Maybe I read too much history - but hasn't Big Sugar been known for "nothing that a slave trader wouldn't do" ethics for the past 300+ years?
There lies the problem...
The key to proper regulation is to keep money and influence from pooling at the top, making it difficult for any single person to buy enough influence.
As it is, we have a dozen monopolies that should be broken up that are making a small section of the population so rich they are essentially above laws.
But, proper regulation can exist if people want it, and more specifically in the case of the USA, legislators want it. Unfortunately, Dems actively prevent it, and republicans are ripping it down, so the rest of us are kinda fucked.
For example, if there is only one regulator for a country, the companies can pay millions to get it eased up for them, because they can make billions from it.
But if there one regulator for each state, they equation will change and it might not be profitable to pay millions to a regulator of the state, because they cannot make enough profit from selling in the state to justify it.
That is the only way to make it work. Rules don't work forever. Incentives do.
For example I just bought a Concept2 RowErg rowing machine. They sell literally every piece and part on their website so it’s end user repairable. The metrics integrate with a ton of apps, so you’re not locked into their app/ecosystem and there’s no subscription. It’s the polar opposite of Peloton and Hydrox.
Unfortunately a lot of these honest businesses are one generation away from potentially selling out everything the founders built, but I’ll continue doing my best to keep them around while they exist.
But sadly, many order of magnitude more people would like to just make more money when invest. Which is why..
>Unfortunately a lot of these honest businesses are one generation away from potentially selling out everything the founders built,
> rather than adopt the doomer pessimistic anticapitalism take...
Capitalism does not imply public trading. Capitalism can work even when companies re-invest parts of their profits.
Oh no, that would be too slow. We want Speeeed...even if that means a quick descent into certain doom.
Blame them (the consumers) then. This is like that silly Reddit/Twitter stat about 10% of companies creating 90% of global emissions… which the companies are doing in the process of making the shiny cell phones and laptops all the consumerists lambasting them are posting from, plus all the plastic crap they buy every day from Amazon.
The consumers are the ones demanding unchecked expansion of their consumption. As long as that demand exists, companies will find a way to fill it, whether they’re doing so in America or other countries. Privately held entities can’t allocate capital fast enough to keep up with the consumerists.
America is one of few places that doesn’t.
I think this is an instance of "large corporations in the 20th and 21st century have been intrinsically amoral" rather than "the sugar industry is intrinsically particularly evil (and has been since the 1600s)".
https://web.archive.org/web/20120629041358/http://www.ers.us...
Oh hey right after beef CAFOs started dominating the industry.
Why? You've never heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag?