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Comment by adolph | Hacker News Reader

Reading through this and thinking about the problem in a blame-free way leads me to see the tobacco companies as a through-line for product packaging optimization that transcends any specific use. "The first patented cigarette-making machine was invented by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno of Mexico in 1847." [0] This puts high volume manufacture of cigarettes right at the cusp of the second industrial revolution with improvements in "steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and use of advanced machinery in steam-powered factories." [1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

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Blame free works with humans where you assume good intent.

It's harmful and dangerous with corporations with a proven history of lying and disregard for human lives and well being. Especially ones with a record of developing and optimizing addictive products.

any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed. result: blame tobacco companies that survived.

People still smoke. any lies the tobacco companies sold to the public were either so old that few alive heard them, or believed them when they were told.

When people or companies do bad things, they're bad even if they get away with them. They should absolutely be blamed.

I think I mis-spoke when I wrote "blame-free" because while I come from a psychological-safety inquiry perspective, the term isn't quite descriptive. The purpose of dropping "blame" is that stopping inquiry there without understanding what lead to the "bad thing" leaves a lot of valuable knowledge on the table.

This is a interesting point. I gave some thought to the nature of what was being processed. In some ways another New World agricultural product gone industrial, cocoa, brought about some companies that at a minimum rival the tobacco companies for contributions to ultra-processed foods, examples Nestle and Coca-Cola.

Like tobacco, cocoa is not an essential food and also has psychoactive components. Thus companies formed around industrializing the material must develop methods of persuasion and navigate oppositional socio-political pressure. Like the sibling comment's observation that "any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed," the most successful were especially suited for adopting other food production lines both from an industrial-technical and a socio-political perspective.

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