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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

It will never happen. There's a long long list of companies who are guilty of trying to cover up harms they know exist in their products and the result is basically mass poisonings committed by serial killers, but they never face any meaningful justice. At most they'll have to surrender a tiny amount of the vast fortune they made off of death and human suffering, and almost none of that will ever reach an actual victim.

If we had any means whatsoever to change that situation it would have been done ages ago because it isn't as if the piles of dead bodies and deformed infants weren't enough to enrage people. Recently the Sacklers got away with it too and people are rightly pissed about it, but they're also totally powerless which is why it will happen again and again and again.

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> It will never happen.

That is very defeatist. Many things have changed in our history. Public advocacy can and do lead to changes in public attitudes and changes in public attitudes lead to changes in our laws.

If it's defeatist, that's only because we've been soundly defeated. Sure lots of things have changed in the past and anything could happen in the future, but I've seen zero evidence suggesting that anything will change for the better in this area, and there is a growing collection of evidence to suggest that it won't.

History is filled with examples of companies getting away with this again and again, and shows us that only with massive amounts of effort has anything ever been done to improve consumer and environmental safety, and even then the few small steps we've managed to make toward change have been largely overturned or worked around.

Today nearly half the country has been successfully manipulated into thinking that strong regulation, government oversight, and holding corporations accountable for the harms they cause is a terrible idea. In fact, often it's the people who are most impacted by the environmental and biological harms created by these companies who would most likely oppose the environmental reforms and regulations needed to prevent them.

They're convinced that the economy will collapse if we make the changes we'd need. They're more motivated to vote against "frivolous" lawsuits and punitive damages than holding companies accountable. They consistently vote to weaken people's ability to seek justice, increase the influence of money in politics, and remove what few regulations constrain industry.

Meanwhile, even when most people are in full agreement that something needs to be done, bribery has been effectively legalized and regulatory agencies are either toothless or run by the same corporations and industries they're supposed to be keeping in line. Regulations are written by and for industry to prevent competitors and protect profits over people.

Yes, it's possible that magically one day things will change, and I genuinely think that would be a good thing, but I have zero confidence that it will because there's nothing to pin my hopes on. What reason is there to assume that things will improve?

This kind of response, on a society-wide scale, is exactly what allows these things to keep happening. The broad populace gets tired of being outraged and retreats from the public sphere, which gets captured by ghouls. Imagine the difference between public outrage at a story like this in Finland vs Russia. A strong public bulwark against corruption and abuse is the sum of millions of small decisions to not shrug it off with "oh well, just another day in X country"

> It will never happen.

We can make it happen. It's just a legislative change away.

Legislation is a function of money via lobbying. So law is not gonna change, unless someone wants to spend enough money to make troubles for others. And enough money means "more than others". Making money is "expensive", by the way, if doing so responsible. Like, paying for nature and health damage.

This brings in an interesting dilemma. Lobbying for such a legislation change would most probably damage the initiator.

There has been legislation that wasn't bought. There has been legislation that just had huge public support without major industry lobbying. Lobbying is effective, but it's reductive and dishonest to pretend that it's the only way to make legislative change.

So what's prevented us from passing the laws we'd need to fix this? Yes, in the past the people have managed to make some changes, but none of that prevented this. We managed to get regulatory agencies which should have, but they are either toothless or run by the same industries they are supposed to oversee.

What was the last time legislation was voted on that caused the collapse of one of the largest corporations in the world? When was the last time a corporation that poisoned a massive number of people was held truly accountable and the victims were actually made whole?

Maybe you still think we have the power to make those kinds of changes, but what's your evidence for that?

If we could make it happen then why hasn't it happened? We are told that we can make these kinds of changes, and we have a system that makes it theoretically possible, but in practice, the people are powerless. Occasionally we've found ways to overcome the obstacles put in place to prevent meaningful change, but over a period of centuries the system has been carefully manipulated to eliminate those opportunities. We are plainly incapable of passing the legislation we'd need to fix this situation.

Even if we somehow did manage to get the laws passed (which we can't) they'd be quickly overturned or worked around. We fought like hell to get regulatory agencies that were created to protect us from exactly the kinds of biological and ecological harms we suffer under yet they've all been captured by industry or made toothless. Legalized bribery, a largely ignorant and uneducated public, and a broken legal system all conspire to protect profits over people and nothing suggests meaningful change is possible, let alone likely.

I think the parent comment was talking about individuals, not companies. At the end of the day most companies can outlast a change in government, which is why the government settles. Jail time for bad actors in companies is probably the best way to deter corporate bad action. I wonder if sharing some of the money from damages with the whistle blowers f* the game up enough to not make it worth a companies time to act in bad faith.

Classic prisoners dilemma. which makes me wonder what the prisoners dilemma looks like with different points distributions for each outcome if it changes the long term strategy. if you can adjust the points so you can predetermine "rational" strategy for an agent.

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