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Comment by k33 | Hacker News Reader

eh, I just don't feel like the writer understands or cares to explain how that whole process is actually detrimental to the world despite the fact that it "unites" it. Coke is just addictive sugar water that does nothing for anyone. When has coke given you something other than diabetes?

Kevin Ashton fails at pointing out the impact of this collaboration. Couldn't all of these talented people that made such a sophisticated product put their energy towards something.. I dunno, useful?

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Look at yourself - you belong to the elite of our species. You are educated enough to know how to read and write. You are fortunate enough to have a computer,and be connected to the internet. You are fortunate enough to speak one of the most widely used languages in the world. This all implies that you are at the top of our evolutionary ladder.

And yet with all this power in your hands, and with the limited time we have in our lives, you decide to go on Hacker News and comment how other people are not doing useful things? Even though for many people the process of making coke is literally the only way they can survive, and yet, they are the ones not doing anything useful? I think you are being naively idealistic at the very best, and just a hypocrite at the worst.

and you? You castigate a poster for doing exatly what you are doing yourself. Ironically recursive.

It's important that the elites of this world understand what harm they and their tribes are doing, intentionally or not, because awareness comes before action!

Of course I am doing it ironically. That's not the point though.

If you think that someone at Coca-Cola Co. is going to wake up one day and say "you know, we are going stop making soda drinks and lay off thousands of people and cause unemployment for hundreds of thousands because after all,we produce a drink that's no good for anyone", then I think you are(just like OP) being naively idealistic.

Quite possibly. However, great changes only ever arise from apparently impossible tasks! You probably actually know that from things like Einstein's special relativity coming shortly after Lord Kelvin's infamous dictum, or Galileo standing up to the Church...

I've never understood this line of thinking. In fact, it feels a bit arbitrary, because your line of thinking can apply to literally anything -- there's no clear cut off point for "useful." By your logic, should we also hold chefs in a low regard. When has their food ever done anything other than make us fat? What about art? Pretty useless. Those people should become engineers and actually contribute something?

you personally don't find a coke to be useful. However, it is a product that brings many people happiness. That actuall seems pretty useful to me.

Further, you completely missed all of the engineering. the modern soda can, the aluminum milling processes, all the high tech tool chains, those happened as a side effect of the mass production of the product you dislike.

You're absolutely right, and it's important to keep raising this point and engaging with the part of your awareness that recognises that there is nothing good about coke and many other products and businesses.

Businesses and the people that work for them need to engage with their consciences, and stop doing work that causes harm, such as producing or marketing a food product with catastrophic effects to human health.

In response to some other comments: 'because I need to earn money' is not a reason to do work that causes harm to other people, 'because i am well off' is not a reason to not challenge what you perceive as harmful.

You are, of course, absolutely correct.

What is needed to redirect efforts in useful directions is a manner of decision-making and reward within our society that trumps economic rationalism based upon paper-profits and a complete disregard for other factors (human rights, environmental protection, etc.).

How we are going to get there is a question worth working on. I posted yesterday on my perceptions of how we are, albeit slowly, marching towards achieving this. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5308525

A can of coke (in the US) gives me 140 calories, every time I drink one. That's 140 calories I would have had to get from somewhere else, or do without. It would be better if I got those calories along with some fiber and other nice things by eating a fruit, but to say that Coke does nothing for anyone is absurd; sugar water clearly has utility.

> That's 140 calories I would have had to get from somewhere else,

Most people are not struggling to get calories. Most people don't have to work hard to eat their 2000 calories a day.

> Coke is just addictive sugar water

It would be somewhat healthier if it actually contained sugar (as opposed to high fructose corn syrup).

In the UK it still uses sugar, and imho tastes a whole lot better than the HFCS version.

Most countries still do, except the US, where we have corn subsidies and sugar tariffs to artificially lower the price of corn and artificially raise the price of sugar (to protect a few growers in the south US).

The other year when sugar prices were near equal to corn, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper distributed soda with sugar only throughout much of the United States. I haven't followed the prices of sugar since, but I would gather the price went back up either naturally or through congressional means.

The commodity price of sugar is ~1.5 cents per can of soda, so I think they could get away with it whenever they wanted (meaning that they would have canceled the products because they weren't making enough volume on them).

Now I looked it up, Pepsi markets "throwback" brands which use sugar.

I doubt that. Sugar and HFCS are essentially the same thing, produced in different ways. Sugar (sucrose) is a 50/50 split between glucose and fructose. HFCS has more fructose in it, generally around 65/35.

There's a danger from using too much HFCS in the replacement, but really, saying sugar is healthier than HFCS is akin to saying that it's better to be punched kickboxer than a boxer.

Useful : Able to be used for a practical purpose.

Useful for what? Making people happy? Killing fire-ants? Repelling purple elephants?

You're gonna need to define a purpose for that to mean anything. (I suspect trying would look a lot like politics)

By that logic, candy is pointless and we should get rid of it?

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