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Comment by Rygian | Hacker News Reader

To my untrained eye, this is a natural consequence of focusing on profit above all. So a natural consequence in cultures where such focus exists.

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My thought would be that it's as much the fact that society is growing. It used to be we'd buy our food from the producers of it. If it was bad, word would get around and the 10-50 people that were buying from them would stop; and they'd be out of business. Then society grew and we got local stores. And, while the same _idea_ was true, there was a lot more people and word didn't get around as much; so the impact was smaller. Then big stores, major chains, and you and your 100 friends that know something is bad... don't matter to them very much. Then online retailers and now nobody matters to them. If word they they're cheating people gets out, they change the name of their business and they're fine again.

So sure, the pursuit of profits is impactful; but the lack of repercussions (when making choices that hurt others) is a pretty major player, too.

I'm increasingly convinced this switches cause and effect. Focusing on profit above all is a capitalist manifestation of an authoritarian zero-sum society; in state socialism it manifests as top-down anti-worker state focused on metrics and productivity. (In both cases a major problem is an absence of labor unions and formally independent oversight. People forget that Lenin killed workers who went on strike.)

I get annoyed at "capitalism is bad for the environment" because it ignores the Soviets' environmental devastation, which was done in the name of improving society. The truth is that environmentalism is a distinct ideology from purely economic concerns, and it wasn't until the 60s that environmentalism became a left-liberal agenda item. I think it is similar with authoritarianism versus democracy. Democratic capitalists work for their workers; authoritarian capitalists work for their investors.

Just beware that plenty of people are pretending to be "Democratic capitalists" and saying they work for you and even do things that look very good - but the end result is not good for you. Even in the case someone is honestly trying to work for you uintended consequences of their actions can be worse for you.

Yeah, and maybe also a focus on grabbing all you can now, without regard for the future.

And yet, this has happened since we've been around.

One of the most ancient examples of the written words we have is from a copper merchant complaining about the quality of the ingots he received[1]. The tablet could just as easily have been a complaint about the quality of honey purchased.

This is a reversion to the mean.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir

I'd argue there is much more fraud with product coming from china than what is locally produced. Fraud always existed but now it's more prevalent than before, simply because some countries don't really try to enforce simple rules.

For instance, Chinese mother refuse to buy powder milk in china since there has been so much fraud. Manufacturer put melamine (a plastic chemical) in powder milk for years to make them appear with more protein than reality, inducing kidney damage to newborn.

That kind of thing doesn't happen in civilized society, this require a complete lack of morality and wide corruption.

Maybe Ea-nāṣir was also too focused on profits, thinking more about shareholder value than the customer.

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