Today I Learned

Corporations don't have morals. Aspiring businessmen don't take ethics classes. There are only two questions: Does it increase profits? Is it illegal? They will ignore rule two if none of the board goes to jail and the fines are less than the profits. They would sell you leaded gas today if they earned a fraction of a penny more per gallon. They do not care about anything aside from profits. That's capitalism.

Bayer also sold medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS to Asia and Latin America when outlawed in the USA in the 80s. Why in all fuck their corporate charter wasn't permanently suspended and the company sold off is BEYOND me.

SciShow did a piece (partially) about this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXEFQH5UXHQ

And Veritasium did a deeper dive a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA

The whole situation is thoroughly fucked up, but hey, as long as people are making money amirite? 😑

This is a heartbeat of history; people who can profit off of the suffering of others will do so remorselessly.

So many other stories you can look up. Obvious shit like climate change or smoking, where it's well-known how unrepentantly evil the industry has been in suppressing the science and research they KNEW indict their product.

For an equally-tragic but less-well-known story, you could look into the Radon Girls. That's a heartbreaking saga of corporate malfeasance where the bad guys basically got away with it.

If you like podcasts, this is narratively similar to the content in two of my favorites. You're Wrong About and Well There's Your Problem. The former is more about cultural moments and moral panics, the latter is oriented towards the arrogance and carelessness of engineers (though sometimes is just historical stories).

And you can be sure whatever causes all major illness today, they know, but it's too profitable to do anything about it.

The things the sugar industry knows for example, but everyone is turning a blind eye.

And all current politicians, and most Lemmy users, and certainly all reddit users are brain damaged as a result.

..."we could improve our machining tolerances and stop using ancient sand casting techniques where the cores float and move. Or hell we could just ignore those low quality crudes from Venezuela"...

"Nah! Dumb consumers are best for capitalism. Give them lead."

~~All~~ airplanes are still using leaded fuels, so if you live near the end of a runway... depending on the average education level of the area, you likely have the cheapest real estate in the region.

We will probably say the same thing about plastics in a few decades.

We know the health risk associated to micro plastics but we continue to use them everywhere

Add in asbestos and other stuff. The US has always prioritized the wealth of business owners.

Tetraethyl lead (TEL) was introduced in the 20s, but was largely eliminated from passenger cars in the US by the end of the 70s, and banned in the 90s. You can still get TEL additives for fuels for certain classic cars that require it, and certain aviation fuels still have TEL because they haven't found anything else that works in those applications yet.

You can blame Thomas Midgely Jr. for the introduction of both TEL and chrlorofluorocarbons (CFCs used in refrigerants).

Wait until OP learns that oil companies covered up their own research which proved they were wrecking the environment with CO2 pollution.

Or that the sugar industry covered up the evidence that sugary food caused the obesity epidemic and they told everyone it was actually fatty foods doing it.

Man, that The Conversation article is just listing individual events and it still reads like a crime scene. Obviously, because it was a crime, but deep down I had still a tiny bit of hope that the companies were not quite as blunt about it.

You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally received and practiced on - Ben Franklin

They still do lead for small plane engines

capitalism