7 ms·

Oh well that excuses all of the poisoning, clearly

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of pollution either. I doubt very much that they're the only ones able to manufacture this stuff
- hackernewds 3y ago
  But it will set a mighty example for others
  - jquast 3y ago
    Genuinely curious, would any money be extracted from the personal accounts of any executive employee that made these decisions, current or past, from any of these thousands of lawsuits? Unless the decision-making folks have their personal wealth destroyed, they really haven’t anything to lose. I would expect the worst-case scenario is that their stock portfolios will need to be adjusted, by tax-loss harvesting their losses in 3m stocks as an opportunity to divest and rebalance their portfolios.
    - pr0zac 3y ago
      Considering Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family has so far had to pay out $10.5 billion (estimates of their net worth including those settlements have it dropping $8b during this time period) and despite trying quite hard have not managed to gain legal immunity or protection regarding civil and criminal liability. That means they'll very likely be hit with more lawsuits going forward and possibly even criminal charges. Looking at it, I think thats pretty good and hope the possibility for future lawsuits means they continue to pay, but knowing that case is an unusual outlier and that none of the other people involved like the CEO or other executives have had any consequences makes it feel a little underwhelming. I'm glad government is going after bad companies more and I hope they continue, but it does seem like our legal system is just not equipped to correctly hold people responsible in these cases.
- enraged_camel 3y ago
  >> disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of pollution either. Yes, but it prevents them from harming the public like this in the future, and also serves as a very strong deterrent for others.
  - BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
    or mabye we should be more honest and consider that maybe this is a way for the USA government to fill its coffers back up? (rapping on another comment saying that there's a chance this is a way for the USA government to sell the 'manufacture capacity' that 3M is to other "greener" owners) now that I type this out, I realize that this is perfectly consistent with the behavior of empires. the realization that the alleged 'pax romana' (stability and 'peace' for the roman empire) was built on stealing from 'barbaric' tribes and selling stuff to more 'civilized' owners in Rome.
    - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      As long as the laws and their enforcement are just, a theoretical government profit motive doesn't seem like a bad thing. But it's hard to see how the particular people who brought this case to bear would be motivated by the small slice of the increase in federal funding that would redound to them. And it's not consistent with most of the government's behavior -- it doesn't spend as many resources extracting judgments from big corporations as would be likely if its profit motive loomed large.
      - BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
        no, you gotta be much more deep in your reasoning this "high" up philosophically, at this height, the principle of "justice" is to not so simple... what does it even mean "to be just"? may as well say "be good" but the point is that the issue is good for whom? the concept is "Empire"... USA government is the empire? aside question: can there ever exist multiple "empires"? monotheistic~ally speaking? uff... My English prose is answering its own questions... I am no longer deeply disturbed by this phenomenon... but it's not something scientifically real so it still shakes me.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it clear to other companies that if they lie about safety they will face an existential threat too. Who are you people who feel compelled to defend mega corporations that screw people over? What is your psychology? What do you value in life? My goodness.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    There are millions of people all over the earth that genuinely believe "might makes right", or "greed is good", or "capitalism inherently results in meritocratic and technocratic allocation of resources so nothing that happens under capitalism can possibly be bad". That's not even the least liberal worldviews widely held. Love thy neighbor and the golden rule and accountability are not universal
    - njanirudh 3y ago
      I would say that billions of people believe that "might makes right". Its been seen across the centuries and countries alike. Colonialism, MegaCorps, Hague Invasion Act and countless examples that prove that morals matter very less in the long run.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    > The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it clear to other companies that if they lie about safety they will face an existential threat too. DuPont, while removed from the threat of this lawsuit, is guilty on plenty of counts of the same behavior with other chemicals. I believe I've read articles about GE and Monsanto also knowing the health risks to their own employees and doing nothing about it. Let alone the dumping into public waterways. $143 billion is hopefully the judgement which is levied, and hopefully the first of many.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      > this lawsuit There can and will be others. Esp. if there is a legal precedent.
  - deleted 3y ago
bcrosby95 3y ago
That's a pretty shitty response to an actual problem. Companies don't need to prove the safety of things like this. Look at bpa free. Most people don't even know that bpa free plastic tends to be just as bad, or potentially worse than bpa. The press doesn't give a shit I guess. Society went through its giant bpa panic and now it's tired of dealing with this so let's just ignore it and move onto the next thing. Ignorance is bliss.
- bravoetch 3y ago
  You're okay with companies not being responsible, but you want the press to help you out here? I feel the opposite. Companies should be responsible for poisoning us, and the press has zero to do with it.
  - pizlonator 3y ago
    I don’t think that the problem some posters are alluding to is the kind where we should be placing blame. The problem is: - Humans invent something useful and cool. - Humans discover that the cool and useful thing is toxic as fuck, but only after years go by. It takes years for the awareness of the toxicity to become widespread enough for everyone to concur it’s a problem. Often, we only find out about the toxicity as a result of the cool chemical becoming hella widespread. - Humans invent alternatives that are different enough to obviously not have the same exact problem. But: what toxic nonsense or buttcancer risks will we discover about the alternatives? No way to know immediately since it takes years to find out. And it’s only when the alternatives become widespread that we can even do the science to figure out what’s up. And by the time they become widespread, some folks got buttcancer. That’s the problem: just because there’s an alternative that is different from the thing we found out to be toxic doesn’t meant that the alternative isn’t toxic. And we find out it’s toxic because people get hurt. It’s not that the press is bad… it’s just a fundamental problem in science and engineering. You need scale to discover the really bad issues.
    - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
      > it’s just a fundamental problem in science and engineering. In my opinion is is a problem not of science and engineering, but of human greed. We do not need these products, we want them. As a species we did fine without them but suddenly in the last 100 years we need the so desperately? Adding, no one can give me a response, just downvotes. Why is the aversion to speaking about greed so strong here on hacker news?

disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of pollution either. I doubt very much that they're the only ones able to manufacture this stuff

hackernewds 3y ago
But it will set a mighty example for others
- jquast 3y ago
  Genuinely curious, would any money be extracted from the personal accounts of any executive employee that made these decisions, current or past, from any of these thousands of lawsuits? Unless the decision-making folks have their personal wealth destroyed, they really haven’t anything to lose. I would expect the worst-case scenario is that their stock portfolios will need to be adjusted, by tax-loss harvesting their losses in 3m stocks as an opportunity to divest and rebalance their portfolios.
  - pr0zac 3y ago
    Considering Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family has so far had to pay out $10.5 billion (estimates of their net worth including those settlements have it dropping $8b during this time period) and despite trying quite hard have not managed to gain legal immunity or protection regarding civil and criminal liability. That means they'll very likely be hit with more lawsuits going forward and possibly even criminal charges. Looking at it, I think thats pretty good and hope the possibility for future lawsuits means they continue to pay, but knowing that case is an unusual outlier and that none of the other people involved like the CEO or other executives have had any consequences makes it feel a little underwhelming. I'm glad government is going after bad companies more and I hope they continue, but it does seem like our legal system is just not equipped to correctly hold people responsible in these cases.
enraged_camel 3y ago
>> disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of pollution either. Yes, but it prevents them from harming the public like this in the future, and also serves as a very strong deterrent for others.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
  or mabye we should be more honest and consider that maybe this is a way for the USA government to fill its coffers back up? (rapping on another comment saying that there's a chance this is a way for the USA government to sell the 'manufacture capacity' that 3M is to other "greener" owners) now that I type this out, I realize that this is perfectly consistent with the behavior of empires. the realization that the alleged 'pax romana' (stability and 'peace' for the roman empire) was built on stealing from 'barbaric' tribes and selling stuff to more 'civilized' owners in Rome.
  - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
    As long as the laws and their enforcement are just, a theoretical government profit motive doesn't seem like a bad thing. But it's hard to see how the particular people who brought this case to bear would be motivated by the small slice of the increase in federal funding that would redound to them. And it's not consistent with most of the government's behavior -- it doesn't spend as many resources extracting judgments from big corporations as would be likely if its profit motive loomed large.
    - BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
      no, you gotta be much more deep in your reasoning this "high" up philosophically, at this height, the principle of "justice" is to not so simple... what does it even mean "to be just"? may as well say "be good" but the point is that the issue is good for whom? the concept is "Empire"... USA government is the empire? aside question: can there ever exist multiple "empires"? monotheistic~ally speaking? uff... My English prose is answering its own questions... I am no longer deeply disturbed by this phenomenon... but it's not something scientifically real so it still shakes me.
jackmott42 3y ago
The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it clear to other companies that if they lie about safety they will face an existential threat too. Who are you people who feel compelled to defend mega corporations that screw people over? What is your psychology? What do you value in life? My goodness.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  There are millions of people all over the earth that genuinely believe "might makes right", or "greed is good", or "capitalism inherently results in meritocratic and technocratic allocation of resources so nothing that happens under capitalism can possibly be bad". That's not even the least liberal worldviews widely held. Love thy neighbor and the golden rule and accountability are not universal
  - njanirudh 3y ago
    I would say that billions of people believe that "might makes right". Its been seen across the centuries and countries alike. Colonialism, MegaCorps, Hague Invasion Act and countless examples that prove that morals matter very less in the long run.
- RajT88 3y ago
  > The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it clear to other companies that if they lie about safety they will face an existential threat too. DuPont, while removed from the threat of this lawsuit, is guilty on plenty of counts of the same behavior with other chemicals. I believe I've read articles about GE and Monsanto also knowing the health risks to their own employees and doing nothing about it. Let alone the dumping into public waterways. $143 billion is hopefully the judgement which is levied, and hopefully the first of many.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    > this lawsuit There can and will be others. Esp. if there is a legal precedent.
- deleted 3y ago

bcrosby95 3y ago

That's a pretty shitty response to an actual problem. Companies don't need to prove the safety of things like this. Look at bpa free. Most people don't even know that bpa free plastic tends to be just as bad, or potentially worse than bpa. The press doesn't give a shit I guess. Society went through its giant bpa panic and now it's tired of dealing with this so let's just ignore it and move onto the next thing. Ignorance is bliss.

bravoetch 3y ago
You're okay with companies not being responsible, but you want the press to help you out here? I feel the opposite. Companies should be responsible for poisoning us, and the press has zero to do with it.
- pizlonator 3y ago
  I don’t think that the problem some posters are alluding to is the kind where we should be placing blame. The problem is: - Humans invent something useful and cool. - Humans discover that the cool and useful thing is toxic as fuck, but only after years go by. It takes years for the awareness of the toxicity to become widespread enough for everyone to concur it’s a problem. Often, we only find out about the toxicity as a result of the cool chemical becoming hella widespread. - Humans invent alternatives that are different enough to obviously not have the same exact problem. But: what toxic nonsense or buttcancer risks will we discover about the alternatives? No way to know immediately since it takes years to find out. And it’s only when the alternatives become widespread that we can even do the science to figure out what’s up. And by the time they become widespread, some folks got buttcancer. That’s the problem: just because there’s an alternative that is different from the thing we found out to be toxic doesn’t meant that the alternative isn’t toxic. And we find out it’s toxic because people get hurt. It’s not that the press is bad… it’s just a fundamental problem in science and engineering. You need scale to discover the really bad issues.
  - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    > it’s just a fundamental problem in science and engineering. In my opinion is is a problem not of science and engineering, but of human greed. We do not need these products, we want them. As a species we did fine without them but suddenly in the last 100 years we need the so desperately? Adding, no one can give me a response, just downvotes. Why is the aversion to speaking about greed so strong here on hacker news?