So what exactly makes the Koch Brothers and Monsanto worse than Facebook (also a horrible political lobbying monster corporation)? Because they're not tech companies who your friends work at?
Monsanto: poisoned people with Agent Orange, DDT, and polychlorinated biphenyls (re PCBs: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0101-02.htm)
Facebook: ???. I guess their CEO is an arrogant, 20-something billionaire, and they play fast and loose with online privacy. They have yet to kill anyone or commit treason[1]. So there's that.
[1] Or, as they'd call it on Arrested Development, "light treason"
The only harm involved with DDT is the millions of poor mostly-non-white people dead from malaria (including many children) because of the irrationality of some privileged wealthier mostly-white people (not including many children).
For more info start with http://industrialprogress.com/2012/01/26/the-story-of-ddt/ and google.
Alex Epstein is the director of the Center for
Industrial Progress, an organization he founded
in 2011. Its mission is to "inspire Americans to
embrace industrial progress as a cultural ideal."
He is also a blogger at Master Resource, a "Free
Market Energy Blog," and a past fellow of the Ayn
Rand Institute, an organization that has received
funding from the Koch Foundations including at
least $50,000 between 2005 and 2010.
Some of my favorite blog post titles of his:
* Coal is Clean: http://industrialprogress.com/2012/03/12/coal-is-clean/
* Keep Our "Addiction" to Oil, End Our Allergy to Self-Assertion: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr005=zvtlch4...
* Why We Should Love the Oil Companies: http://www.masterresource.org/2012/06/love-oil-companies-edu... (I think this might be my favorite for its shades of Dr. Strangelove's subtitle)
Salesmen used to drink large amounts of organophosphates to show farmers it was harmless -- now we know that class of peaticides cause serious neurological disorders.
Or more importantly, where is the evidence that exposure to much lower dosages of DDT causes more harms than millions dead of malaria?
However, the mechanisms that drive this are more complex. A grossly simplified version goes like this: Since the population that's hit worst has no buying power, no pharmaceutical company is interested in developing a vaccine or an effective, cheap treatment. Malaria is very much a poor peoples illness due to a variety of contributing factors: No access to effective treatment, no access to mosquito nets, no proper hygienic conditions, no enclosed living spaces that keep mosquitos out.
Just spraying DDT on every swamp in Africa is not a solution to the problem. DDT accumulates in the food chain, mostly in fat and gets fed to the children you're trying to protect via the mothers milk. It is linked to an increased rate of stillborn and cancer. It's really not the kind of stuff you'd want to use if there's any alternative.
edit: really, i'm getting downvoted by someone for civility?
Statists don't like the Koch's because they hate anyone who believes that people should be free to make their own decisions without being ordered about by small-minded busybodies whose self-image depends on the delusion that they know what's best for everyone else. And rather than engage in debate, they find it much easier to just demonize their opponents with dishonest ad hominim attacks.
You do know they funded the Tea Party.
But nice try at sophomore cynicism.
Really it all comes down to irrational hate by one side or the other and unfortunately this type of irrationality is best observed on sites like Hacker's News and Slashdot, Digg was bad too in its good days. The level of pretentiousness is astounding, but fortunately other than up/down/karma and bombastic posts the members of such sites do little else.