Comment by hello_computer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hello_computer | Hacker News Reader

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Could care less about shareholders and compensation. They poison the world--physically and spiritually. It is crime on the largest scale, and all our little professors here chomp at the bit for a piece of the action. Zuck or Elon or Jamie Dimon or Sam Altman... says "Jump!" They reply, "How high?," jump, then bitch about it (anonymously)--here or on Bluesky, in the vaguest and most non-incriminating of terms--rinse and repeat.

responding here since rate-limited:

It has been estimated that up to 40% of Coca-Cola's annual revenue comes from the food stamp program. When a bipartisan effort arose to remove that poison from the schedule, the industry's lobbyists and non-profits were engaged, and set about making the removal into a racial issue. They succeeded, and the politicians promptly backed-off. "Just incentives" doesn't fly when the incentives themselves come from a single source, directed by unelected administrators, who may be subject to considerable private pressure.

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

- George Bernard Shaw

That doesn’t require a conspiracy just incentives.

You’re a farmer considering which crop to plant and you realize tobacco is the most profitable option. Do you plant it or worry about the heat impact on smokers? That’s the kind of moral quandary which most people simply never consider in the moment.

> "Just incentives" doesn't fly when the incentives themselves come from a single source, directed by unelected administrators, who may be subject to considerable private pressure.

Taking that 40% figure at face value is crazy when losing the entire US market would only be a ~40% loss of total sales.

As to government programs resulting from lobbying, every company has the exact same incentives for such lobbying if a program doesn’t exist they would be happy for it to be created. The only thing different in this case is the degree to which their lobbying is effective.

“Everybody does it” does not alter the fact that a very small very wealthy very connected group of people exert far more influence over policy than the general public.

Per The Hill:

“Take, for example, the most frequently purchased item in SNAP — sugar-sweetened beverages, which comprise 9.3 percent of all SNAP expenditures. This part of the SNAP subsidy, by our estimates, drives 20 to 25 percent of U.S. revenues for Coca-Cola and Pepsico.*”

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5118876-healthy-snap-...

This is a great example of how focusing on specific details can blind people to a particular context and feeds conspiracy theories.

> sugar-sweetened beverages, which comprise 9.3 percent of all SNAP expenditures

That’s also the typical percentage of food spending on sugar-sweetened beverages. Money is fungible, you can specifically exclude soda from SNAP but poor people are still gonna buy junk food.

The wider context is someone is trying to justify cutting SNAP funding and making their argument as appealing as possible. Which means you need to be especially critical when evaluating their claims because the degree to which an argument resonates with you is independent of its accuracy.

PS: “far more influence over policy than the general public” yes that’s what it means to have power. It however doesn’t directly make what they are doing good or bad even if it feels that way. You still need to justify specific details.

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