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| ▲ | da_chicken a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Also known as the, "I got mine. F*** you." philosophy. Maximize exploitation in the short run because by the time the long run comes around, they'll already be dead. It doesn't speak well of their feelings about their own children, but, well, there isn't a lot speaking that well of them in general. | |
| ▲ | emddudley a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ironically, PFAS levels have been found to be higher in wealthy people. People with money own more furniture and clothing with stain resistant treatments, for example. | | |
| ▲ | supportengineer 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Also brand new items versus used items. When you buy a used item, someone else has already absorbed the PFAS, and the depreciation for that matter. |
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| ▲ | e2le a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm not convinced that this is the correct answer. These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume). An examination of the individuals in the EPA pushing this change might reveal something. Perhaps it's ideological? I don't know, I'm at a complete loss. | | |
| ▲ | shigawire 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | >These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume). They get to move to whatever enclave they want and buy expensive RO filters. Or, they don't believe in science broadly and believe they won't be impacted. If scientists are so smart, why aren't they rich like me and exploiting everyone and everything to the maximum potential profit?? |
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| ▲ | chung8123 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This debate style is pretty frustrating to me. Use a talking point for the other side and act like it is why the reason it the decision is made. It really does not lend itself to getting to the root of issues and finding what compromise is. In my opinion this added nothing to the conversation when in theory the op asked for a real answer. | | |
| ▲ | zug_zug a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I understand this may look dismissive or blamey, but sometimes (actually a shocking amount) there aren’t equal merits to both sides… I’ve looked into this a lot and there isn’t any strong argument I’ve seen that this is good for humanity, and let’s not pretend every political action is a sincere attempt to improve the world for all equally. If you look into all the abuse heaped upon the man who discovered leaded gasoline was bad it helps give context on just how far some people will go for their own profits. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway173738 a day ago | parent [-] | | Or the companies selling cigarettes. The only positive is that cigarettes alleviate the stress caused by being addicted to cigarettes. | | |
| ▲ | yndoendo 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is also a social water cooler like aspect. Historically brakes were only provided to those that smoke so people took up smoking so they could get a brake. Some companies still follow this asinine ideology and do not provide brakes to non-smokers. | | |
| ▲ | teddyh 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | (You mean “break”, not “brake”.) | | |
| ▲ | yndoendo 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, unable to edit to fix typos. And no I do not condone smoking. It was to point out system design flaws in the business world. |
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| ▲ | DoctorOetker 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So without smokers, there wouldn't be any workers rights at all? |
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| ▲ | tensor 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well, the facts are that this administration will always, without fail, without a single exception, do the opposite of what has been shown to be good for the US people. This isn't a property of authoritarianism either, no other authoritarian state is so uniformly across the board against science, medicine, and technology. If you have any other suggestion than the reason they do this is something related to money, please be my guest and volunteer. Because otherwise it is the most baffling and self destructive policy making that has ever been documented in the history of humankind. | | |
| ▲ | m_fayer 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The populist wave is global and its causes are complex. But in the case of the US on top of it all, our populists happen to be clowns and morons. I think the reasonable mind struggles to deal with the current obvious stupidity even within a populist frame, and hunts for a hidden explanation. It’s a lot scarier to believe that the world’s biggest economy and military and nuclear arsenal are somehow in the hands of not just authoritarians, but crooks and morons. But it’s true. Britain did it too, it happens. So why do they do it? To play out some idiotic meme-driven culture war, reduced through these people’s small minds to caricature. They don’t think about second order effects, they lack the sophistication for that. It’s terrifying. | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Trump's EPA created these PFAS rules. Now re-read your comment and look how politically biased you are so much as to be seen as crazy. Here is the statement from the organization pushing for this. It really wasn't hard to find either. https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-... | | |
| ▲ | colinmorelli 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It seems like the PFAS rules were set in prior administrations [1]. In fact, even in the article you've linked above, the text states: > retaining its maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS but pulling back on its use of a hazard index and regulatory determinations for additional PFAS Key word being "retaining," indicating the maximum contaminant levels were already in place prior to the change mentioned here. Putting aside allegations of "political bias," can you point to a source which clearly indicates the PFA limits were put in place by the current administration? Would like to learn if I'm wrong. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration... | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Absolutely. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-
02/documents/pfas_action_plan_021319_508compliant_1.pdf Trump's first term. February of 2019. Andrew Wheeler's EPA. You'll also notice that the document lays out planned action dates bleeding generously into Biden's term, and for which Biden later took credit in the document you shared. This is shameful, and sadly normal presidential behavior, taking credit for their predecessor's wins. If you'd truly like to learn if you're wrong, it's recommended to seek information that disproves your hypothesis rather than proves it. Both this and the previous article I shared were very easy to find and within the first 2 or 3 results. | | |
| ▲ | tensor 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Trumps first term and his second term are entirely different beasts. His first term, although widely regarded as bad, still had mostly competent people across the board running things. This term is absolute lunacy, with tv show hosts cosplaying as government officials. | |
| ▲ | colinmorelli 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If you'd truly like to learn if you're wrong, it's recommended to seek information that disproves your hypothesis rather than proves it. Both this and the previous article I shared were very easy to find and within the first 2 or 3 results. Firstly, this is a completely unnecessary comment. My searches were specifically regarding finding the enactment of specific PFA limits. I will acknowledge to not spending that much time looking at it, as you claimed to already have a source and I was curious to see what it was. But to the point, this document does not outline or set limits on PFAS in drinking water. It's an action plan for measuring and creating limits, but does not itself enforce anything. In fact, every subsequent search I've done has shown that the 2024 Final Rule was the first point at which any limits were put into action. Quoting directly, the document states that one of the steps being taken is: > Initiating steps to evaluate the need for a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS); In other words, it outlines a plan for the research that is used to 1) determine if MCL should be set, and 2) what, if any, it should be set to. Notably, it does it not itself set that limit or come to a conclusion about what it should be. Further, this research appears to be a continuation of research released in 2016 [1], which was the first time that a guideline (but not a mandate) was set. This would, of course, be prior to Trump's first administration. This is suggested in the document itself, where it outlines that this document is part of a series of actions beginning in 2015/2016, as well as callouts to specific research in the 2016 article linked below. So the facts seem to show that:
1) The first guideline was set in 2016. It was not a law at this time.
2) Research continued to identify next steps for setting a standard, which were codified and shared in the 2019 article you linked
3) The 2024 Final Rule put a MCL into action for PFAS. Take from that chain of events what you will, but the initial accusations of "political bias" seem unfounded here. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/documents/pf... | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | You've lost sight of the comment I responded to, in which the poster asserts, in so many words, that there can be no explanation for easing any restrictions other than for profit and authoritarianism, etc. Right? Clearly there is an explanation if you search for a few minutes. So I stand by my allegations of bias against that comment specifically. Here, you've read and revised the approach to the issue. This last comment does not warrant any allegation of bias, and I make none about it. The bigger picture is that both parties are interested in clean drinking water. I guess that's obvious to me, and I'm shocked that's not obvious to everyone. Look how many people on this thread actually believe that the Trump administration is literally trying to poison them. That's not crazy to you? It is to me. | | |
| ▲ | colinmorelli 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair, but I'd like to clarify that in my comment I had asked specifically for any sources indicating that the PFA limits were put in place by the prior administration, since you had made the claim: > Trump's EPA created these PFAS rules Your response was what I perceived to be a snarky comment that if only I had bothered to look, I'd have found the evidence, followed by a link that didn't say what was suggested. > Look how many people on this thread actually believe that the Trump administration is literally trying to poison them. That's not crazy to you? The claims made all over the place are insane to me. Yes, I doubt the Trump administration is actually trying to kill me. The world is not as polarizing and extreme as people on the internet want to make it sound like it is. Most people are far more docile in the real world, but the collective hive of the internet exacerbates tension. I have no clue what side of the political aisle you're on, but my guess is we probably agree about more things than we disagree about, if we could detach bullshit labels from it all. But FWIW, the allegation that I wasn't bothering to learn or see if I'm wrong just raised tension further. I was genuinely trying to determine if the claim was true, the evidence I had found suggested it wasn't, and it seems like it in fact wasn't quite true, but perhaps that wasn't the point you were trying to make anyway. All fine. My hope is that we can all turn down the tension and hostility a level or two. Might be the only hope we have. |
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| ▲ | Larrikin 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The first administration had some people acting in good faith even if you disagreed with them. This second term does not. | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Giving municipalities more time and money to enact change aligns just fine with what I think most people would call good faith. You just can't please some people, I guess. |
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| ▲ | 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | saghm a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not out of the realm of possibility that one side of a issue is not acting in good faith. If that's the case, compromise isn't really a viable option; trying to work with someone within a system doesn't work if they literally don't support the system itself. Obviously not everyone agrees that's what's happening here, but not everyone agrees with your premise that there's guaranteed to be some reasonable compromise to every possible issue either. In some ways, you're kind of arguing the same thing but in reverse by claiming that the comment you're responding to isn't being made in good faith. You're certainly entitled to hold that opinion, but only because of the exact same logic that entitles the parent commenter to hold the opinion that they express in the first place (and for what it's worth, I don't think it's actually being made in bad faith; not everyone will agree about where to draw the line, but at least to me it seems like we're long past the point of giving the benefit of the doubt on policies like the one described in TFA). | |
| ▲ | spankalee a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not a debate style, this is the actual explanation. Do you think you have a better one? | |
| ▲ | SSchick a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ok, what is your counter argument? | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think it is just venting, rather than debate. Realistically we’re locked in for about a year and a half of full Republican control of every branch of government before literally anything at all can be changed (and even then the main achievable goal for the midterms would be for Democrats to take the House, right? Which gives them at least some ability to do some oversight, but is pretty limited). | |
| ▲ | beAbU 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thanks for calling this out. I share your frustration. As a non-american it's becoming more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart with all the shit flinging going on. | |
| ▲ | lawn 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And this is in part why these things are happening. People will dismiss it as "talking points" or "too ridiculous". And then they will continue to do it, fully aware that people will just not believe what is happening. | |
| ▲ | Workaccount2 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The media would have a much harder time collecting ad dollars if they didn't use strawman arguments and misrepresentation to lock in an audience. Ask a liberal about conservatives or a conservative about liberals and they have abso-fucking-lutely no idea what the ideals of the other side are. None whatsoever. Thanks silo'd media. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | What are the current ideals of so-called conservatives? Being a libertarian who can entertain both left and right approaches to problems, I thought I had a decent handle on where they were coming from. But then they seemingly went bat-shit insane during Covid. I try to appeal to what I thought were some of the underlying values (eg belief in institutions, America as a force for good in the world, individual liberty, slow and measured change), and always get written off like I just don't understand or something. But never any explanation for what I'm actually missing. The best I've been able to come up with is that they've set aside actually living those values in favor of thinking that we need some massive societal cataclysm to get back to a place where those values have more of a draw, but that's clearly not itself conservative. |
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| ▲ | Daishiman a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Im sorry if you’re naive about life but the Republican Party has shown nothing but contempt for life in general. Ideological coherency is not something they have cared about, hence debating them as if their arguments has any weight whatsoever is not useful. Whenever they propose something, just ask yourself which lobbyist stands something to gain. That will be a sufficient explanation. | |
| ▲ | greenie_beans a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | |
| ▲ | zzzeek a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | these are fascistic decisions. fascism is well understood, and it is the root of the issue here. a confused, sickened and desperate population is easier to control and manipulate. end of story. | |
| ▲ | SalmoShalazar a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This nonsense meta comment is pretty frustrating to me. Use a counter argument rather than wringing your hands and whining with no apparent critique other than “I don’t like that this person is being mean” | |
| ▲ | supportengineer 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Take one step backwards. Do cockroaches debate with the boot heel that comes to squish them? The billionaires are not “debating” anything with the “little people” | |
| ▲ | thegrim33 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're assuming people in here want actual debate, when really the purpose of this comment thread is just a modern two minutes of hate session. | | |
| ▲ | thrance a day ago | parent [-] | | What's up to debate here? It's crystal clear: they removed important health regulations so that a few companies could make slightly more money not having to clean up after themselves. What's not to hate there? | | |
| ▲ | suby a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It is frustrating. Rolling back forever chemical regulations is analogous to reintroducing leaded gasoline. Should we be expected to debate and weigh the pros and cons of leaded gasoline? Some things require nuance, but some things are clearly and unambiguously bad. PFAS have well known health risks, they're persistent, bio-accumulative, and linked to cancers and endocrine disruption. We should err on the side of caution. An angry reaction against this is justified. It's insanity. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway173738 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s the argument—yes. Consumers are supposed to educate themselves about all the industries in their backyard before buying a house to make sure that none of them have ever dumped PFAS in the last 100 years. And also they need to move to a place where it doesn’t rain, because PFAS is also in the water cycle. If nobody does that then the free market has spoken. |
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| ▲ | hobs a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue and you must steel man every other debater when sometimes the guy is coming at you with a knife. There's no two sides to deregulating every business to poison us all, its just profit over people in the most direct and obvious way. There's no complex plan, there's no 4d chess, its just a transparent power grab for ideologues that really have either no interest in the outcomes of their terrible agenda because it ends in power for them or are literally in the pockets of those who desire the end of America. | | |
| ▲ | overfeed 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue Other people are culture warrior and intentionally poison the well (pun nit originally intended) so their side doesn't look bad, because the discussion has devolved into an ideological spat and not about the topic at hand |
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| ▲ | throw0101a a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > As for people getting sick and dying, they either don’t care, or they want people to get sick and die. Healthcare providers and insurance companies are corporations too: you can get rich by treating more people. | | |
| ▲ | throwawaygmbno a day ago | parent | next [-] | | An insurance company CEO was famously shot in broad day light just before he went into a meeting to celebrate his accomplishment of denying people healthcare for his company's profits. Nobody felt bad except other CEOs and the people they directly pay because everyone has a story of the insurance company putting profit over people. They did not get rich by treating more people. | |
| ▲ | yndoendo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | USA HealthCare insurance companies are the _Death Panels_, run by CEO, accounts, and investors, that work to maximize profit over keeping people health. They pay _specialist_ to contradict the actual practicing doctors on why some procedure or medicine is needed. A firm's sole responsibility is to increase profit and a maximize returns for shareholders. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wrt to insurance companies: You can get rich by insuring more people. Treatment is not profitable. | |
| ▲ | AHatLikeThat 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'd argue the insurance companies prefer to collect premiums and not treat people. | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Then you'd be wrong. Insurance companies are limited to the amount they can collect without paying back out. It's a fixed percentage. That means the more expensive treatment gets, the higher they can raise rates, and the more revenue they get from that fixed percentage. | | |
| ▲ | vel0city 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Then you'd be wrong. Insurance companies are limited to the amount they can collect without paying back out. So they go buy the providers and clinics and pharmacies so they can raise the prices and juice that percentage. |
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| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also, there's likely to be a few years between the policy being enacted and people having health issues, so the chances are that the people pushing for this won't be around to catch the blame. | |
| ▲ | 2OEH8eoCRo0 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't get the environmental poison stuff. These rich people and their families breathe the same air and drink the same water as everyone else. Why would they poison themselves and their families with environmental pollution? | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up. I don't support the proliferation of PFAS in the environment, nor am I a Republican, nor do I even live in America. Having said that, you should consider how asinine this sounds, and you should ponder whether the actual reason for this change in the law is more nuanced and less comically ridiculous than something so simplistic. I'm not saying the actual reason is a good one, but strawmanning every political opinion you disagree with is lazy and suggests an inability to use critical thinking about a world that is often quite complex. Indeed, you sound like you're just as far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole as 'they' are, just on the other side of the political spectrum. | | |
| ▲ | trehalose a day ago | parent | next [-] | | So why did Dupont and 3M cover up their own evidence of PFAS toxicity for decades? (This is a known fact. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever... ) Why did they do that, if not for their own profits? | | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent [-] | | They did cover it up. But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said. There's a massive difference. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You’re debating the difference between criminal intent to negligently harm and criminal intent to harm. There is not really much difference from the perspective of those harmed, is there? | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | What does their perspective have to do with whether the distinction is real or not? It's a matter of logic and also a matter of what is most likely to be true. The language used is obviously in relation to the rather important legal dichotomy between those two things; victims of PFAS toxicity and their opinions are irrelevant. What does matter is what the executives and people making the decisions at the corporations knew, thought, and intended by doing certain things, like covering up studies that demonstrated the harms, continuing to ship products they suspected were harmful, or suing whistleblowers to keep them quiet about putative harms. The original commenter was insinuating (I've quoted it throughout this thread) that the corporations were intentionally poisoning people, as if making them sick was itself a motive for shipping these products. Whether that is true or not is to be determined from the mental state of the executives I just talked about. There is no evidence I've ever seen that any of the corporations, like Dupont or Marlboro, ever intended to poison people and give them diseases for some underlying profit motive. To suggest they had was, as I said, lazy thinking and a caricature. That certainly doesn't mean those corporations weren't negligent. But, as has been my point this entire time, intention is everything - intention is literally the entire difference between a murder charge and a manslaughter charge. It's not trivial at all. And imputing intention to cause harm (ie., the opposite of using Occam's Razor) because you dislike a corporation or person is just sloppy thinking. |
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| ▲ | magicalist 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said No, the said > If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up Which has played out again and again in history. It's a lot cheaper to dump industrial solvents out the back door than pay for proper disposal, and if there's no legal repercussions stopping it, someone can just do it and watch profits go up. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > or they want people to get sick and die. Actually this is what he said, and what I was referring to. | | |
| ▲ | vouwfietsman 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Its not what you quoted, and its also still not supporting your point (it starts with or, maybe there's something before the or?). | |
| ▲ | californical 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Isn’t “doing something that causes people to get sick and die for your own small financial gain” exactly that? | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | If I run a business that produces pollution through a pair of smokestacks, and I know that the pollution is harmful and will give a few of the surrounding residents lung cancer, is that the same thing as intending that they will get the cancer? Or would it be reasonable for me to see the harm as an unfortunate externality that I wish could be avoided but can't be given whatever technological limitations there are currently. So no, it's not 'exactly that'. You guys hate corporations so much that you are going a step beyond mere negligence and pretending that they are actually out to harm people as the very raison d'etre for their products, as opposed to the harm being a byproduct of their business. I'm not saying PFAS should be legal (they definitely shouldn't be); I'm saying it's lazy thinking that lacks evidence to suggest the harm itself is somehow the motivation, which is what the original commenter suggested. Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma? | | |
| ▲ | vouwfietsman 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not sure why you keep spinning this as a valid response to anything. This is the full quote of the parent:
> As for people getting sick and dying, they either don’t care, or they want people to get sick and die. Lets break it down. Lets say some of your actions are causing harm, there's basically three options:
1. you don't know this is happening
2. you know, but continue because you don't care, and you can make money not caring
3. you know, and somehow this is beneficial to you, unlikely but possible (The default option, which is always available, is to stop operations, which they have obviously also not done.) Since DuPont obviously knew this was causing harm, #1 is out, so #2 and #3 remain. This is just deduction by elimination, not a value judgement. No amount of spinning this argument is going to change this. I think your last line here makes it obvious who's straw-manning. | |
| ▲ | californical 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You guys hate corporations so much Sorry I don’t know who you’re grouping me with, but I don’t hate corporations. I hate people intentionally harming others for their own profit. > Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma? Again, not speaking for a group here since I’m just some guy. But I think when evidence started to appear that “holy crap this is killing people like crazy”, then choosing to allow it to continue - yes is equivalent to killing people intentionally. I don’t consider “disguising your killing through statistics” to be a reasonable defense. If I have 100 miners that I’ve hired in a room, and I know that 10 of them will die as a direct result of my actions, such as not taking precautionary safety measures… It doesn’t matter which 10 it is, I’ve still chosen to kill 10 of those people. |
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| ▲ | absurddoctor 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wonder if you misunderstood what the commenter was saying. It isn’t that the goal of the companies is to make people sick as you suggest, it’s that the goal of the companies is to increase profits, and they don’t want concerns over people’s health to be a constraint on that goal. | |
| ▲ | cluckindan a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you own shares in companies which are in the chemical manufacturing business? Or are you somehow otherwise invested in having ultra-lax environmental regulations? Genuine question. The other explanation for not wanting to call a spade a spade is in the category of actually hating other people and wishing them to die a prolonged, painful death. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent [-] | | I own no shares, nor do I work in any industry that would be affected by this. I'm fully against PFAS and related chemicals being used in consumer/cooking products or being released in the environment. They should be outlawed and not used, end of story. Now that that's out of the way, I don't think corporations are actively trying to make consumers sick so they can recoup the profits through their investments in the healthcare sector (or whatever insane conspiracy theory you guys are suggesting here). | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan a day ago | parent [-] | | 1. The executives know that chemicals are poisonous to wildlife, plants and humans 2. The executives don’t care because proper disposal would be costly and they are heavily incentivized to increase profits as much as possible 3. Executives order chemicals to be dumped or vented into the environment 4. Company gets caught 5. Executives order a coverup 6. Company eventually pays for cleanup, but the executives are already long gone 7. Nobody goes to jail What part of this scenario is not intentionally poisoning people? | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > or they want people to get sick and die. This is the part I've been referring to from the original comment. Also, once again, you should be careful how you use intention here. Even in the case where they knew about the harms or the risk, you can't impute intention without more evidence. Without that evidence, you should stick to negligence, since that's what it would be and indeed that is what separates a simple negligence claim from criminal negligence (intention). If you say they intended to harm people or the environment, that's very different from saying their negligence or coverup resulted in harm to people/the environment. Intention is a subjective state of mind of the executives/board/'The company', and while it can be imputed in certain circumstances, it's a high bar. Dumping toxic waste somewhere because you think nobody will ever notice (which they did, in remote bodies of water), and then having some campers come along and jump into the water for a swim (which also happened), doesn't mean they intended to harm those campers or indeed that they intended to harm anyone. It was negligent but not obviously intentional. This really isn't hard to understand. It's also why there were never any criminal charges, not because the execs were long gone. In the US, corporations can be held criminally liable regardless of whether the original execs are still there or not. | | |
| ▲ | californical 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > you can't impute intention without more evidence If I’m aware that eating too much chocolate will kill my dog. But it’s annoying for me to get up and walk to the trash can. So I just throw the chocolate scraps to my dog to avoid inconveniencing myself. Is this the same as wanting my dog to die? Being completely unbothered by the fact that I’m killing my dog sounds about equivalent to wanting it to die. I’m choosing to harm it to avoid a small inconvenience. Maybe I would prefer it not to die, but I’m actively making a choice to do something that kills it, so really there’s not such a difference. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean, if we're talking about intention then yes there's a huge difference, that's the entire point. But more to the point, your example is (as I'm sure you know) laughably simplistic. Cigarettes and PFAS play a probability game: the stats guys come to you and say, 'Hey boss, so if we sell 100,000 units of this product, there's a 20% chance than 5 people will be genetically susceptible to this particular novel molecule we're using, and 1 of them has a 10% chance of going on to develop bone cancer within 25 years. Should we sell it anyway?' If you put it that way it isn't so obvious what the answer is. Most products have the potential to cause harm to some segment of the population. It's absolutely true that cigarettes and PFAS are two examples where the harms are much more rigorously established (especially with cigarettes, going back half a century), but the point stands: it's not a matter of chucking a chocolate bar at your dog. Again, you could plug the actual numbers in for the potential harms of PFAS and I don't think you'd be able to say that Dupont 'intended' to harm anybody, notwithstanding that they were clearly negligent. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | PFAS were first determined to be harmful by internal industry scientists in the early 1960s, with documented evidence showing animal toxicity (including liver damage) and warnings of human health risks by the late 1960s and 1970s. |
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| ▲ | thrance a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What's your reasonable explanation, then? A whole lot of words for saying nothing. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent [-] | | Whether I have a reasonable explanation for this change or not doesn't change the fact that that comment was a simplistic caricature. I never claimed to know the full answer. But I am nearly certain it doesn't begin with those evil corporations literally trying to make people sick. Merchants of Doubt, which is a great book related to this subject, is full of stories about how cigarette and PFAS corporations like Dupont pulled all sorts of shady shit to cover up the harms their products caused consumers. At no point has it ever been suggested, either in that book or anywhere else that I'm aware of, that corporations did it on purpose to make people ill so they could what, make money through the healthcare industry? Touch grass. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan a day ago | parent | next [-] | | DuPont pulled shady shit because executives were heavily incentivized to maximize profits in the short term. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent [-] | | Ok? No shit? That's not the same thing as literally trying to make people sick, as the original commenter said and as I was replying to initially. Being negligent is not the same thing as being malicious; intent matters. Even if I try to cover up a harm, that doesn't mean the harm itself was my intention. If you guys can't understand the nuance there then I dunno what to tell you. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Leaving a valve open by mistake and accidentally venting toxic gas into the neighborhood is negligence. Ordering the valve be opened is malicious. | |
| ▲ | masfuerte 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not negligence. Negligence is when you don't test product safety and ship an unsafe product without knowing it. You can reasonably argue this was the case in the early days of cigarettes. If you continue to ship a product after you know it is harmful you are deliberately causing harm. |
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| ▲ | thrance 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You clearly misunderstood what "if companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up" meant. It's not that the rich are poisoning people for its own sake and laughing manically to themselves. It's that removing regulations and lowering safety standards allows companies to recoup the money they were legally required to spend on upholding them, hence increasing their profits at the cost of public health. Which, I hope you'll concede, is a morally terrible thing to do. |
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| ▲ | zzzeek a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | read Orwell's "Animal Farm". then ask yourself if the pigs had any "nuance" to what they were doing. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi a day ago | parent [-] | | Not sure how telling me to read a satirical work of fiction, by an avowed Socialist by the way, is particularly helpful here. I'm a fan of Orwell, but I don't think he'd have such a simplistic view of the actual (as opposed to fictional) world either. | | |
| ▲ | zzzeek a day ago | parent [-] | | if someone thinks Animal Farm is a "simplistic work of fiction" that teaches nothing due to its author being an "avowed Socialist", that's a pretty poor "fan" of Orwell. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism no matter what the purported ideology is. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | You told me to go read a satirical work of fiction to understand why real life executives might make certain decisions. This is like telling me to read Lord of the Rings to understand, by analogy, what insert politician you hate here is thinking and how it's informing his use of policy. Fiction is fiction. I prefer non-fiction for informing what I think about other (actual) people and their decision making processes. | | |
| ▲ | zzzeek 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Animal Farm uses metaphor to make statements and observations about non-ficticious events. a non-fiction version of Animal Farm might be: "Authoritarianism is bad. Consider the case of the Russian Revolution leading to the rise and rule of Stalin. Imagine it's like the story of a farm taken over by authoritarian pigs: <insert existing Animal Farm text here>" the word "fiction" here is doing work for your argument that it's not qualified to do. the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission. This is the simplest and most consistent explanation with many historical parallels and an approach (known as fascism) that is described by a tremendous amount of written literature, both academic and non-academic, fiction and non-fiction. The actions of politicians must be observed and the net effect of these actions forms the basis of the rationale. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission. Now we have what you're really trying to get at here: some tinfoil hat conspiratorialising where the US government is out to mind control/'crush' its population (or something). At least if you aren't telling me to read a subversive Socialist novel instead of just saying it outright it saves us both the time of trying to figure out what you really mean. I get it, big oppressive authoritarian government bad. Look, I'm not a fan of much that the Trump admin is doing (certainly not this), I've never voted for him (I haven't lived in America in 20 years), and I'm fully aware of the US government's long history of pulling dodgy shit vis-a-vis medical research (pretending to treat syphilis in black people, anyone?) Nevertheless, I don't see everything that happens in the world, whether it involving US law or even ethically questionable administrations), as necessarily emanating from farsighted and ingeniously devious governmental planning. If anything, the last 10 years have demonstrated that federal governments are less competent and more inept than we ever thought they could be in the modern Big Brother world. | | |
| ▲ | zzzeek 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | this all just says you're not really reading much about what's going on right now, or you're only reading right wing news sources there is broad consensus among academics and journalists who study/cover authoritarianism that that's exactly what this is. it has a predictable path. this includes that individual authoritarians don't have to understand what they're doing at all. Trump does what he does due to deep narcissism and other personality disorders, he can't even spell "fascism". He's an obvious ignoramus. Bur the effect is, authoritarianism. The administration's next moves can be predicted and understood based on the study of this phenomenon. | | |
| ▲ | SpicyLemonZest 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Someone making decisions “in order to crush the population into submission” definitely does have to understand what he’s doing. That’s what “in order to” means. Indeed, the public has to understand it too; how else will someone with a PFAS-weakened immune system know who they’re supposed to submit to? |
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