shebang. But you might get invited to be part of the benchmark which matters and their internal documentation pulls cleverly from all their cases. It’s subtle but hiring them is the closest you can get to a cartel without crossing the line. That’s why they are so expensive.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I have never heard of a single instance where they provided actual, useful, cutting edge actionable advise. I however have seen them payroll dozens of unremarkable yet politically connected people. You are repeating the narrative they pitch out loud, but whenever they make this pitch, they also make sure you hear the extortion angle as well.

In the instance of this very article, what makes more sense? McK offered competitive advise that sold more product. Or, given that at all the companies they advised, employees knowingly murdered hundreds of thousands of people and escaped any legal culpability, that the fees went to paying off politicians to protect them from investigation/prosecution?

It is a small step between enabling pill mills and helping herd undesirables into the showers. It truly is time that we demand better of corporations, and time to prosecute immoral and unethical management.

The "undesirables" comment is a little harsh. You're taking about people who are foolish enough to trust that doctors have their best interests at heart, and get addicted.

No, I am not. You might recall the adage “Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.”

Here’s some light reading for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

The parallels should now be obvious.

Maybe I'm confused. Are you calling the addicts undesirables?

You're confused. They're not calling the addicts undesirables.

McKinley advising and assisting Purdue is not entirely unlike IBM advising and assisting Germany’s 1933 NSDAP government in its execution of a thorough ethnic census of its peoples, and then “facilitating the regime's generation and tabulation of punch cards for … military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.”

I see upon reading my OP that I did not identify IBM as a co-guilty party paralleling McKinley. My apologies.

another side to this is -- now that your eyes are open, you have a unique choice, to build social systems that thrive from mutual benefit and actually implementing those, and to bear witness to that. Profit is useful for force certainly, but not the only factor for making change over time. The ugly spectacle of Big Pharma here is not the only path forward.

> the role of McKinsey is to come in, tell you what you wanted to hear, and then walk away bearing a good chunk of the blame for whatever happens

This is the role of nearly all consultants.

Or if not, their work for 43 of the 100 largest global polluters [0] or illegal corruption in Africa? [1]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/mckinsey-climate...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-sou...

I hate it when "studies" assign pollution to the company that pulled the oil from the ground. It's so dishonest, and perhaps even worse, it provides zero valuable insight. If I go joyride in a private jet, I'm the polluter, not Exxon Mobil for pulling the oil from the ground.

I prefer addressing issues at the source. Mental gymnastics are for the guilty.

Right, the source here being the jet where the fuel is actually burned for energy.

Wrong. The jet is a matter of convenience. The fuel (source) being sufficiently inconvenient (expensive, illegal) would force alternative decisions.

Takes two to tango in this case.

The source is still where the fuel came from. You're talking about the sink it's ending up in.

do you know oil has a lot of uses that are not pure transportation/electricity/heating related and necesssary for the modern civilization ?

Yeah, like the plastics that kill our environment on another vector.

Stop apologizing for oil companies. Your brain power would be better spent solving how to stop literally pouring gas on the fire.

Why not both?

Half a million people died and they get away with a slap on the wrist. Mckinsey should be dismantled and its members involved in the opoids promotion sued and tried.

The owners of the company should he sent to prison for more than 10 years

That is horribly inhumane. Just have each of them be forced to take the average prescribed dose of their product for one year, and then forced not to from then on.

But the entire point of OxyContin is to induce opioid withdrawals every single day by lying claiming that the release formula is effective for 12 hours, but making it cease dosing at 8 hours. Regular removal of opioid availability from a patient has the pernicious effect of creating a excessively of desire for a normalizing dose but removing all base levels to zero puts the brain and body through another cycle of low and high experience and so OxyContin makes immediate junkies out of everyone unfortunate enough to be prescribed.

I was prescribed it recently after surgery. Took it for around 5 days and then stopped with no ill effect (and several left). I don’t think your statement holds in the short term (and certainly not “immediate”), though over a longer period it seems to.

Possibly, but I have had Oxy prescribed and wasn't an immediate junkie. It worked for my pain is as much that I would pass out soon after taking one. This would have been in the 2008/2009 period, and my doctor was very careful with dosage.

Also note, I hated the way I felt while taking them.

Yeah Oxycontin was a 13th amendment violation.

And calls into question every number in Western Medicine.

> its members involved in the opoids promotion sued and tried.

definitely sounds like they would be liable for tortious offenses due to this.

The timing is eerie. Declared public health emergency in 2017 and most media coverage and high profile lawsuits was in 2017-2019. Insiders like McKinsey knew about the dangers much earlier, perhaps better than anyone.

> Consultancy McKinsey and Company agreed to pay $573 million to 47 state governments to settle claims it advised "Purdue Pharma and other drug makers to aggressively market opioid painkillers."

That was in 2021.

how would a corporation death penalty work? probably with company closure ( equity destruction ), banning the brand and force all ill involved managament to not work in that specificindustry for 5-10 years.

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